Jurors find boat manufacturer partly liable

[FloterBoter]

with the lawsuit-happy society we live in, i'm surprised any non-lethal accidents
get reported. i'd bet a lot of people would rather risk being found out by the feds
than hint to the injured party that they could/should sue. is there any sort of
immunity granted like for a pilot filing an ASRS report? of course those are for
near misses and the like, and we're talking injuries here...


.

[toondog]

Man...I didn't know all of this was going on in our little boat world. Our happy place has been invaded by lawyers.

http://www.wcslaw.com/publications.asp?artID=103

PROPELLER GUARDS: THE SUPREME COURT PROVIDES SOME ANSWERS AND MANY QUESTIONS (7/29/2004)


The Sprietsma decision is just the “tip of the iceberg” in propeller guard litigation. The courthouse doors have now been opened to anyone aggrieved by an unguarded propeller injury to sue the sellers and manufacturers of the boat and engine. Boat charter and livery operations will also be exposed to lawsuits. Over time, some of these cases will be successful and the industry will suffer losses and rising insurance costs. New construction will have to give consideration to inclusion of propeller guards, and only time will tell whether recalls and retrofitting will be required (this could benefit the boat repair industry) . On its website, the National Marine Manufacturers Association has expressed its disappointment with the ruling, stating its fear that Sprietsma “may lead to a patchwork of inconsistent regulations in multiple jurisdictions, with safety standards being set by juries rather than safety experts.”

only time will tell whether recalls and retrofitting will be required (this could benefit the boat repair industry).

Hey, I wasn't too far off with my stupid riding mower comment.

Sprietsma will also lead to new innovations. A patent was recently issued to a major boat manufacturer for a “virtual propeller guard” that uses infrared sensors to shut down an engine when persons or objects are detected too close to the propeller or on the swim ladder/platform (at present the devise is only effective at slow speeds). Another recently patented invention employs deflectors mounted on the bottom of the boat, which in combination with sensors, can stop a boat’s propeller in the event a person is detected under the boat or in its path.

A patent was recently issued to a major boat manufacturer for a “virtual propeller guard” that uses infrared sensors to shut down an engine

Just a little note from Gary's site:

http://rbbi.com/pgic/paboutus/paboutus.htm

Gary is a licensed professional engineer. While working as an engineer at MerCruiser in the early 1990's he came up with the idea of using sensors to detect people in the water near the propeller as an alternative to traditional propeller guards and tried to interest Mercury in the idea at that time. After he left in mid 1996 to pursue Internet opportunities, he continued to collect even more information on technologies, products, people and labs that made his Virtual Propeller Guard concept look yet more feasible. He posted the basics of his idea online as a Stealth Prop Guard in 1997. Gary approached the industry a few more times with his Virtual Propeller Guard concept while claiming no intellectual property rights for himself and was rejected. On 7 January 1999 he posted more extensive coverage of his Virtual Propeller Guard concept online as a series of 18 frames in an HTML slide show that was the first public exposure of his newly coined term "Virtual Propeller Guard" in hopes the industry would respond, but it did not.



Hey Gary, are you going to try and make our boats like my riding lawn mower?

[PGIC]

Hey Gary, are you going to try and make our boats like my riding lawn mower?

I hope not, unless you are one of those guys that day dreams of mowing your yard while you are out on your boat.

Back to Virtual Propeller Guards, the approach of using sensors to detect the presence of people near or approaching the propeller seemed like a logical next step from conventional guards to me because it immediately eliminates three of the objections often raised against guards (drag/performance, boat handling issues, and entrapment). Early on I was purely focused on detecting people near the prop, since then several other sensor based approaches have/or are entering the market. They tend to detect the increased probability that someone could be in the water near the prop (they detect the operator is no longer at the helm while the boat is underway, they detect someone fell overboard, they detect the swim ladder is down, they detect a gate to a swim platform is open, etc.). Your lawnmower seat falls into that group.

In terms of purely detecting people in the water near the prop, Brunswick was granted patents for infrared devices and methods to detect people in the water near the stern in 2002 and 2006.

Gary
Propeller Guard Information Center

[BassFrequency]

wow! he actualy came back

[HandymanHerb]

So that explains where the money came from for lawyers, your trying to get them to require the new system you have a patent for and you want them to regulate the money to you.

