Comment by peatmoss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peatmoss | Hacker News Reader

I decided I wanted to get more deeply into kayaking this year, after having fantasized about becoming a regular kayaker for many years. Part of that process has been to start taking classes with a certified instructor. Even from our level one class, I realize there was probably a lot that I should have known but didn't during my casual paddle-abouts.

The video calls out reckless marketing by Oru, and after watching, I'm inclined to agree. I'm building a wooden kayak right now using plans by Nick Schade from Guillemot Kayaks, and by contrast, his plans include a dense couple of pages on safety beginning with:

"Going out on the water in a small boat is always going to be risky. The waters of the United States kill about 100 paddlers every year. A trip out on the water should never be taken lightly. Of those people that die, over 80% of them are not wearing a life jacket or Personal Flotation Device (PFD). Wearing an appropriate PFD is the single easiest thing you can do for your own self-protection. Wearing the PFD is the key. Wearing an appropriate life jacket is comfortable and cheap insurance. Many paddlers die with the life jacket strap to the deck. They never have the time or ability to put it on after they've fallen in the water. It is extremely difficult to put on a PFD when you are already on in the water. When you need a life jacket it should already be on."

I live in Seattle, which means I'll be paddling on Puget Sound. I really don't know how self rescue happens in those Oru kayaks, but I think I'd be pretty nervous in one without a wetsuit and PFD as a bare minimum. (One nit to pick about the video: it calls out a couple drinking wine in kayaks on Puget Sound—in actuality they were stupidly drinking wine, not on Puget Sound, but on Lake Union, which is not nearly as cold as Puget Sound.)

I, too, am a kayaker in Seattle, and I agree water safety is paramount.

Another sad story emphasizing PFD use is the drowning of Naya Rivera. They had gone in for a swim and the boat started drifting away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Naya_Rivera

At least here (not US) when you take a course for skipper license you also have to show ability to swim, put on lifejacket while in water, tie bowline around your waist and couple other.

The tasks are not particularly hard but this is done in perfect conditions and assuming a person that has actually trained for it.

People land in water in all sorts of situations including getting heart attack or knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. People who can't swim or get shocked by cold water may simply not have ability to think clearly at all even if they are perfectly fine otherwise.

A PFD that is not worn, can't activate automatically is as good as ballast in those situation. I would also add that PFD has to be able to turn your face into the air unless you are in a situation where there is a minimal chance you get rendered unconscious and you can get immediate help.

Aren't the couple in Lake Union right next to wear water planes land too? Sorta hard to move quickly out of the way with an open glass of wine.

I've seen people in these Oru kayaks in Union and Green Lake but never the sound. It's easy to rent an Oru off another local via Friendwitha, wonder if those people are properly safety briefed.

That's the seaplane pilots' responsibility, not the kayakers' - boaters have right of way. The seaplane takeoff/landing area is a relatively small patch at the south end of the lake, anyway; it's easy to not hang out there.

> Of those people that die, over 80% of them are not wearing a life jacket or Personal Flotation Device (PFD).

Making this statement in such a context borders on statistical misconduct, because it ignores base rates: Consider whether you'd find a statement that ">90% of injured car passengers were not wearing helmets" as a valid argument for helmet-wearing. This is presented as an argument for PFD-wearing.

Car passengers rarely wear helmets, but don't most paddlers wear life jackets? When I see people out on the river they're almost always wearing them.

This is exactly my point. Without knowing how common {wearing helmets in cars, wearing PFDs in kayaks} is, the statements imply nothing about safety benefits of either, and yet that one was presented in a way that suggests that it does.

What would be a non-misleading value to quote would be absolute change of risk of drowning (e.g. that a typical trip without a PFD costs X micromorts, while a typical trip with one Y micromorts). What would be less problematic (but still potentially misleading[1]) would be a relative risk reduction (wearing PFD makes you X times less likely to die).

[1] Because it doesn't tell you anything about the original risk that you're lowering. E.g. helmets are a good protection against falling bricks: equally good at construction sites as when you're walking down the street. The only difference is that falling bricks are more likely on a construction site.

