This gets back to what I said. People not dying or needing outside help is a non event that is never reported. One way of gather some information is to take a poll on this list. Basically, ask people to report incidents over the past year (or years) that they witnessed or were a part of, in which wearing a PFD was a decisive safety factor. There is some subjectivity to this. For example, we were out surfing in some storm surf recently when Vickie missed repeated roll attempts and took a swim. By the time I saw it she was being recirculated by a strong rip pulling her out, and 7+ foot plunging waves driving her back in. Even with a PFD she was spending fairly long periods of time with her head under water. I almost went after her, but she was gradually making progress and seemed to be getting enough air. My subjective opinion is that we would have had to intervene to keep her from drowning if she were not wearing a PFD. FYI: She was wearing a dry top over a farmer john. Five minutes later the same thing happened to a man in our group who was an experienced and current class 5 whitewater paddler. He was doing a better job keeping his head above water, so it is not as clear what would have happened had he not been wearing a PFD. I would probably ask him how he felt about his prospects without a PFD before reporting it. Someone would have to volunteer to take the information and compile in some logical way. Any volunteer? Steve Brown ....It would also be necessary to know what percentage of the people who didn't die were wearing PFDs..... -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Apr 24 2003 - 17:42:24 PDT
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