Pressure Is Mounting for Tougher Boating Laws

For the Boss family, the awful feeling of helplessness is the most haunting memory of the tragedy last September that marred their regular Sunday-afternoon outing on San Diego Bay.

Waving and screaming, Rebecca Boss’ mother, father and brother watched in horror as a speeding 18-footer roared “wide open” toward the teen-age water-skier, who tried in vain to dive beneath the oncoming power boat.

“It practically cut her half in two,” recalled Zona Boss, Rebecca’s mother. “. . . The water was just bright red.”

Rebecca, now 14, has discarded the body cast she wore for three months and can walk without limping. And although it’s painful and exhausting, she can also touch her toes during daily therapeutic exercises prescribed by the surgeon and bone specialists she still sees regularly.

But the family has virtually given up hope that police will ever find the four young men in the power boat, who witnesses say drove to the shore where they had been drinking earlier, picked up two women companions and their picnic equipment, then “took off immediately.”

That incident, and several other recent unrelated accidents at far-flung points on coastal and inland waterways, are fueling a bipartisan legislative resolve here to step up enforcement, close loopholes and toughen safety laws affecting the 1.5 million to 2 million recreational boaters in California.

With more than 600,000 pleasure craft navigating them, the state’s waterways are “becoming overcrowded and quite dangerous,” said Assemblyman Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton). “I see this as a long-overdue effort.”

The dangers are multiplied, added Republican Sen. John Seymour of Anaheim, because too many amateur skippers think a boat outing “is the time to consume a lot of alcohol.”

Three separate bills are pending before the Legislature, and Deukmejian Administration officials are predicting that some needed changes in the law will occur this year. Even though the governor himself tried unsuccessfully in 1971, when he was a state senator, to enact the state’s first-ever operator’s license for boaters, his Administration--citing cost and unenforceability factors--has led vocal opposition to any attempt to try again this year.

Boaters feel that the U.S. Constitution gives them unbridled access to coastal waterways and an operator’s license law would violate that right, said John Robinson of Newport Beach, president of the 35,000-member Recreational Boaters of California.

William H. Ivers, director of the state Department of Boating and Waterways, said the administration does not necessarily agree that mthe Constitution prohibits licensing. But he said setting up a licensing agency would be a mammoth undertaking, and he is not convinced that it would make the waterways any safer.

Ten states and the District of Columbia have licensing requirements. But most of them require little more than an identification card involving no tests or competency standards. Four times, bills to require some sort of licensing in California have been defeated in the Legislature, and no legislator is even trying to get one passed this year.

But legislative observers say the reform mood in the capital is much more positive than it was in 1983, when heavy lobbying by boaters, pleasure craft manufacturers and dealers shot down a bill by Democratic Assemblyman Peter Chacon of San Diego to require some licensing, restrict boat operation by minors and subject boaters to the same sobriety tests to which automobile drivers must submit.

The measure was watered down to merely call for a two-year study to determine how alcohol, youthful operators and repeat offenders contribute to accident rates on the state’s waterways.

In the first action on any of the three bills introduced this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee last week approved, 8-0, a measure by Sen. James W. Nielsen (R-Woodland) that would prohibit children under 14 from operating boats with 10 horsepower or more without adult supervision. Nielsen’s bill would also make it easier for prosecutors to bring manslaughter charges for fatal boating accidents.

Meanwhile, Seymour and Johnston are awaiting legal opinions from the legislative counsel’s office on the constitutional question that boaters say makes them different from automobile drivers.

Seymour’s bill would subject boaters to the sobriety standards and rules regarding tests similar to those already in effect for automobile drivers. Under current law police cannot force boat drivers to submit to sobriety tests. As currently written, Johnston’s bill is a comprehensive measure that would do the same thing. But in addition, it adds boats to the state’s vehicular manslaughter statutes, stiffens penalties for fleeing the scene of a boat accident and prohibits children under 12 from operating power boats of 10 or more horsepower, with or without parental supervision.

Johnston said he initially intended to require operator’s licenses, too, but Ivers persuaded him not to do it. Johnston said he will not try this year, but he is not yet convinced that boaters licenses are not needed.

“I’ll continue to think of the idea for the future,” he said.

The study by the Department of Boating and Waterways, released just before legislators returned from their year-end recess, estimated that alcohol was a factor in 59% of fatal boating mishaps during the study period. While the number of youths operating power boats is small, the study said they were involved in accidents at more than twice the rate of adult operators.

But shoddy record keeping at all levels--by marine police, courts and the boating department itself--made it impossible to get an accurate picture of how repeat offenders contribute to accident rates, the study said.

Although the results were somewhat predictable, the study has had an impact. The same boater and boating industry coalition that opposed the original version of Chacon’s bill three years ago is supporting all three bills this year, although the support is lukewarm for some of the proposed changes.

But much more persuasive than the study, legislators say, has been a series of well-publicized serious boating accidents and court cases stemming from them, which have pointed out enforcement problems and the shortcomings of existing laws with almost mystical timing and precision:

- In November, Shasta County Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony Anderson fired off a two-page letter to Nielsen complaining that “there is a grave and serious omission in our laws,” after he accepted guilty pleas on misdemeanor charges from two men who tried to flee the state after a boat they were operating ran over and killed two Oregon State University students being towed on an inflatable water sled on Shasta Lake. Since there is no boating law similar to the vehicular manslaughter charge an automobile driver would have faced under similar circumstances, Anderson said he had no choice.

- In January, an Orange County jury deadlocked, 9-3, favoring acquittal for 30-year-old Virl H. Earles of Seal Beach, who was charged with manslaughter in the deaths of five people who died when he crashed a power boat into a buoy in Anaheim Bay in Seal Beach. A National Transportation Safety Board report, released in July, blamed the accident almost entirely on Earles’ drinking, and urged that California tighten its laws governing operation of boats while intoxicated. Earles is scheduled to go on trial for manslaughter a second time in May. (While there is no vehicular manslaughter charge for boaters, current law does allow manslaughter charges to be brought when it can be shown that the boat driver was intoxicated.)

- It was a June 9 fatal boat accident on the San Joaquin River in San Joaquin County that Johnston said inspired him to introduce legislation. Dawn Girardi, 20, was killed when a speedboat driver, racing another craft, ran into Girardi’s inflatable paddle raft. Police suspect the speedboat driver had been drinking.

- And, last month, after all three bills had been introduced, nine people were killed when 30 of 48 passengers spilled into the ocean from a charter fishing boat that struck a 16-foot wave near Bodega Bay in Sonoma County. Although investigators blamed the accident on stormy conditions, not negligence, the accident has heightened concern here about boating safety.

Meanwhile, Zona Boss said she is glad that legislators are concerned about safety on the waterways, even if it has taken these tragedies to make them aware.

When they bought their boat two years ago, she said, her whole family enrolled in a U.S. Coast Guard safety class, which she said should be required for everyone.

“And, I think there ought to be some kind of driver’s license, too. A boat is just as dangerous as a vehicle on the road,” Boss added. “Right now, any idiot can get on a boat and drive it.”