Video: Alcohol Can Be Deadly

On screen, a group of lounging boaters open a cooler.

Voiceover

Often, the first law that people break before committing negligent or reckless acts is consuming alcohol while operating a boat. Alcohol impairs vision, alertness, and reaction time. It impairs your judgment, and it’s particularly deadly out on the water. One alcoholic drink while boating can have the same effect as three on land. Alcohol is a contributing factor in many boating accidents, including about one third of all fatalities. So be sure to designate a boat operator if your group consumes alcohol on the water.

A woman appears on screen and begins to speak.

Woman

You know, Terry was popular as can be. You know, all the community knew him as the go-to guy to fix their cars and high-performance vehicles and stuff like that. But he always had control. You would always think of him as just—invincible. I mean, Terry could make anything happen. I think we all think it could happen to somebody else, or, you know, that happened to him because he was this. You know, it just takes one. One bad decision. Well, a couple of bad decisions.

The driver thinking it was OK to go almost 50 miles an hour in pitch black darkness. And then my son, the decision to actually get on the boat with him when he knew he had been drinking. But certainly, this guy didn’t mean to plow into a daymarker—a steel I-beam daymarker—at 48, 50 miles an hour. But he obviously wasn’t completely—he didn’t have all the tools he needed, being that kind of intoxicated, to make that sort of decision.

So initially, we were like, oh, this was an accident. He didn’t mean to do this. But we found out later that this particular guy had several other boating accidents. And it wasn’t even a month or so later that we see him out. You know, his boat got totaled, but he’s out in somebody else’s boat doing the same thing over again. Getting rid of his type is one thing. But getting somebody to hopefully remember that, think about that, before they step on a boat with somebody—who knows what they’re filled with. Who knows what they’ve been drinking, smoking, whatever. I think it just all comes back to, we all have to stop and think and make better decisions.