Don’t Drink While Boating
June 28th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Date: July 01, 2009
Contact: Tom Nunes
Public Affairs Officer
602-617-1979
[email protected]
Washington – In a landmark study on drinking and boating, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC) researchers collaborated with colleagues from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health to conduct the first population-based, case-control study of the role of alcohol in recreational boating deaths.
Drinking evidence of those who died in North Carolina and Maryland in recreational boating incidents between 1989 and 1998 were combined with interview data and Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) measurements obtained a probability sample of 3,943 boaters on lakes, rivers and coastal bays and sounds during three summers in North Carolina and Maryland.
Highlights of the study include:
- Recreational boat passengers are just as likely as operators to die as a result of drinking alcohol. A primary reason for this is that most boating fatalities involve falling overboard and drowning, rather than collisions. Drinking increases the risk to passengers of falling into the water, and of drowning once in the water, even if the operator has not been drinking.
- Even with a BAC of only 0.01%, the risk to operators and passengers increased 30% compared to individuals with no alcohol in their blood. The risk of death was more than 52 times greater when victims showed a blood alcohol content of 0.25%.
- About 80 percent of boating fatalities result from drowning.
- Efforts to reduce boating deaths that target only operators such as legal limits for boat operators or suggestions to use "designated operators" fail to protect many boaters who are at risk.
Over the Fourth of July weekend and whenever on the water, don?t drink and boat.
The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary is the uniformed volunteer component of the United States Coast Guard created by an Act of Congress in 1939. The Auxiliary, America’s Volunteer Guardians, supports the Coast Guard in nearly all of the service’s missions.
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