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 report form, their database, their method of forwarding the accidents to the U.S. Coast Guard, or some other step in the process.
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USCG Recreational Boating Statistics 2010
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 on waters under Federal jurisdiction.
Each year, USCG summarizes all the accidents reported in BARD in their annual USCG Recreational Boating Statistics reports.
To reduce the number of unreported boating accidents of all types, in recent years, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) has hired a contractor to capture boating accidents reported in the news media. USCG uses the contractor’s news reports of boating accidents to encourage states to follow up on boating accidents that have not yet been reported through normal channels.
USCG describes their use of the news reports on page 8 of their 2010 Recreational Boating Statistics report. The U.S. Coast Guard reports that in 2010 there were 56 accidents, 11 deaths, 46 injuries, and 13 losses of vessels that were captured in the news reports for which they did not receive an accident report. These represent all types of boating accidents, not just propeller accidents.
Earlier we reported the USCG 2010 public release version of BARD had been castrated by the expulsion of data from over 20 states and many other regions.
Now we will give a closer look to BARD’s handling of U.S. 2010 recreational boat propeller accidents. Read More→
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 the text being studied. This post is the first of a series exploring the use of wordles to better understand news media coverage of propeller accidents.
As we have looked at thousands of news reports of propeller accidents and their victims, we see common threads in printed and televised news media coverage, especially in the coverage of high profile propeller accidents resulting in critically injuries. News media coverage of a propeller accident typically begins with a news bulletin including the sex and approximate age of the victim, the location of the accident, date and approximate time of the accident, a mention of the propeller being or possibly being involved, and citing officials on the scene. These initial reports also often mention the victim being life flighted by a specific service to a named hospital. Law enforcement officials often mention an investigation is in progress to determine the cause of the accident and may note alcohol or negligence on the behalf of others may have contributed to the accident. Other family members on the scene are sometimes identified by position only (father, mother, brother, uncle) and not by name. The area of their body struck by the propeller is often identified (legs, thigh, arm, torso, etc.). Read More→