6 July 6-12, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | SUNK COSTS Loose boating regulations lead to fatal accidents on Florida waterways. BY ALEX DELUCA A fter leading the nation in boating accidents for years, Florida still doesn’t require thou- sands of boat operators to un- dergo training before embarking on joy rides on the high seas and through the state’s often labyrin- thine waterways. There is no such thing as a “boating li- cense” in Florida, and the state has no mini- mum boating age requirement. Moreover, folks born before January 1, 1988, who make up a huge portion of Florida’s boat operators, need not undergo training to operate a vessel in Florida with ten horsepower or more. Boaters born after that cutoff date have to obtain a boater education card issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), which involves several hours of courses and a final exam. Regard- less of the on-paper bona fides, the state re- quires not a single moment of experience on a boat to obtain the card and get behind a vessel’s helm. Following a string of boating casualties in South Florida, Florida’s loose regulations and lack of boater training are back under scru- tiny. New Times is awaiting word from state regulators on whether the driver involved in the fatal June 25 incident near Dodge Island, where a 30-foot-boat struck the Fisher Island ferry, had a boater education card or other training. But it’s safe to say many do not and are cluelessly tooling around Biscayne Bay, the Intracoastal, and other waterways. In more than half of all boating accidents in Florida last year, operators did not have formal boating education, FWC spokesper- son Ashlee Sklute tells New Times. In 2022, captains with no formal boating education were responsible for 69 percent of fatal acci- dents, down from 83 percent in 2021. Sklute says that in 2022, 64 percent of op- erators with no formal boater safety training were over 35 years old (i.e., folks mostly born before the mandatory training cutoff date). Operators over 36 represent the age group most frequently involved in accidents over the last ten years. “These statistics show us that the boat op- erator most likely to be involved in a boating accident is a middle-aged or older male who has boating experience yet never learned the most important safety considerations by hav- ing taken a boating safety course,” the FWC said in a 2022 report. Ninety-seven percent of fatal boating acci- dents in 2022 had a male operator at the helm. (The report does not estimate what percent- age of Florida boaters in total are men.) The report found that there were 735 boat accidents in Florida waters in 2022, resulting in 65 deaths. Among Florida counties, Miami- Dade ranked second behind Monroe County (the Florida Keys) for boating accidents, log- ging 90 crashes, eight deaths, and 57 injuries. The report says that while Florida had fewer overall boating accidents than in 2021, it saw more deaths. The Sunshine State has the most regis- tered boats in the na- tion — more than one million, according to the FWC. The high number of vessels, mild climate, and complexity of the state’s waterways contribute to making Florida the state with the most boating acci- dents in the nation. “The FWC en- courages all boaters to take a boating safety course. We know that an educated boater is safer on the water,” Sklute wrote in an email. “If a boat operator has taken a boating safety education course, the likelihood of their time spent on the water being a safe and enjoyable experi- ence is much greater for them as well as their passengers.” Several recent fatal boating incidents in South Florida have brought training and boating safety into focus, including the June 25 crash in which a 30-foot boat struck the Fisher Island ferry near the Pilot House Sta- tion at Dodge Island –– killing one man, hos- pitalizing another in serious condition, and delaying travel for more than 15,000 cruise passengers at PortMiami. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. In an accident near North Key Largo last September, then-51-year-old George Pino crashed a vessel with a dozen teenage passen- gers into a channel marker and capsized while traveling down the Intracoastal water- way. All fourteen people aboard were ejected from the vessel, eight of whom were injured. Seventeen-year-old Luciana Fernandez died. Despite the FWC report’s initial statement that alcohol was not likely a factor in the crash, a lawsuit filed against Pino by the fam- ily of one of the injured passengers claims he was drinking that day and supplied the teens and their friends with alcohol. In June 2022, two people were killed and ten others were injured after two boats collided near Key Biscayne. The previous month, a Texas man died in the Florida Keys after the boat he was riding crashed into a concrete power line pole. The driver, an Islamorada man, and his six passengers were ejected into the water during the accident. While attempts to require state-issued boat- ing licenses have died in Florida’s legislature, some boating safety measures have passed through Florida’s legislature in recent years. In June 2022, the Boating Safety Act, which re- quires boat rental and jet ski operators to se- cure insurance, report accidents and overdue rentals to the FWC, and obtain a no-cost per- mit, was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Florida law requiring those born on or after January 1, 1988 to take the boater train- ing course was passed back in 2009 and went into effect into 2010. At the time, that meant boaters younger than 22 years old had to go through the course. As time passes, and a larger portion of the boating population has to meet the training requirements, a clearer picture is expected to emerge on the law’s im- pact on accident rates. Florida is among at least 30 states that have some form of safety training require- ments for adult boaters, according to the Na- tional Association of State Boating Law Administrators. Unlike Florida, most states have a minimum age for piloting a boat, typi- cally ranging from 12 to 16. [email protected] A barge is used to carry a 32-foot center console boat that crashed into Government Cut’s north jetty, killing three people on April 22, 2019. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images | METRO | IN MORE THAN HALF OF ALL BOATING ACCIDENTS IN FLORIDA LAST YEAR, OPERATORS DID NOT HAVE FORMAL BOATING EDUCATION.
