Boating deaths increase

Florida led the nation with 77 boating-related fatalities last year, a 10 percent increase over 2006. State law enforcement officials say the number of deaths could be reduced by as much as 25 percent, if mandatory boater education laws were enacted.

But a proposal to "phase in" boater education for the state's one million boaters over the next 11 years went nowhere during this year's legislative session.

Legislators said they believed it was the younger boaters who needed the education.  But most boating accidents and fatalities involve people 36 years or older who have more than 100 hours boating experience and no formal boating education.

In 1996, Florida began requiring boaters 21 years or younger to take a mandatory boater education course. Since its passage, the boater education law has reduced the number of accidents from greater than 21 percent to 14 percent.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission maintains that 15 to 25 lives a year could be saved if everybody took a safe boating class. That is why the FWC proposed phasing in mandatory boater education, in five year increments, over the next 11 years.

But at a Feb. 6 meeting of the House committee on Conservation & State Lands, the FWC proposal fell on deaf ears. Legislators balked at a proposal to expand the current regulations. read the full story in tomorow's St. Petersburg Times.