DEM SAYS LAW CHANGE REQUIRES CHILDREN UNDER 13 ON RECREATIONAL VESSELS LESS THAN 65 FEET TO WEAR LIFE JACKETS

All Boaters Urged to Wear Personal Flotation Devices

PROVIDENCE - The Department of Environmental Management is reminding boaters that a change in state law requires that all children under 132 years of age in any recreational vessel under 65 feet in length wear a personal flotation device approved by the US Coast Guard while underway in Rhode Island waters unless below deck or in a closed cabin. Responsibility rests with the operators of the craft.

The change, which took effect in July upon Governor Carcieri's signature, replaces language that required children 10 years of age and younger in boats up to 26 feet in length to wear such flotation devices.

"The purpose of this law," says Michael Scanlon, DEM's Boating Safety Coordinator, "is to protect our children when they are on our waterways, and to also instill safe boating habits at a very early age that will be carried on into adulthood."

DEM's environmental police officers are using the rest of the current boating season to educate boaters of the change in the law, and will be enforcing the old statute in the meantime.

"However," says Stephen Hall, Chief of DEM's Division of Law Enforcement, "although the law applies only to youngsters, and only topside when the boat is underway, it's just common sense for people of all ages on all sizes of boats to wear life jackets. Life jackets are the most effective way to save boaters' lives, and we encourage everyone to wear them any time they are in a boat."

"Nationwide," Hall added, "in 2004, 676 people died in recreational boating accidents. More than four hundred of those boaters could have been saved if they had been wearing life jackets."