Posted on 07/18/2003 5:57:43 AM PDT by randita
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:42:59 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Folsom, Sacramento County -- Mike Farr dived off a friend's ski boat into Lake Folsom moments after his 11-year-old son sank below the churning waters while bodysurfing in the vessel's wake.
"I swam as deep as I could and as far as I could," said Farr, his voice cracking. "I expected to catch an arm, but there was nothing."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Stupid parents that did NOT know about the effects of CO. Why are you so against that fact being presented?
More fun for the Libertarian family:
Teak-surfing! Last one to drown is the winner!
I've noticed you make a lot of foolish and incorrect presumptions.
If CO was an element of the incident, it would be irresponsible journalism to not mention that fact.
What I would rather not see is people attributing greater significance to the CO in his death than it merits and doing so in apparent attempt to foster or legitimize an expansion of nanny government.
The autopsy indicated that the kid drowned...
An autopsy after the accident on May 28 revealed the boy had been knocked out by carbon monoxide fumes and then drowned
I see. The fact that CO knocked him out is of minor merit ...
Sorry, I did not even realize there was such a thing as "Teak Surfing." I take it to mean people body-surf off the wake curl of a powerful boat at speed, right where the exhaust concentration might be the heaviest.
This is the marine equivalent of drafting off an 18-wheeler in your 1962 VW Beetle, the survivors of said experiments presumably never trying that again.
In regard to catalytic converters on boats: Not good. Same reason CG really frowns on Air-Cooled engines. That kind of heat in a bilge is simply not safe. On the other hand, there are far too many boats around with very crummy old carburetors, decrepit flame-traps and incredibly crappy exhaust set-ups. I could see requiring EFI on new boat engines, but retrofitting it to the funk-ola Chevy 350's and Chrysler 318s out there would be a nightmare. How about everyone going for common sense. i.e. no 'Teak Surfing,' everybody in a PFD, and try not to breathe engine exhaust.
According to the article, The Coast Guard agrees with you. Of course that didn't stop some from yelling 'facism' and proclaiming the 'state' is out to stop 'all our fun'.
Ninety percent of the readers of newspapers never make it past the first paragraph. With your logic, there would still be more stupid parents and few would be aware of the CO hazard.
This is your mistake. Modern law is made to protect against lawsuits and to give politicians something to brag about.
There are really only a few ways to handle this: ignore it (preferred), spend millions on an ad campaign (rarely effective), or pass a law prohibiting it.
Ignoring it prevents responsibile people from stepping in and saving someone's life because no one on the boat has any common sense. For instance, if you saw this taking place, you can't do anything about it. Trying to reason with them would probably get you a knuckle sandwich.
Education campaign assumes that the intended audience hears and remembers the message. Madison Avenue spend billions of dollars trying to figure out the magic bullet ad. So far it hasn't been found and so companies advertise until they no longer care to do business.
Law Still requires an education campaign or else it would end up a "lack of common-sense" tax, as teak surfers would be cited not knowing of the law. This is ideal for government since every person in this country is expected to have read, memorized and comprehended the intent of all two billion or so laws on the books. Who benefits besides government is the liability insurance and manufacturing industry since they can point to the law and say that illegal use of their product exempts them from prosecution (unless the product is a gun), and it is not the responsibility of the manufacturer to decorate the boat like it was running in NASCAR with countless labels stating the law. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
We don't have a justice system, we have a legal system. That is why passing a law is really the only solution.
Most ski boats already conform to the 2006 standards, which is the target date for the cutting of emissions. The deal with that is, that they are looking at the recreational boating industry as a whole, and aren't targeting specific boats for cat/con installations (at least nationwide--CA is most assuredly a different story). You are starting to see the marine industry slowly move away from 2 strokes in both outboard engines and PWC's. Four stroke outboards are becoming much more widely accepted, and so are 4 stroke PWC's. By making this shift, the marine idustry is reducing the overall output of florocarbons across the board. CA is by far the most stringent state, and most manufacturers who sell here in the US make their entire US product line 'CA approved'. Also, the remaining 2 stroke applications are moving to direct injection as a means of reducing pollution output. We recently outfitted the family offshore fisher with twin Yamaha 225's that are two-stroke, but fuel injected. Fuel efficiency is supposed to be greatly increased as well. (we test drove an identical hull to our boat w/ the 4-strokes on it, and just didn't feel like we could sacrifice the power, which was quite noticable)
The PWC industry is moving towards four strokes as well, with all manufacturers now having at least one four stroke offering, and Honda, who is only two years into the PWC market offering NOTHING but four strokes.
I own three Yamaha waverunners, and two of them, both with the big 1200cc/155 hp engines came with catalytic converters installed. The replacement cost for these catalytic converters are around $800. There is a $53 part that is sold that replaces the cat/con, gives more power and acceleration, and better throttle repsonse besides being 1/15th of the cost. Cat/cons aren't the answer because of their cost. Cleaner more efficient engines are the way to go, and most boaters being perfomance oriented anyway will revolt against the use of cat/cons in their boats, and most likley just simply remove them like I did mine. No way I was paying nearly $1000 for something that a)decreased power, b)actually hurt fuel economy, and c)was meant to make it comply to CA standards. Most people would view it that way too.
Well in that case, I guess the only solution is to pass a law mandating that if you start reading a newspaper article you have to finish it. You're brilliant.
That's a done deal. I don't think it's actually being required, but all marine manufacturers are moving to fuel injection across the board. See my post #116.
Excellent Observation! Now lets exploit this child's death for our own personal benefit.
Street racers who like to add NO2 systems to their cars also discovered that NO2 is "laughing gas", and sometimes the garage crew would inhale more of the NO2 than the race engine. Manufacturers then had to put in Sulphur so that the gas would stink so bad, no one would sniff it. Now the only good way to get a NO2 euphoria is to go through the grocery store and without shaking up pressurized whipped topping, snort the NO2 that is at the top. Toke the NO2 like a Lbertarian holds his breath when smoking pot, and one would only need a half dozen cans or so. (Excerpted from "Stupid Resturaunt Employee Tricks")
There is plenty of oil in the world that is not usable because it contains more than 0.5% sulphur. This is called "sour" crude. We only use "sweet" crude. While Congress is passing oh-so-necessary federal laws criminalizing "teak surfing" perhaps they can also observe that people wouldn't be sniffing exhaust if it was just as nasty as smelling sulphur laced NO2.
We can bring back sulphur crude and trump the environmental wackos by repeating the mantra "Do It For The Children".
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