EDITORIAL: Don't regulate duck boats. Just ban them instead.
Dec. 25—Duck boats don't belong on the water loaded up with tourists.
Oh sure, a bill requiring stricter safety rules is now finally headed to President Joe Biden for his signature. The legislation will require the U.S. Coast Guard to draft new regulations for amphibious vehicles after the sinking of a duck boat during a storm on Table Rock Lake in 2018 that killed 17 people. Many of the changes were recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board after its investigation into the tragedy.
It's all too little, and too late.
Among other things, the legislation calls for removal of canopies, side curtains and framing from the boats to improve passengers' chances of escape during emergencies.
Readers who followed the Globe's own investigation after the Table Rock Lake accident already know that the canopies on these boats are inherently unsafe and function like a net, trapping passengers against the roof when they need to escape as the boats sink.
The problem is twofold:
First, listening to the hearing on the disaster held by the National Transportation Safety Board, there was only one conclusion possible: The boats, designed for cargo, are being used for a purpose for which they were never designed — transporting tourists.
Their heavy metal frames and heavy chassis and transmissions, combined with the lack of reserve buoyancy, mean they swamp easily and sink quickly. Low freeboard means passengers have little time to react in an emergency.
The biggest disappointment coming out of the NTSB hearing was that it stopped with recommendations, when it should have gone further and banned the vehicles from the tourist business.
Regulation won't make an inherently unsafe boat safe.
Second, this industry has had many chances to clean up its act. The Table Rock Lake accident was tragically similar to one 20 years earlier in Arkansas in which 13 people died.
That accident also was followed by all the requisite investigations, recommendations, demands for change, and then — silence.
The Coast Guard issued a guidance in 2000, after that NTSB recommendation in the wake of that accident, urging its inspectors and vessel owners to evaluate canopy design and installation and to "evaluate the design and installation of seats, deck rails, windshields, and windows as a system to ensure the overall arrangement did not restrict the ability of passengers to escape."
Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
The industry missed its moment, and more people died. Why should we believe they are going to do now what they knew needed to be done decades ago?
The time has come to ban these boats for commercial and passenger use. In the nearly 80 years since these boats were built for World War II cargo, better technologies and better designs must surely be available if we want to continue using amphibious vehicles for tourists.
The ship has sailed. World War II-era duck boats don't belong on the water any longer.
