The NTSB really should have put an end to this industry in 1999. It's tough to imagine that they won't fix their mistake this time around.
These things are insanely heavy, put through daily stress, and are basically maintained by carnies.
Whether they're sinking like brick or eviscerating the sides of buses, it's clear that they don't belong on the road.
Can't they just sunset these stupid things for the sake of the businesses, let wealthy collectors buy the old boats for their own purposes (and at their own risk), and force "Ride the Ducks" (who constantly insists that is not a single entity, despite having the same brand and business model), to purchase modern amphibious tour buses that pass safety regulations.
Surely there would become an immediate demand for a safe, comfortable, maneuverable amphibious vehicle in the wake of a crackdown on these deathtraps.
That's factually incorrect. Smaller monohulls that focus on racing performance often do not have weights, though they will certainly have a keel to reduce drift when sailing upwind. The exceptions are certain classes of tiny sports vessels.
Larger monohulls that are designed to be lived on are generally categorised under "class A" according to Europe's CE certification, but are probably sold with equal safety standards around the world. Class A means that they are impossible to fully capsize and will not sink with even a reasonable amount of water in them (well, de facto at least, de jure they only need to survive certain wind and sea conditions). For example, a class A yacht may roll over 90° onto its side and fill up with water, but will not sink. To pull this off, these yachts have heavy weights on the end of their keels to counterbalance the force of the wind pushing them into the water.
However, given enough water in them, even class A yachts will begin to sink.
You started this subthread by comparing 30+ passenger commercial amphibious vessels with sub-20' dinghies. Nonsense begets nonsense.
They did everything they could legally do, which is to say that they issued many strongly worded recommendations. Unfortunately they don’t have the legal authority to actually force anyone to do anything.
As with most of these issues, it’s quite likely that a private market solution would be most effective. If insurance companies refused to cover these boats, or they at least forced clients to implement all NTSB recommendations, the problems associated with this industry would largely disappear overnight. According to the NTSB, the reason the death rate is so high when these things sink is because the canopy doesn’t come off. They had specific recommendations that would address this problem, and the industry seems to have entirely ignored them.
By all means let's get some proper safety standards for these things, but banning them outright seems excessive.
Philadelphia's fleet of 20 to 25 duck boats have been
involved in three fatalities in five years, he said. "If
you compare those rates to the number of fatalities per mile
driven in a passenger car, you are talking about rates of
fatalities literally thousands of times higher."
If you search Google news (use a date range prior to this month's accident) you'll see regular deadly incidents going back years.
The NTSB did a huge review after a 1999 incident with 13 deaths. Conclusion? They're death traps. Duck boats swamp easily and sink like a stone. If there's a canopy people get dragged straight to the bottom.
The industry is huge and economically important. So perhaps just grandfather existing duck boats as long as they don't have a canopy. If you want a fancy duck boat with windows and a canopy, then buy a properly designed boat that isn't a death trap.
EDIT: Reading through the Google News results it seems these things are more deadly on land than in water.
Amphibious tours in amphibious cities would be great, but I doubt you could even get those things approved now, and no one actually has the money to make a new fleet and profit.
It is also probably note worthy that the original design was made for a situation where loss of human life was already expected.
However, they're unsafe in other ways. The 2015 crash in Seattle, which killed 4, was caused by a snapped axle. When I read that the duck design was "stretched" by someone with zero engineering training, that sounds awfully suspicious.
An additional concern is the the safety & maintenance records themselves. As part of the settlement in Seattle, the company admitted to 463 separate violations:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/duc...
From the article:
"In the water, duck boats are like a “sinking coffin” when they start to flood, said McCaskill, who plans to draft legislation proposing stronger safety standards for duck boats."
Forgive the dead horse beating, but this is why it's frequently said on HN (and in general) that safety laws and regulations are written in blood. People die, gaps are identified, gaps are closed, time passes, people complain about regulation.
People stop dying from it (because the regulation) therefore it’s not needed.
Law is similar, except on much longer timescales. I wish the laws would carry both inline explanation (comments), and explanations of reasoning and causes when changed (commit messages).
De-regulators know there is a reason, in many cases they understand it well. They don't care.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/24/us/seattle-tour-bus-duck-tour...
I think after the NTSB is done, it's likely these get taken off waterways --at which point, there is no reason to keep them as land only vehicles since they get such poor mileage and offer a poor bumpy ride.
I would hope that some (known) relatively simple and inexpensive quick fixes would at least be made though.
If this isn’t a good time for a regulator to intervene, when is?
Yeah the canopies seem like death traps :(
Unfortunately, I heard reports that, no one had life jackets on.
Then when water started coming on board, reports said, some people stood up (possibly to get the life jackets) but the employees told everyone to stay sitting.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.6044492,-93.3119691,3a,75y,2...
If they had started out right next to the dam, they couldn't have driven up onto that, but in that case they would have passed about half a mile of shoreline before sinking.
If this sort of thing happened at Lake of the Ozarks, the main obstacle would be all the lake-home seawalls... CoE regs prevent installation of those amenities at Table Rock. Of course, given the Lake's wealthier/more prestigious clientele, duck rides would never prosper there...
'U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Chad Saylor confirmed that the Missouri duck boat was a “stretch duck.” He said the boat was last inspected on Nov. 29, 2017, and was found “fit for route and service.”'
And presumably someone in government (in a lot of places) signed off on transporting people in these.
Yes, someone with more experience and even professionally licensed should probably have signed off on the mods. But no one OKing this service required it and it's not clear the modifications were responsible for what happened or it was just something that can happen when duck boats generally are operated in the way that they're operated.