On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, ralph diaz wrote: > Germans were (are) loath to wear PFDs > There was a discussion on wearing PFDs on Faltboot.de recently and it ran on similar lines as on PW: You should wear one! Even the rare excuses were the same: a PFD is not always necessary on small and calm inland waterways. It seems difficult to enforce security rules, in kayaking as elsewhere. I often accompany my son Erik to kayak competitions here in France. The French Kayak Federation has enacted strict security measures for these rapid racing boats: Helmet, PFD, flotation, foot-brace, etc. And they always do sample controls at the regional and national competitions and they regularly disqualify kayakers not respecting these rules. This negligence is astonishing, as these skilfull kayakers sometimes run on class III-IV WW. The comparison with car safety comes to mind. At this years Championats de France on the Isere river the federation toughened its controls: After the official trial run *every* boat was inspected. My son luckily passed, but his friend had to buy a new PFD within 24 h (old foam, inadequate buoancy, was a thread on PW). Good business for the dealers present selling PFDs... I think it is nearly a crosscultural phenomenon that people think (in kayaking and elsewhere) that they have the situation completely under their control and that those nasty accidents only happen to other people. We know what we should do and we don't do it! Reinhold Weber *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Sep 07 2000 - 07:55:36 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:31 PDT