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I increasingly feel like I'm playing Where's Waldo when it comes to digging out facts in between appeals to emotion in media articles. Your articles confirm tha

I increasingly feel like I'm playing Where's Waldo when it comes to digging out facts in between appeals to emotion in media articles. Your articles confirm that the "windows" are plastic curtains which one individual described as being difficult for children or elderly to open. The canopy was also detachable, and was detached, during the incident. And before diverging too much, the point I was getting at here is that these incidents seem to be extremely rare relative to the usage of these vehicles. And (at risk of hijacking my own point, again) in this case the major problem was not the boat itself, but a captain bringing his passengers out into a very severe storm - with possible wind speeds in excess of 60 mph in the exact lake they were going into. And the warning was released before they even entered the water. That's enough to wreck any small water vehicle. And the captain also did not tell the passengers to put on their life vests even when telling them this was the worst storm he'd ever seen. He probably did not want to start a panic but, at least in hindsight, that was another bad judgement call on his part. It'll be up to the courts to decide if that judgement entered into the realm of negligence.

learc83 8y ago
>Described as being difficult for children or elderly to open. That part was a paraphrase of what he said. You ignored the next part which was a direct quote: the windows would "prevent you from even trying to get out. You need to swim toward the back of the boat. But there being 30-plus people in there, I could just ... just all the chaos happening in there I think it would be difficult to calmly line up and go out the back." He's not talking about just children and elderly when he mentions people calmly lining up and going out the back. Look at the plastic sheeting. They are raised and lowered electronically and the sheets take up an entire side of the boat. Nothing about them looks well designed to allow quick escape in an emergency. >These incidents seem to be extremely rare relative to the usage of these vehicles. You don't know that at all. You have no idea how often they are are used or how many of them are operating. You don't have the information say whether they are more or less dangerous than other tour boats. You know who does have this information, the NTSB. Their conclusion is that they are unsafe and should be heavily modified. >And the captain also did not tell the passengers to put on their life vests The coast guard doesn't recommend wearing life vest while under a canopy because if the boat goes down the vest can pin you under the canopy. In the 1999 sinking they found 4 people with life vests stuck under the canopy. > The canopy was also detachable, and was detached, This article and pictures I've seen of the recovered boat indicates that it wasn't actually detached, "The boat appeared largely intact with holes in its canvas top.." It looks like it either ripped or a few flaps were opened in it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coast-guard-preparing-to-raise-duck-boat-in-fatal-missouri-accident-1532348915 https://www.wsj.com/articles/coast-guard-preparing-to-raise-... A private inspector who inspected the boats for the company that owns them last year even warned the company about how dangerous they were. He inspected 20 of them and thought they were too dangerous. He said: "The biggest problem with a duck when it sinks is that canopy, Paul said. “That canopy becomes what I’ll call a people catcher, and people can’t get out from under that canopy."
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  You can estimate the usage of these duckboats (and thus their relative safely) pretty easily. These boats have been running for decades and they're described as hugely popular with numerous companies offering duckboat rides throughout the country in various areas with individual boats giving 6+ hours of tours each day. Even at the absolute rock bottom, you're easily way into the millions of hours of operation. And this LATimes piece seemed to try to dig up every single incident they could given they were even reporting random traffic collisions, and there just weren't many relative to this bottom end of the scale. I understand it can be difficult to find facts between all the emotional drivel, but your own article (second one) states, "the captain had a moment of clarity and was able to release the canopy." Of course they could just be writing whatever they feel like, which is another increasingly common trend in media, but this is a rather specific fact.
  - learc83 8y ago
    >running for decades >hugely popular >numerous companies >various areas >6+ hours There is no way to get useful data from that. 80 boats being used all over the country for 6+ hours in a few places with an average of 3 hours per day across all boats for 20 years, fits your descriptions. Automobile fatility rate is 1.25 per 100 million miles. Assuming a high average of 50 mph (to convert to deaths per hour), all those assumptions would put DUKWs at about 40 times more fatalities per hour than cars (over the last 20 years). Maybe there are 160 boats and they really drive 6 hours per day average, that's still 10 times deadlier per hour than cars. Tour boats and tour buses, which we should be comparing them to are much safer than cars. How is that comparison? But none of this matters because we don't have accurate estimates, the NTSB does, and they have experts who evaluated the boats and found them unsafe. I don't care what a news report says. The NTSB report is all the evidence I need unless I see other more compelling evidence to the contrary.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      I doubt those lowballs were your first picks for the numbers here, but nonetheless I respect that you put forth some elbow grease so I'll reciprocate by grabbing some better data. The first Duck Tour business started in 1946 [1] - they're still in business. You can read the NTSB report on the 1999 incident here [2]. The PDF (on the right side panel) has far more information. It includes information such as each year having more than 250 ducks transport more than a million passengers on tours averaging 90 minutes. It's reasonable to assume that that number has been increasing over time, but the millions in the 90s at least gives you a decent ballpark. And so like I expect you were finding with more reasonable estimates, these vehicles are hardly dangerous. And the NTSB also did not find the boats themselves unsafe, though that they could be made to be safer in case of accidents. They stated the cause of the accident was "inadequate maintenance." The other issues, which the media is obsessing on today, were listed as contributing to the magnitude of the incident, not causes of the incident. The cause then, like now, was human error. The 1999 boat was sent out to sea with with a 4.5" hull access plug removed. The mechanic, who was new to the job, forgot to put it back in. The operator did nothing to evacuate the craft, and so on. [1] - http://amusementtoday.com/2015/05/original-wisconsin-ducks-celebrates-70-years-of-operation/ http://amusementtoday.com/2015/05/original-wisconsin-ducks-c... [2] - https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/MAR0201.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/MA...
spookthesunset 8y ago
> I increasingly feel like I'm playing Where's Waldo Perhaps that is because you are playing armchair accident investigator...

