Significant safety law being proposed

In the USA, all children under 13 years old are required to wear a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket while on a moving recreational vessel, a wearable life jacket must be on board for each person, and all vessels must carry at least one throwable device. State laws may vary, but the federal law applies when state law does not.

For New Zealand, federal law requires only that a correctly sized lifejacket for everyone on board a recreational vessel, though regional regulations may require lifejackets be worn on vessels under 6 meters in length. However, a proposed expanded lifejacket law is being considered to cover all recreational boaters, following strong public support.

When originally introduced, the legislation would have required anyone under 15 on a recreational craft of 6 meters or less to wear a lifejacket. However, submissions received by the committee overwhelmingly called for the lifejacket requirement to be extended to all users of small recreational craft.

Statistics show that New Zealand averages 17 boating fatalities per year, with most deaths associated with people unexpectedly ending up in the water. The average age of these drowning victims is 50 years, with multiple submissions including harrowing accounts where adults without lifejackets died while children wearing them survived. No details on boat type were provided.