So I looked up some numbers, and here's what I learned.
Motorcycles: 60 annual fatalities per 100,000 registered motorcycles
Power Boats: 6 annual fatalities per 100,000 registered boats
Light aircraft: 1.06 annual fatalities per 100,000 registered aircraft.
A huge part of the improvement in aviation safety has been uniform adoption of checklists before, during, and after operations. The pre-flight checklist alone is considered to be the single most important factor in reducing annual aviation accidents/deaths to its current historic low.
If you're six times more likely to get killed running a boat than an airplane, maybe the boaters oughta take a page out of the pilot's handbook and start doing some pre-run checklists.
Edited to add: oh, and btw, I'm selling my motorcycle.
Mother-in-law was a nurse and always called them "donorcycles".
Considering what you see at the boat ramps, I'm really surprised the fatality rate for boats is that low. Seems an inordinate number of idiots buy them.