I don't think I need anymore costs that only help stupid people, I've been boating for 40 years and never had anyone hurt on any boat I've been on.

Same for the mowers, when I had the lawn business all the stupid safety's were removed and never once did any of my guys reach under the deck to see if the blade were working, but they where a pain in the ass when I got them if you shifted in the seat to get something out of a pocket the engine would quit.

The only safety's I left on were the roll bars as it's easy to tip a mower over mowing a ditch line and that will kill you quick, I only flipped one over but that mower was 2 thousand pounds and was caused by having tires mounted wrong to reduce the track the first day I got it used from a dealer.

So do us a favor and shoot your lawyers.

[WaltF]

Im sure the government will just plain ban boating soon. To help us, you know? We wouldnt want to get hurt n all. And with as many moron's as we appear to have in the country now, a boat ban would prob pass.

I can see them protesting now!
"Toss the boats! We need protection from boats now! Anyone who disagrees is racist!"

All it would take is a couple days in a back room with Obama, and Blamo! You get a law! Im sure it will also take 14,203 pages. Gotta get the kick backs to the black panthers in there somewhere...

The Government is here for You....

[PGIC]

So that explains where the money came from for lawyers, your trying to get them to require the new system you have a patent for and you want them to regulate the money to you.

Just a point of clarification - I have no patents on any propeller safety devices, however I have placed several propeller safety inventions in the public domain (given them away for anyone to manufacture, including you).

Several years ago we started collecting technologies that look like they might have application to propeller safety and published them on our Possible Propeller Safety Technologies page in an effort to assist the industry in working on the problem.
http://rbbi.com/pgic/ptech/ptech.htm

As time went on, I had a few related inventions myself. I posted those rough concepts on the site to allow other to build upon them. Some companies patented some of those inventions, so we started more formally disclosing those inventions so they would positively remain in the public domain. Anyone can build them. We make nothing from them.

gary
Propeller Guard Information Center

[toondog]

I hope not, unless you are one of those guys that day dreams of mowing your yard while you are out on your boat.

Well...I often day dream of driving my boat while mowing my yard.

Your probably not going to find many here eager to make boats more complicated and expensive.
I am curious about that virtual prop guard. How much would that add to the cost of a boat and what are it's known problems? Do you have a link that shows what it would look like?

[badmoonrising]

Clearly these are the same stupid people that vote Democrat. Can't we just deport them all and save the rest of us a ton of $$$ ?

[HandymanHerb]

I second the motion can we get a vote on it

[PGIC]

Thought you guys might be interested, details are sketchy, but a 25 year old young woman appears to have fallen from a pontoon boat, been struck by the propeller, and died from her injuries near Crystal River Florida over the weekend.

Citrus Daily 19 April
http://www.citrusdaily.com/local-news/f ... 39126.html

gary
propeller guard information center

[HandymanHerb]

Wow who would have believed that if you fall foward off a pontoon you go in between the toons and hit your head on the engine.

Yes stupid people happen, you can't stop them.

[badmoonrising]

So...what he's saying is: Woman consumes too much booze, falls in and gets struck by prop, so therefore the boat industry gets another lawsuit it can't afford.

[WaltF]

$50 says she was sitting on the front, outside the gate, with a beer in hand, dangling her feet in the water while under way....

It sucks this happened, but ya cant fix stupid, nor should I be restricted due to the actions of stupid people.

Darwin always equals the playing field. He is unstoppable.

[Stephen]

PGIC: I'm curious about your Virtual Prop Safety mechanism. It claims to only work at slow speeds, but how slow are we talking? I would think a lot of 'falling off the boat' accidents resulting in hitting the moving motor would be more likely to occur at speeds in exceess of 15 miles per hour (the exception being alcohol related accidents, and I don't think safety mechanisms should be required to be emplored for people who choose to be morons).

Like a lot of the guys here, I wouldn't want to see my boat have tons of safety related bells and whistles that might result in my engine shutting off if I stepped away from the captains chair or a gate was opened or something like that, but your design seems more efficient and less intrusive. It's an interesting concept you've come up with. Congrats and good luck with it.