Editorial Tuesday October 21, 2014

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

THE recent spate of boating mishaps has once again prompted calls from some quarters to make the wearing of life jackets compulsory, at least aboard recreational craft up to a certain, supposedly unsinkable size. The problem, as always, is that laws don't mean much unless they're observed, and rules for the likes of life jackets won't be observed unless they're policed. While some local authorities might be prepared to station staff at boat ramps to ensure compliance, most probably won't be.

At the end of the day, a legal requirement to display common sense is a fairly ineffective instrument. Those most likely to comply are those who don't need to be told how to behave so as to improve their odds of making old bones. Most of us possess a sufficiently strong sense of self-preservation to deter us from tempting fate, whether it be putting to sea unprepared for calamity or drink driving. To a degree the survival instinct probably strengthens with age, although the Kaitaia District Court sees plenty of drink drivers who are old enough, and in many vases experienced enough, to know better.

It is probable that the average non-drink driver is deterred from flouting the law by the consequences if they are caught, not the least of which is being publicly named and shamed, but there is no doubting that common sense comes with age, along perhaps with sufficient imagination to balance the act with the harm that might be done to oneself, and to others.

And don't forget the denying of parents the right to discipline their children with corporal punishment, even in its mildest forms. Those who would never have beaten their children no doubt comply, so nothing has changed for them. Those who do beat children, and sometimes kill them, probably aren't even aware of the law change, and couldn't care less. In any event, the law has never allowed the gross abuse some adults dish out, and continue to administer.

The same almost certainly applies to the wearing of life jackets, although the onset of common sense seems to be delayed. One theory is that grown men, rarely women, start going down to the sea in ships for the first time in their lives when they reach a point where they can afford to do so. Hence the phenomenon of mature people doing stupid things, and sometimes paying for their stupidity with their lives.

That is not to say that those who have died over the last week or two were behaving irresponsibly. Certainly the divers at Waikuku seemed to know what they were doing. Time will tell. The fact remains though that there is a not insignificant macho culture that sees the wearing of life jackets as unmanly, and that is unlikely to change just because some authority promulgates a law demanding that they do so.

It is everyone's right, after all, to take themselves out of the gene pool, and whatever the law does or doesn't say there will always be some who don't see anything wrong in setting out in a boat without a life jacket, and in many cases without much else in the way of gear that could save their lives when the plankton hits the propeller, just as there will always be some who don't see much wrong in getting paralytically drunk and hitting the road.

The law could do much more than it does to deter drink driving, for a start by refusing to treat recidivists as little worse than slow learners. Killing someone tends to have a salutary effect on your average drink driver (but not always), but of course that could be seen as a little late for whoever got in their way. And while compulsory life jackets would be unlikely to achieve much, there is one circumstance in which the law shall fall like a hammer - when those who are in command of a boat carry juvenile passengers without life jackets.

That should be punishable by an eye-watering, wallet-crippling penalty. If grown men want to head out to sea without taking every (or any) sensible precaution, that's their business, but children who step aboard their boats deserve every chance of surviving that the skipper, and the law, can give them.

It's not only the skipper who has a clear responsibility, however. So do the parents of children who go out on the water, and other adults for that matter.

There don't seem to have been too many cases of people being ordered aboard recreational craft at gunpoint, so those who are old enough to make their own decisions, and find themselves clinging to a chilly bin miles from land and praying for rescue, have only themselves to blame. Children, on the other hand, have a right to believe that someone with more experience than they have will look after them, and that includes insisting that they don a properly-fitting life jacket in good working order, before it is needed.

It might not be a bad idea to insist that those who skipper boats of more than a certain size make the effort to learn some of the skills required too. Surely it would not be too much of an imposition to demand that a newly-affluent idiot acquire a day skipper's certificate before heading out into the great unknown. Unless, perhaps, they are not intending to carry passengers or crew, in which case they should be free to tempt fate as much as they like.

The only concern there is that when things go wrong people like Coastguard and Search and Rescue have to give their time to save them, not infrequently putting their own lives in danger in the process. Lifting the rescue fee would only make some people more reluctant to issue a May Day, potentially increasing the odds of a fatal outcome.

Whether or not this penchant some people have for flirting with danger when even a little common sense would go a long way is a relatively new phenomenon is a moot point, but as an elderly local man once told this newspaper, in his generation kids gained all sorts of valuable skills from their fathers, their uncles, and said fathers' and uncles' friends. That included boating, and what to do in an emergency.

Kids who grew up with adults who knew what they were doing, who knew how to reduce the chances of mishaps on the water, benefited from those lessons when they became adults. The same could probably be said of girls whose mothers and grandmothers taught them how to cook, a passing on of inter-generational skills that largely seems to have gone by the boards. It says something about the society we've become, where many people believe that some amorphous entity generally referred to only as 'they,' will not only fix things but has a moral if not a legal obligation to do so, but show absolutely no interest in availing themselves of the very basic skills that others are prepared to give them.

The same thing probably goes through a lot of boaties' minds; if we get into trouble someone will rescue us, even if no one knows we're in trouble, where we've gone or when we are planning to return.

As agitated as some might become, these people will always be among us, and even more rules won't change that. If politicians could legislate against stupidity they would have done it long ago, and we wouldn't be having this conversation, again.