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"she got a bunch angry messages and comments from people that thought she was insensitive to take video of the duck boat and that she should have done something to help instead."
How utterly absurd. What did they expect her to do - drop the camera, dive into the water, swim to the boat and push it to shore? What lunatic would think she could have done anything to help?
I think this tragedy is a direct consequence of our societal refusal to discriminate based on weight. People are counted as one adult no matter if they weigh 400 lbs or 100 lbs. Most of the passengers (the family that died in particular) were over twice the weight of an average adult. While the captain should have paid closer attention to the weather, if he had gone by the weight of each passenger instead of loading up every seat with morbidly obese passengers which more than doubled the weight capacity of the vessel he would have been fine. The other boat wasn't so loaded down, and they made it out.
I think the charges are a bit unfair, and what needs to change is how society treats passenger weights when it comes to any sort of travel. Being politically correct can be deadly, as this incident shows.
I had not considered that before. You're right. Passenger weight could certainly have overloaded that boat. Unfortunately, too many people believe weight shouldn't be considered an issue on airplanes either, but they are dead wrong.
I think this tragedy is a direct consequence of our societal refusal to discriminate based on weight. People are counted as one adult no matter if they weigh 400 lbs or 100 lbs. Most of the passengers (the family that died in particular) were over twice the weight of an average adult. While the captain should have paid closer attention to the weather, if he had gone by the weight of each passenger instead of loading up every seat with morbidly obese passengers which more than doubled the weight capacity of the vessel he would have been fine. The other boat wasn't so loaded down, and they made it out.
I think the charges are a bit unfair, and what needs to change is how society treats passenger weights when it comes to any sort of travel. Being politically correct can be deadly, as this incident shows.
I had no idea that the duck boat was seriously overloaded by weight.
As an overweight person myself I have no objection to stating my weight, or even getting on a scale, if it involves safety. Occasionally an amusement park ride says "weight limit XXX" and if I am even close to that weight I won't ride on it.
My nephew, who is over six feet and almost 300 pounds recently took a private helicopter ride and each person riding had to get on an actual scale and prove that they were under 300 pounds (the weight limit for each seat & safety harness). They also took everyones weight into consideration to "balance" the helicopter. The helicopter company took those weight limits VERY seriously which helped keep everyone safe.
I had no idea that the duck boat was seriously overloaded by weight.
As an overweight person myself I have no objection to stating my weight, or even getting on a scale, if it involves safety. Occasionally an amusement park ride says "weight limit XXX" and if I am even close to that weight I won't ride on it.
My nephew, who is over six feet and almost 300 pounds recently took a private helicopter ride and each person riding had to get on an actual scale and prove that they were under 300 pounds (the weight limit for each seat & safety harness). They also took everyones weight into consideration to "balance" the helicopter. The helicopter company took those weight limits VERY seriously which helped keep everyone safe.
Helicopters are extremely sensitive to weight. The duck boat has a much larger room for error but it was just a perfect storm unlucky situation of a maxed boat full of severely overweight passengers and a bad storm happening at once. I really don't think the captain deserves punishment, I'm sure he feels bad enough.
Helicopters are extremely sensitive to weight. The duck boat has a much larger room for error but it was just a perfect storm unlucky situation of a maxed boat full of severely overweight passengers and a bad storm happening at once. I really don't think the captain deserves punishment, I'm sure he feels bad enough.
Well fortunately we have laws against captains endangering their passengers. So he will be punished. If we didn't have laws against this type of conduct, a lot more people would be dying in incidents like this. If it wasn't for their legal troubles, I can guarantee you that these duck boats would have been back in the water the next day, with no changes in their protocol, and the captain would have been back to work, like nothing had happened.
They don't even care about liability. They just let their insurance pay whatever. Ride the Ducks of Seattle, just paid out $123 million to the victims of their 2015 catastrophe, and they are just going on with business as usual, like nothing happened. With our the threat of criminal prosecution, these duck tours would be free to do whatever they want.
Overloaded pleasure boats that capsize with a great loss of life, is something you expect to read about from third-world countries, where they either have no safety standards or no enforcement of them. So it doesn't seem that in practice, we in the U. S. are much better. Have any of these "duck boat" accidents led to stiff regulations and inspections, to be sure they are observed?
Overloaded pleasure boats that capsize with a great loss of life, is something you expect to read about from third-world countries, where they either have no safety standards or no enforcement of them. So it doesn't seem that in practice, we in the U. S. are much better. Have any of these "duck boat" accidents led to stiff regulations and inspections, to be sure they are observed?
The NTSB has been pushing for new regulations for duck boats, since 2002, to no avail.
One year later there are a few stories in my google news feed. I'm glad to see at least 3 people have been federally charged because they prioritized profits over safety even though there were warnings that the severe storm was coming.
The 3 that have been charged so far are Curtis P. Lanham, who was the general manager of Ride the Ducks Branson; Charles V. Baltzell, who was the company's operations supervisor; and Kenneth McKee who was the duck boat captain. In addition to federal charges, they each got 13 misdemeanor charges for each of the passengers that survived.
Thank you for posting this update. Many of these current event stories are stored in my memory and I think about them from time to time and wonder how the families are doing. The two which come to mind right now being the hot-air balloon accident from July 2016 and the more recent school-bus accident in October of last year. So thank you so much, Rose, for posting this.
You can see in the video the other boat motoring past the one that went down. Both boats, which were identical, faced the same conditions the only difference was that the one that made it out wasn't so overloaded. The pics from inside the boat shown at the time of the incident (I'm sure you can find them with a google search) showed most of the passengers were morbidly obese, the members of the large family that died were very very overweight, and every seat was filled. The focus has always been on the boat itself and the captain's mistake to take it in the water with a storm coming, but the real reason it went down was that it was grossly overloaded.
Here is the original video from the original thread. For some reason it's very hard to see, it's like 2 videos edited together. You do see the other boat driving and not being weighed down.
A photo of the family can be found on their closed go fund me. The one family member that survived but lost her husband and kids can be seen on her closed go fund me
It's extremely insensitive of those people getting mad at her for taking the video. What exactly did they think she should do?! Jump in after them??
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