In just over a month, three devastating South Florida watercraft accidents have claimed eight lives, most of them children and teenagers. Several others are critically injured.
On July 4, four people were killed in a chaotic, alcohol-fueled multi-vessel crash on Biscayne Bay after a fireworks show. On July 28, three children died when a barge plowed into their youth sailing camp boat near Hibiscus Island. On August 12, a 14-year-old girl was killed and a 16-year-old was injured after their personal watercraft slammed into a dock in Fort Lauderdale’s Intracoastal Waterway.
These are not isolated tragedies. They are the foreseeable result of a system that regulates Florida’s crowded waterways with far less rigor than its roads – even though the risks are often greater and the impacts are often more catastrophic. Unlike cars, boats often operate without defined lanes or predictable traffic flow. In crowded waterways, vessels can approach from any direction in the same space as swimmers, personal watercrafts, sailboats and commercial barges. Navigable waterways are often dark and unlit at night. Collisions – day or night – can cause devastating physical injuries, exacerbated by the added risk of drowning…