"Harold" wrote in message
...

"Harry" wrote in message
m...
On 6/23/10 8:21 AM, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jun 22, 9:29 pm, wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:09:42 -0400, Wayne.B

wrote:
Tragic:

http://www.newschannel9.com/news/cre...-capsized.html

Even more so...

"None of the people in the fishing boat were wearing life jackets at
time of accident."

Sad.

It's not likely that a life jacket would have saved someone run over
by a bunch of barges and a tug. That's the problem I have with those
statistics, the "pro life jacket" people always want to assume that
wearing a life jacket would have saved the victim. And that is not
always the case. We don't wear life jackets while recreational
boating. I only ask people to wear one if they are very young or
can't swim. Wearing a life jacket is a situation by situation call.

It's hard to imagine tht these three guys could have all missed seeing
this bearing down on them. I can understand how the tug operator
might have missed seeing them.


According to the news story, the tug was pushing nine barges. What size
barges, I don't know, but that far back, it is unlikely the barge
operator could see anything in front of him, and, if he could see the
small boat, it isn't likely he could have stopped in time or even changed
the direction of that train of barges significantly.

Perhaps operators of pusher barge trains should be required to post a
forward lookout on the bow of the most forward barge.

Or at least a camera.

They do have lookouts, but are used mainly during docking and mating of
barges. A lookout could do very little but alert the captain, and the
captain could do very little, as these things don't stop and turn on a dime.

Steve

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A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.