The Most Common Causes Of Boating Accidents

Memorial Day has come and gone, and that means boating season is officially underway in Minnesota. Whether you love taking skiers and tubers around the lake for a day of fun or you just like to cruise around the outside of the lake looking for the fishing hotspots, taking the boat out can be a great way to spend the day. But when the lakes are busy or the weather doesn’t comply, it can be a recipe for injury, so it pays to know some of the most common causes of boating accidents so you can stay safe this summer. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at some of the most common causes of boating accidents.

Common Reasons For Boating Accident

Personal injury accidents can take many different shapes on the water, but below, we look at some of the most common causes and factors that contributed to boating accidents in the US in the last year the data was available, which was 2020. Here’s a look at the most common causes of accidents on the water:

1. Operator Inattention – An inattentive boat captain is the most common cause of boating accidents, resulting in 644 accidents, 383 injuries and 55 deaths in 2020.

2. Operator Inexperience – This factor likely goes hand-in-hand with the above factor, and operator inexperience accounted for 612 accidents, 343 injuries and 56 deaths in 2020.

3. Improper Lookout – Whenever you’re carrying passengers behind you on a tube or skis, you need to have a trained lookout to help ensure the driver can focus on what they are doing. Improper lookout situations accounted for 578 accidents, 409 injuries and 28 deaths in 2020.

4. Excessive Speed – Going too fast in any vehicle can be a recipe for disaster, and in 2020 it led to 418 accidents, 345 injuries and 32 deaths.

5. Machinery Failure – Rounding out the top five is machinery failure, which accounted for 373 accidents, 151 injuries and 19 deaths.

On a more local level, Minnesota also collected some local data on the types of non-fatal boat accidents that were most common in 2020. They found that a collision with another watercraft was the most common type of boat accident, accounting for 26 non-fatal boating accidents in 2020. Rounding out the top five types of non-fatal boat accidents were water-skiing mishaps (11), fire/explosion (9), sinking/flooding (8) and capsizing (7).

When you’re out boating this summer, remember that you may be held liable for injuries to any passengers or individuals elsewhere on the lake if you don’t practice proper safety protocols. You owe others a duty of care, and if you fail to uphold this duty, you can find yourself facing a personal injury lawsuit.

On the flipside, if you find yourself dealing with injuries as a result of someone else’s failure to uphold this duty of care, make sure you contact a personal injury lawyer to help get your case off the ground. Dean and the team at Margolis Law Office have been helping injured passengers get the compensation they deserve for decades, and we’d be more than happy to help you in your time of need. For more information, or to see if you might have a legitimate claim, give our team a call today at (952) 230-2700.