Table 2-17: Recreational Boating Accidents: 2008

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¹ Includes accidents in Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and those occurring offshore.

NOTES: An accident is listed under one category only, with Fatal being the highest priority, followed by Nonfatal injury, followed by Property damage. For example, if two vessels are in an accident resulting in a Fatality and a Nonfatal injury, the accident is counted as a fatal accident involving two vessels.

Data in this table do not include: 1) accidents involving only slight injury not requiring medical treatment beyond first-aid; 2) accidents involving property damage of less than $2,000; 3) accidents not caused or contributed to by a vessel, its equipment, or its appendages; 4) accidents where a person died or was injured from natural causes while aboard a vessel; 5) accidents in which the boat was used solely as a platform for other activities, such as swimming or skin diving. Such cases are not included because the victims freely left the safety of a boat. However, the data do include accidents involving people in the water who are struck by their boat or another boat; and 6) accidents involving damage, injury, or death on a docked or moored boat resulting from storms, unusual tidal, sea, or swell conditions, or when a vessel got underway in those conditions in an attempt to rescue persons put in peril.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard, Boating Statistics 2008 (Washington, DC: 2009), table 30, available at http://www.uscgboating.org/statistics/accident_statistics.aspx as of Apr. 8, 2010.