How The Duck Boat Accident Could Have Been Avoided
How do you prove who is responsible for the Delaware River duck boat tour accident?
Just like car accident cases, the evaluation of liability in boating accident cases is determined by looking at the “rules of the road.” The rules are technically called the Federal Inland Navigation Rules. They are Coast Guard navigation regulations, and all boat captains are required to follow them. If they don’t, bad things happen, as did last week in Philadelphia.
By now most of the country has heard about the collision between a “Ride The Ducks” duck boat and a barge on The Delaware River. A tugboat was pushing an empty barge and the duck boat was on the blind side of the barge.
I’ve been on the Ride The Ducks boat with my wife and three kids. We also did the same tour in Boston. I never considered that a collision between the boats we were on and a larger vessel could have occurred. The duck boats were landing craft for the Allied troops in World War II. They had done battle against the Nazis during D-Day and the Japanese at Iwo Jima. How could they not be safe? But tragedy happened, and now two Hungarian teenagers, visiting Philadelphia on a group trip, are dead. Right here in Philadelphia.
Who’s at fault? Certainly the tug boat operator, and the company that operates the tug. It’s inconceivable that the tug boat would not have a vantage point on all sides so the operator could see what happening on the river or so that an assistant could report to him. The rules of the road require that the tugboat pushing the barge have a proper lookout.
The duck boat had a small fire on the boat and was disabled in the water for at least fifteen minutes. It did not issue a distress call to the Coast Guard. It did call the home base of the tour company and was waiting for assistance. Here are just a few questions to which I'd like to know the answers.
- What caused the fire?
- What do the maintenance and inspection records reveal for the boat?
- Why was there no distress call sent to the Coast Guard by the captain of the duck boat?
- Why did the duck boat captain wait until the last few seconds when the barge was bearing down on the duck boat to tell passengers to jump into the water?
- Why not get them out sooner?
- Were there sufficient numbers of accessible and usable life vests?
- Was enough training provided to the captain and his assistant of the duck boat insofar as this type of incident?
- Why wasn’t the air horn on the duck boat operational?
- What sort of assistance did the tugboat captain have in terms of lookout on the tugboat or the barge?
- Was the tugboat captain monitoring Channel 13, the ship to ship channel, or Channel 16, the emergency contact channel?
The rules of the road apply to all water ways. As an avid kayaker in the back bays of South Jersey, I frequently see small boats and jet skis in the areas where I kayak. I can tell by how those craft are operated that the captain of the boat or operator of the jet ski has no idea of his or her legal obligations on the water.
Philadelphia’s duck boat tragedy will now set the standard for all duck boat tours around the country. New procedures will have to be place before these tours begin again. This, from a Philadelphia Inquirer article written by David O’Reilly and Linda Loyd sums up the scenario:
A vessel stalled in the middle of that teeming shipping channel is the stuff of maritime nightmares. It is also a scenario envisioned by a former Coast Guard commandant a decade ago when he barred duck-craft tours from the port. "I didn't allow it on my watch, because I was concerned about an incident like this possibly happening," said Capt. Gregory F. Adams, superintendent of the Port of Philadelphia from 1998 to 2002. He had ridden the amphibious sightseeing vehicles in Baltimore, he said. "It's an entirely different operation there. They are in more protected waters outside of commercial navigation areas. Each port is different." At Penn's Landing, he said, "the whole main channel of the Delaware runs right along the Pennsylvania side of the river. It just didn't seem like a good idea."
