sirgallivant said.."For nothing is pleasant that comes from compulsion!"
Despite the mantra quoted by Blue Moon above, which is being flogged to death recently by the authorities, it is exceedingly sad that some people just don't get the idea or resist it at their peril.
The recent tragedy at Cronulla comes to mind where if the septuagenarian, who lost his life there, was wearing a pfd, he would - probably - be still amongst us sipping his beer at the table.
Some of us get the idea very well - I've done a fair amount of research on PFD use, including talking to the top guys at Surf Life Saving Australia and US Sailing, and checking out the enormous amount of information about the human capacity to assess risks.
The poor guy who died off Cronulla may well have died if he had a PFD on. Everyone knows (and SLSA agree) that being able to dive under breaking waves is critical, especially if there are rocks inshore. Arguably what would have saved a life in that situation is being fit and active enough to have spent lots of time bodysurfing and therefore have been able to get into the beach safety in large waves, as bodysurfers do all the time.
The issue is that dying due to not having a PFD on in a tender is extremely uncommon, and it is arguably illogical to worry about the issue much when there are far, far, far more common dangers that are normally ignored. Our chances of dying through lack of physical activity, for example, are vastly higher than our chances of dying through not wearing a PFD in our dinghy, especially when becoming fitter will not just reduce your chances of heart disease etc, but will mean that if you do fall out of your dinghy you can hop back in or swim ashore happily.
The problem that adding safety gear may turn people off a healthy activity is not one that can just be ignored, although RMS say they do ignore it. There is a lot of evidence that overall health in the Australian population may have been harmed by mandatory bicycle helmets, for example. Note that I'm not saying that the case is clear, but there is certainly a lot of evidence.
Similarly, the rate of death in ocean racing (to use one example) has skyrocketed since extra safety gear was put on the boats. That, along with much of the research into risk calculation, indicates that it's not a case of "not getting it", but of having done a hell of a lot of research that indicates that the issue is problematic.
The bizarre silliness of the issue is indicated by the fact that it's illegal for me to use my very stable RIB to get out to my boat, which I can board from the water, unless I'm wearing a PFD but it's perfectly legal for me to use a lilo or just swim out to a boat that I can't board from the water.
With respect to Bristol, yes many rules are brought in as a logical outcome of research - but not the PFD ones in NSW as far as I know. As Kankama noted I wrote a submission about windsurfing and PFD rules in NSW and it is apparent that RMS do NOT do research on this sort of stuff. Many of their factual claims were ridiculously wrong, ludicrous to make, and the thrust of their proposals would, as SLSC said, have killed people.
As just one example, RMS claimed that the number of people windsurfing in Australia has been increasing and therefore there were more people at risk. In fact, as a committee member of Windsurfing Australia and former president of the biggest windsurfer racing class I know (and confirmed through what remains of the industry) that numbers are down to about 5% of what they were.
That little example indicates that the people dreaming up these rules have not done the most basic of research. To make claims in an official proposal without doing reasonable research is basically nothing more than lying. It is ridiculous behaviour and such people deserve no respect as professionals. In that situation, nothing the RMS say about PFD use should be believed.
