U.S. Coast Guard sent us a copy of the Public Release version of their 2012 Boating Accident Report Database (BARD) in late May 2013. We were busy with a few other projects at that time, but recently had some time to look more closely at the database.
The big news is more states allowed their data to be included. Only 10 states and one territory refused to allow their data to be included (Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Mississippi, Missouri, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). If they reported on time, their summary data is included in the totals USCG previously published in their 2012 Recreational Boating Statistics annual report, but their individual accident data is not available in 2012 Public BARD. Several other states redacted one of more data fields, but allowed most of their data to be included.
The ten states and territories failing to report say they do so for privacy issues. After recent revelations out of Washington, D.C. (massive phone and Internet snooping by the Federal government) it seems pretty obvious to us that individuals in those states should have much larger more important privacy concerns than someone printing their boat Hull number and tying it to an accident date (no names or addresses are printed in Public BARD). We strongly encourage all states to report their data to help make boating safer in their state, and across the country.
About the same number of states and territories refused to report to 2011 Public BARD. This is still a great improvement over 2010 Public BARD when over 25 states and territories refused to allow their data to be included. Overall, in 2012 1,001 accident reports were deleted by the states vs. 997 in 2011, and 1,910 in 2010. Read More→




