The duck boat is a dangerous design.
I don’t think they are that dangerous. And they are definitely saver than a Harley Davidson on most roads, even with a helmet. And no, I don’t think we should ban motorcycles.
Life is risk. At least, it is if it’s worth living.
It is terrible that this happened.
But an average of 50 people a year are killed on tour buses. In an equivalent 20 year period, there were 15-20 people killed each year driving golf carts...that is a thousand people in that 20 year time frame.
And I would be pretty sure that only includes people killed who were ON a bus, not people in other vehicles who were killed due to things like “poor sight lines” on land where three of the fatalities included were due to accidents on land in traffic with the duck boats...but they include those in the “dangerous” statistics which I think is deliberately misleading and tells me something about the people who want to shut them down.
By my count via Internet searches for Duck Boat accidents, there may have been 40-50 people maximum killed in duck boat accidents in and out of the water in the last 20 years total.
That is 40-50 people TOTAL in 20 years in Duck Boats compared to thousands of deaths in tour buses and golf carts.
Granted, in golf carts (where 1000 people have died in twenty years) your life is generally in your own hands and is completely voluntary, but when riding a tour bus, you are relying on the driver and company to maintain the bus properly, much as people do in a duck boat.
The problem with these is that the statistics are hard to find.
Searching for duck boat accident statistics seems similar to searching for “assault rifle statistics” where all you get are the hysterical media reports, money grubbing lawyers looking for a payday, and nanny state legislators who want another feather in their cap by banning duck boats.
I looked up one duck boat operator, Boston Duck Tours (that I have actually patronized as a paying customer on multiple occasions) who has been operating since 1994, they have had one land based fatality in a collision with a scooter.
Boston Duck Tours boasts an annual ridership of 600,000 riders a year.
Personally, I think what happened in the accident in MO is awful. I think safety can always be improved, including not going out into areas with imminent or active thunderstorms, etc. But most of this hand wringing just pisses me off.