There's no doubt that standing and moving around are perfectly safe for
an experienced canoeist. I also don't mean to imply that this is
necessarily reckless or dangerous behavior. However, the statistics are
clear that these are leading causes of capsizes and falls overboard that
result in fatalities of canoeist. It seems pretty safe to conclude that
this is due to inexperience in many, if not most cases.


Sounds like the law should be against standing in a canoe....

It seems ironic that we spend so much effort on the low count but high
fatality factor and little effort on the high count low fatality factor.

e.g.

I would get on a bicycle without a helmet way before I got on one
without gloves. 90% of [my?] falls result in hands being thrust out.