On 9 March 2011 Craig said: > As far as a PFD being the best survival tactic in cold water... > then what's second best? A PFD and a drysuit? A PFD and a > wetsuit? That seems ludicrous to me. At the risk of thrashing this to death, I see it as an example of the 80:20 rule. We all know that the highway death toll would drop if we could just get everyone to equip their vehicles with a NASCAR cage, 6-way belts, a halon fire system and then ease them into a full-face helmet. It's undeniably a better tactic than relying on air-bags - but there would be some buyer resistance. Surely the choice for the USCG is between one simple message - "spend $ 50 on a pfd and wear it" (in your kayak, your small fishing boat or small sailboat) or an obviously better message saying "spend $ 800 on a drysuit & pfd and wear them"... Or, more truthfully but also more demotivatingly: "please spend the $50 - but maybe don't bother, because it's not a perfect solution". It looks to me that USCG has maybe 5-10,000 people a year fall into cool or cold water - of whom about 500 don't climb out. They are looking for a simplistic 'bang-for-buck' message and they believe they have found it. If they could knock that 500 in half - or even just back to 400, they'd be happy. Whatever the USCG front men are saying, I think that the organisation has decided that the result of pushing for a 'perfect solution' will be less effective than pushing for an affordable one which has some chance of widespread adoption. 80:20 Best Regards Paul Hayward, Auckland, New Zealand *************************************************************************** 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 Wed Mar 09 2011 - 03:37:06 PST
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