YukonBound wrote:


"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.

Good point... or maybe they should be restricted in how many barges
they can push in a confined space.
We have a bit of a similar controversy up here on 'road trains'...
that is 18 wheelers pulling two trailers, rather than one.
Lots of safety concerns from the public.
The two have nothing in common. Barges move at, maybe, 10 knots. At
5:30pm there was enough light to see this thing coming.