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From: Kevin Dyer <k.dyer_at_bluewin.ch> subject: [Paddlewise] Accidents, licencing etc. Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 07:57:47 +0200 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:29 PDT

Wow! That stirred things up!

Actually, I'm not advocating legislation, but that's often the way countries
go when there seen to be too many accidents by the almighty media. I wondered
if it's happening there. I agree that it's unenforceable and will not stop
accidents. 

Sorry about my geographical ignorance. I'm all in favour of avoiding shrinkage
of Canada.

In Switzerland, law does not restrict access to mountains or activities in
mountains. The situation is similar to your situation with kayaks on your
coastal waters I would say. 

I see one reason for this as being the banalisation of "extreme" sports.
People watch it on TV, it's shown as heroic, the message quickly comes across
that "you can do it too" - and it's left right there. There is no indication
of how to go about preparing yourself for safely enjoying that sport. No
advice of which club or organisation is out there and no yardstick to show the
difference between the person you just saw perform skilfully and what a
complete novice might have done wrong in the same situation.

Here, we've had and are having this with high mountain climbing, rock
climbing, skiing, canyoning and more besides.

One interesting thing here, the mountain rescue here is performed by a
collaboration between a publicly financed private helicopter company and the
Swiss Alpine Club, who's members are volunteers selected amongst the most
competent alpinists. This allays some of the "why should we pay" argument.

For the anecdote, on kayak and marine safety here; a kayak is considered to be
a "beach device" and as such may not exceed 300m from the shore. The problem
was windsurfers who cross the lake, 15 km or more, who also have "beach
devices". This law has now been changed, so now, if I have a bailer, a
compass, a PFD and a red flag for signalling for help, I may now cross the
lake. I wanted better than that. I wanted a VHF. I asked the lake rescue
people if that was useful here and they said "yes we monitor channel 16 day
and night".

So, I asked the OFCOM - Swiss federal regulatory branch - how to go about
getting a licence. They explained that I must pass an operators exam and then
pay a licence. They also explained that I would not be allowed to use my radio
in Switzerland! This is because the military, police and fire services are
using those frequencies. What really hurts is, if I drive around the lake to
France and put the boat in the water, the French authorities insist that I
MUST have a VHF if I paddle further than 300m from the land. Which kind of
forces me to have an unlicenced radio, if I want to take safety seriously.

Cheers,

Kevin.

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