Here’s perhaps the “key” or most critical excerpt from what you asked me to read:
“Another worry, he said, is drinking. There are about 40 boat-accessible saloons in the Chain. All too frequently, boaters watch Thursday night boat races on Grass Lake, then crash into each other on the way home.
(when? Always? When? Oh we never find out.)
“We consider drinking and boating one of the major causes of accidents on the water up there,” Wakolbinger said. “We are trying to use increased enforcement and education to slow it down.”
(Jeez! Things must be really terrible! How much money do you need to save our lives?)
Lake County has had no boating fatalities so far in 1997, perhaps in part because of the sobering effect of a two-boat collision that killed three people on July 11, 1996, on Nippersink Lake.”
There are three paragraphs here. The first is an opinion about why boaters go fast: because they have been to a bar and seen a race on TV. The second is another opinion, and the third is a tragic reminder of a couple of deaths fifteen years ago and another opinion about how, fourteen years ago, there were fewer deaths because laws changed that year.
In that year, 1996-7, I personally lost three friends in a Volvo 760 near Williamsburg, including (perhaps) the love of my life.
Is that significant to you? Probably not. They were killed by a Mexican trucker.
But it’s the same number of people. It was a Volvo. Should I sue Volvo?
I understand your point, but please understand also:
Our Freedoms are ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS limited in the name of “SAFETY.” Washington and Franklin and even Hamilton knew it.
Will you think on it too?
Understanding, after Orlando Sentinal takeover of the formerly "World's Greatest Newspaper," Chicago Tribune normally doesn't lets facts stand in the way of a story; perhaps you missed this: The Chain is also considered one of the nation's busiest bodies of water. And this: operator Arnold "Dick" Carlson, 56, of McHenry, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.179, cocaine in his system, a record of drunken driving, including three revocation of driving privileges.
USCG was ordered to Chain o' Lakes in the summer 1996; result: zero boating fatalities. BTW, all the non-fatality reported property damage collisions in the story are between drunk boaters and a law enforcement vessel. Isn't that special?
Never the less, we insist Alexander Hamilton's first letter of instruction is folowed by our Boarding Officers:
"...will always keep in mind that their countrymen are freemen, and, as such, are impatient of everything that bears the least mark of a domineering spirit... They will endeavor to overcome difficulties, if any are experienced, by a cool and temperate perseverance in their duty – by address and moderation, rather than by vehemence or violence."
Bottom line: It's not against the law to drink and boat; only against the law to operate while intoxicated. Operators failing a field sobriety test challenge findings with chemical breath analysis. The intoxicated operators are cited with negligent operations and passed to the local authorities.
Cheers,
OLA