learc83 8y ago

>Described as being difficult for children or elderly to open. That part was a paraphrase of what he said. You ignored the next part which was a direct quote: the windows would "prevent you from even trying to get out. You need to swim toward the back of the boat. But there being 30-plus people in there, I could just ... just all the chaos happening in there I think it would be difficult to calmly line up and go out the back." He's not talking about just children and elderly when he mentions people calmly lining up and going out the back. Look at the plastic sheeting. They are raised and lowered electronically and the sheets take up an entire side of the boat. Nothing about them looks well designed to allow quick escape in an emergency. >These incidents seem to be extremely rare relative to the usage of these vehicles. You don't know that at all. You have no idea how often they are are used or how many of them are operating. You don't have the information say whether they are more or less dangerous than other tour boats. You know who does have this information, the NTSB. Their conclusion is that they are unsafe and should be heavily modified. >And the captain also did not tell the passengers to put on their life vests The coast guard doesn't recommend wearing life vest while under a canopy because if the boat goes down the vest can pin you under the canopy. In the 1999 sinking they found 4 people with life vests stuck under the canopy. > The canopy was also detachable, and was detached, This article and pictures I've seen of the recovered boat indicates that it wasn't actually detached, "The boat appeared largely intact with holes in its canvas top.." It looks like it either ripped or a few flaps were opened in it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coast-guard-preparing-to-raise-duck-boat-in-fatal-missouri-accident-1532348915 https://www.wsj.com/articles/coast-guard-preparing-to-raise-... A private inspector who inspected the boats for the company that owns them last year even warned the company about how dangerous they were. He inspected 20 of them and thought they were too dangerous. He said: "The biggest problem with a duck when it sinks is that canopy, Paul said. “That canopy becomes what I’ll call a people catcher, and people can’t get out from under that canopy."

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
You can estimate the usage of these duckboats (and thus their relative safely) pretty easily. These boats have been running for decades and they're described as hugely popular with numerous companies offering duckboat rides throughout the country in various areas with individual boats giving 6+ hours of tours each day. Even at the absolute rock bottom, you're easily way into the millions of hours of operation. And this LATimes piece seemed to try to dig up every single incident they could given they were even reporting random traffic collisions, and there just weren't many relative to this bottom end of the scale. I understand it can be difficult to find facts between all the emotional drivel, but your own article (second one) states, "the captain had a moment of clarity and was able to release the canopy." Of course they could just be writing whatever they feel like, which is another increasingly common trend in media, but this is a rather specific fact.
- learc83 8y ago
  >running for decades >hugely popular >numerous companies >various areas >6+ hours There is no way to get useful data from that. 80 boats being used all over the country for 6+ hours in a few places with an average of 3 hours per day across all boats for 20 years, fits your descriptions. Automobile fatility rate is 1.25 per 100 million miles. Assuming a high average of 50 mph (to convert to deaths per hour), all those assumptions would put DUKWs at about 40 times more fatalities per hour than cars (over the last 20 years). Maybe there are 160 boats and they really drive 6 hours per day average, that's still 10 times deadlier per hour than cars. Tour boats and tour buses, which we should be comparing them to are much safer than cars. How is that comparison? But none of this matters because we don't have accurate estimates, the NTSB does, and they have experts who evaluated the boats and found them unsafe. I don't care what a news report says. The NTSB report is all the evidence I need unless I see other more compelling evidence to the contrary.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    I doubt those lowballs were your first picks for the numbers here, but nonetheless I respect that you put forth some elbow grease so I'll reciprocate by grabbing some better data. The first Duck Tour business started in 1946 [1] - they're still in business. You can read the NTSB report on the 1999 incident here [2]. The PDF (on the right side panel) has far more information. It includes information such as each year having more than 250 ducks transport more than a million passengers on tours averaging 90 minutes. It's reasonable to assume that that number has been increasing over time, but the millions in the 90s at least gives you a decent ballpark. And so like I expect you were finding with more reasonable estimates, these vehicles are hardly dangerous. And the NTSB also did not find the boats themselves unsafe, though that they could be made to be safer in case of accidents. They stated the cause of the accident was "inadequate maintenance." The other issues, which the media is obsessing on today, were listed as contributing to the magnitude of the incident, not causes of the incident. The cause then, like now, was human error. The 1999 boat was sent out to sea with with a 4.5" hull access plug removed. The mechanic, who was new to the job, forgot to put it back in. The operator did nothing to evacuate the craft, and so on. [1] - http://amusementtoday.com/2015/05/original-wisconsin-ducks-celebrates-70-years-of-operation/ http://amusementtoday.com/2015/05/original-wisconsin-ducks-c... [2] - https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/MAR0201.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/MA...

spookthesunset 8y ago

> I increasingly feel like I'm playing Where's Waldo Perhaps that is because you are playing armchair accident investigator...