Cogent, as always, Mary. And yet... And yet... he has already managed
to get some office of the USCG to task one of its contractors with
looking into the question of (A) whether sponsons can indeed be
lifesavers, and (B) if so, whether they should be required equipment.
And the contractor assigned the task to a young woman with no paddling
expertise, hence no sound judgment in the matter, nor even enough
knowlege to ask the right questions (of Timmy OR of the paddling
community).

I'd like to trust the good judgment of a USCG faced with Ingram's
incoherent ravings, but...

-Richard


Mary Malmros wrote in message ...
"Rick" writes:

...stuff deleted
...and the number of kayakers is still tiny. Not the same situation
at all.

Mary,

Small population means little political clout. This is just the type of
potential group for which pooly considered law is enacted.

Well, no, it really isn't. You see, in order to enact legislation
of any kind, SOMEone has to give a damn about it. SOMEone has to
want to do it. So can you tell me who, exactly, wants to nail
sponsons on the boats of all paddlers? Sponsonboy doesn't count; he
doesn't got a vote in the USofA.

You must realize that the helmet laws were enacted simply because those who
cycled (age range 5-16) had zero political power.

And those many kids who cycled had these appendages known as parents
who cared about what might happen if their child's head hit the
pavement. IOW, there were a great many concerned people -- many
millions -- and, rightly or wrongly, they saw helmet laws as a
solution.

No vote, no risk of
enacting laws that offend. Because kayaking is growing more popular (mostly
fla****er), there are a greater number of low skilled people on the water
and an increased risk of death to those individuals. Since the numbers of
boaters is still pretty low, lawmakers acting now can enact dumb laws that
won't hurt them at the polls.

Lawmakers don't enact laws on issues that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY cares
enough to agitate them about. A lot of people cared about bike
accidents; very few people care about kayak accidents, and with the
exception of one lone nutter, NONE of them think sponsons is a
solution that would merit anything even faintly scented of a legal
requirement. No lawmaker is going to spent a nanosecond of effort
on something like this when they can instead spend time on
legislation that someone cares about, and for which their efforts
will somehow be rewarded. QED.