Refocus on boating safety

Memorial Day weekend was no holiday for Susan Stocker, boating education coordinator and boating law coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

“This is a tough start of the season,” said Stocker after a weekend that saw 11 boating accidents in Iowa and four deaths, including a 12-year-old girl on Coralville Lake. Over the past decade, Iowa has averaged three deaths per boating season. “Having any fatalities is very tough.”

For a boating education coordinator, it's teachable moment.

“Everybody needs to make sure they're wearing life jackets, that they're observing where they're going. There are no road markers out there. There are no highways on the water. So people need to make sure they're aware of all of their surroundings,” Stocker said.

That's good advice. And this weekend's accidents prompted us to recall a couple of good boating safety measures that state lawmakers opted to shelve in recent years. We're not suggesting that these proposals would have necessarily averted any of last weekend's accidents. But with boating safety back in focus, we think they should be revisited.

One would lower the blood alcohol level for drunken boating from 0.10 to 0.08, or to the same legal limit for operating a motor vehicle on Iowa roadways.

It makes no sense to have dual limits. A boater who is not legally intoxicated on the water could be legally drunk when he or she loads up a boat trailer and drives home. Public safety and common sense demand consistency.

The Iowa DNR has lobbied for the change for years. In 2009, it was approved in the Iowa Senate on a 49-1 vote, but it stalled in the Iowa House. It was not debated during the 2010 session. We hope it's revived in 2011.

A few years ago, lawmakers declined to debate a bill that would require boaters to use “skier-down” warning flags when a boat is towing a skier, sled, inner tube or whenever someone from the boat is in the water. The flags alert nearby boats, and are required in several states, including Missouri and Nebraska.

In Iowa, Stocker said the DNR recommends the use of flags in its boating manual, but it's not required. “I think that would be a very, very good thing to revisit,” she said.

Manpower is also spread thin. The DNR has 64 full-time officers and 42-seasonal employees patrolling the state's waterways. That's down from past years, but the good news that 14 new enforcement officers have been hired to bolster the patrol ranks.

And in Johnson County, where Coralville Lake is located, Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek is considering the possibility of adding water patrols to his department's duties.

We understand that laws can only do so much. In the end, it's up to boaters to watch out for themselves and others.