Re: [Paddlewise] Safety in Recreational Kayaks

     Now I am not aware of any like studies having been conducted about
wearing 


  pfd's in kayaks. Anecdotal stories about how "I would've died, by golly, had

  I not been wearing my trusty pfd," simply don't cut it. And while I have not

  made any formal studies into the matter myself, it would seem to me that
from 


  the stories I have read about kayak deaths there seems to be a pretty even 



  split between those who have died with their pfd's on, and those who died 


  without one. 


        Well, it's a difficult thing to gather together sufficient numbers of
accident reports.  Many don't even get to paddlers' attention.  Still others
imply paddling events but are not; for example a fishermen on a small pond
using a beat up boat.  He was fishing, just happened to use a canoe, hence was
automatically a paddler.  Here in NJ I often see articles concerning drownings
on the rivers involving canoeists which are never reported to the paddling
community otherwise.  They remain local events. Perhaps nowadays with the
greater use of the internet we can be more readily made aware of these.  


        So far as I know, no accidents or fatalities of this kind are required
to be reported anywhere.  Nonetheless there are some collections of
information.  Pennsylvania does an annual review of boating accidents with a
view to working out why they happened and what might have been done to prevent
them.  


        In the whitewater community, Charlie Walbridge has been working for
decades on such reportage and analysis.  At least there, there is abundant
evidence of the utility of PFDs.  Charlie once wrote that merely wearing one
could cut the fatality rate in half.  


        Since the Delaware River above Port Jervis became a Wild & Scenic
River about 1981,  NPS has kept such records.  Since that year there have been
34 paddling related drownings on the river.  Of those, 32 victims did NOT wear
a pfd.  The remaining two had them on, but so loosely they were immediately
stripped off.  Surprisingly, Alcohol was not a major factor, nor was the kind
of boat.  


        I really don't think that more efficient statistical sampling
procedures would enhance the impact of that observation. No one, no paddler,
who wore a properly fastened pfd has died on that part of the river in 20
years.  





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