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Archive for news media

“In Ocean City, Propeller Accidents Chop Up Vacations” headline changed by media

A flurry of boat boat propeller accidents in Ocean City, Maryland has many talking about the recent cluster of accidents. As we scanned the news this morning (24 August 2016) our eyes were drawn to a DelmarvaNow headline, “In Ocean City, Propeller Accidents Chop Up Vacations”. DelmarvaNow is part of the USAToday media network. DelmarvaNow […]

The Media and Boat Propeller Safety

Media (television, printed, radio, online, movies, etc.) all have an impact on public perception of the danger of boat propellers, on the public’s awareness of steps to be taken to improve their safety, on public awareness of potential solutions, on public awareness of regulations and proposed regulations, and on the ability of both sides of […]

Shark Attacks vs. Propeller Strikes: A Statistical Comparison

We often see media reports referring to propeller strikes as very rare or freak events, while shark attacks are trumpeted as an ever present danger. While both events share some potentially horrible outcomes and spark fear in victims and onlookers, propeller accidents are actually much more frequent. This post is being written in response to […]

Stephen Keller Boat Propeller Accident – Boat Propeller Fatality Statistics Under Reported – San Jose Mercury News Misinforms Readers

Stephen Keller’s fatal boat propeller accident on Lake Tahoe Saturday August 27, 2011 was covered by San Jose California’s Mercury News, because Stephen Joseph Keller DDS was a dentist in San Jose. Mercury News’ August 31st coverage of the boating accident made a major error in reporting the number of annual United States deaths by […]

U.S. Coast Guard 2010 BARD Unreported Propeller Accidents: Carla Faul Pontoon Boat Propeller Accident in Florida

The boating industry continues to claim almost all boat propeller accidents are reported in BARD. They base their claims on the United States Coast Guard’s claims that the more serious a boating accident is, the more likely it is to be reported. The industry says propeller injury accidents are very serious and therefore they must […]

Florida Propeller Accidents Missing From U.S. Coast Guard 2010 Boating Accident Report Database (BARD)

As mentioned in our previous review of propeller accident reporting in USCG’s BARD 2010 database, 7 of the 10 propeller accidents we found news media reports for that were not listed in BARD occurred in the State of Florida. That got us wondering if something might be different with their reporting criteria, their boating accident […]

U.S. Coast Guard 2010 Boating Accident Report Database (BARD) Left Out Many Propeller Accidents

The boating industry continues to claim that all or almost all recreational boat propeller accidents are captured in BARD, the United States Coast Guard’s Boating Accident Report Database. This post proves that to be untrue. USCG receives boating accident reports from the states and from Coast Guard accident reports on fatal boating accidents that occur […]

Propeller Accident News Media Coverage Phase 3 (Released From Hospital Stay) Wordle

The third in a series of posts investigating news media coverage of propeller accidents. We continue with our study using news media coverage of the Gabby DeSouza February 5, 2011 boat propeller accident as our example. This one follows our Phase 2 The Hospital Stay Wordle. This time we analyzed several news media articles of […]

Propeller Accident News Media Coverage Phase 2 (The Hospital Stay) Wordle

This article is a continuation of our series investigating news media coverage of propeller accidents by using wordles of a collection of news articles about a specific accident. It follows, Phase 1 Breaking News Coverage of Propeller Accidents. We continue to study news media coverage of the same boat propeller accident, Gabby DeSouza injured by […]

Propeller Accident News Media Coverage Phase 1 (Breaking News Reports) Wordle

We mentioned in our earlier post on using wordles to explore propeller safety topics our intention of using wordles to identify common threads in media coverage of propeller accidents. For those not familiar with wordles, they are a form of word art in which the relative size of a word represents its relative frequency in […]