Re: [Paddlewise] Kayaks and Visibility

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 2:03 AM, Paul Hayward <pdh_at_mmcl.co.nz> wrote:

>
> Do most night-time paddlers comply ?
> Do your 'relatively low-luminance' lights meet the 0,54 nm (1 km)
> requirements ?
> Do you find them effective at keeping other boats at bay ?
>
>
The answer to these would be interesting. I'd also like to know how these
lights affect their vision at night (and the vision of anyone paddling near
them). But I cannot see how any steady light mounted anywhere on a kayak
could help but interfere with night vision. Your blue light is great for
being seen but terrible for your night vision, by the way. There is a reason
we have red lights on the bridge at night.

I have a lot of problems with these disparate local regulations. One problem
is that it makes it more difficult to know what rules to follow. Another
problem is that they are seldom written by people who have any experience in
the field they are attempting to regulate. But my major problem is that it
seems that local jurisdictions are finding it easier to target kayakers than
to target powerboaters. Imagine the uproar if a municipality decided to
require all pedestrians to wear special vests during the day and lights at
night because that made them more visible to drivers.

Requiring a kayak to have TWO white lights seems to me to be targeting the
potential victims because targeting the potential perpetrators is too great
a task. And it's easy because to the average citizen (and even, apparently,
to some kayakers) it's just common sense to make a kayak have lights; and
the more the better. But there are already rules requiring mariners to
operate their vessels at safe speeds and in a safe manner. Why not just
enforce these?

Politicians certainly love paper solutions. They can point to their
"solution" and proudly claim that they did something to stop the problem of
kayakers being run over by powerboats. Then they can use that to get
re-elected.

The average person already thinks kayakers are crazy people too stupid to
know how to be safe so we make easy targets. This is why I prefer to have
one set of rules (the ColRegs) applicable everywhere. It eliminates the
knee-jerk reaction of passing a rule after a local accident. Once you have
international regulations you can then use education - and the enforcement
of existing rules - to begin to solve the problems.

Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
www.nwpaddling.net
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