BIA attacks Vic lifejacket reg
The Boating Industry Association of Victoria (BIA) has labelled the State Government's new lifejacket regulations a disaster, claiming they fail to address some of the important issues of boating safety.BIA chief executive officer Lindsay Grenfell said the regulations governing the use of personal flotation devices (PFDs) and other safety equipment, announced by Transport Minister Peter Batchelor last December, were ill-timed, potentially ineffective and hopelessly confusing.
Grenfell said he was stunned that the government announced the regulations just two days before they were to take effect and raised serious concerns with several aspects of the regulations.
"More worrying is the complete lack of practicality of these new regulations -- they will not prevent accidents, and will not even guarantee survival if accidents do happen."
Grenfell has expressed his concerns in a letter to TrailerBoat:
"Demanding that people wear lifejackets is a last resort -- they should be doing more to educate people about the sort of conditions when small boats should simply not be out there."
Mr Grenfell said education by boating organisations -- and even by Marine Safety Victoria, which will enforce the regulations -- had helped to reduce boating accidents to the stage that Victoria recorded not a single power boating death last summer.
"Education is the key to giving people a sense of what's wise and safe in boating, and we should be giving simple, sensible advice such as not going out in a small boat when there are whitecaps on the bay -- which equates to around 15 knot winds," he said.
Read Grenfell's Letter to the Editor in separate news story. See news list.
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