While it's shoddy statistics, at least in this case the implied effect seems to be real. According to these two sources [1][2] that just came up when I searched for this, prevalence of wearing life-jackets among kayakers appears to be ~78%.

[1] https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/4/3/203 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5931488/

I have very little doubt the effect's real.

Note though that getting base rates from one place and getting rates of accidents from another is usually a bad idea: they will have various ways of measuring the rates, so will have different biases (based on location, time-of-day, time-of-year, ... where the measurement happens).

> don't most paddlers wear life jackets?

It depends on the area, difficulty level and water temperature. Life jackets have pros and cons. Can be an obstacle when swimming after a drifting kayak or even worse rescuing somebody that fell in the water. A jacket will also block you to get impulse to return to the kayak in some cases (because you are unable to submerge). I often don't wear one but the children must wear it.

Of course in the sea the idea of not wearing a jacket is out of the discussion

Technically your point is true, but I find these types of gotchas in bad faith. A more fair comparison to this statement would be ">90% of injured car passengers were not wearing seat belts".

The author was trying to stress the importance of wearing a life jacket, I don't think they need to get into statistical robustness in their summary paragraph for something that is so _obviously_ correct. The only reason you would want to argue this point is if you think they are being intentionally misleading, which I highly doubt you do.

> The author was trying to stress the importance of wearing a life jacket, I don't think they need to get into statistical robustness in their summary paragraph for something that is so _obviously_ correct.

Then don't provide statistics and just state that it's obviously correct. If doing so is less convincing, then it means that the statement _was_ misleading.

> The only reason you would want to argue this point is if you think they are being intentionally misleading, which I highly doubt you do.

I think they believe the conclusion is true and are intentionally saying whatever they can to make people think it's true, regardless of whether the reasoning they imply is correct.

E: So, in my estimation they are intentionally misleading in the area of valid arguments and not in the area of water safety.

Passengers would in fact have a lower chance of injury in a car crash if they were wearing helmets.

So why don’t they? Because helmets are expensive, uncomfortable, and—worst of all—totally uncool.

One reason this video is focused on advertising is because that helps set the baseline for social acceptance of things like PFDs and sober paddling. If every single person I see in a kayak ad is wearing a PFD, it will seem less weird to wear a PFD when I go kayaking.

Helmets are cool.

I would not be able to sit in most compact and subcompact cars if I were wearing a helmet, due to inadequate headroom clearance.

> Passengers would in fact have a lower chance of injury in a car crash if they were wearing helmets.

I once thought so. Someone pointed out that helmets might make whiplash worse (because they extend the head backward, so will change the angle at which the head impacts the headrest) and that we're essentially using airbags for (a.o.) the same functionality (protection from direct strikes to the head). So, I'm ambivalent on the topic now.

Check out frontal head restraint systems. In combination with a good harness they eliminate the C-spine concern, at the cost of reducing your field of regard a bit. If they can figure out the mobility piece, I’d happily drive with one on the street over air bags.

Are you familiar with the "Davies Craig Motoring Helmet"? It's a real Australian product from the 80's. They did considerable research and claimed considerable safety benefit. I'm not sure how it interacts with airbags, but here's a link: https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-style/davies-craig-australia....

Its is about as misleading as saying "X% of them are not wearing a seatbelt" the helmet comparison is not fair here.

In every US state (as far as I can tell) you are required to wear a seatbelt while operating a car.

Similarly in nearly every US state you are also required to wear a PFD while operating a personal watercraft. Enforcement seems a lot more lax on this though.

The legal status of the requirement makes this a valid comparison though it is implicit. This isn't an extra safety device. Though like helmets on motorbikes it is still one an individual may choose to forgo.

https://www.boatsafe.com/pfd-requirements-state-boating-regu...

> Lake Union, which is not nearly as cold as Puget Sound

Lake Union is colder from ~October through April.

But yeah, you should be dressed for immersion, in July, that might be a PFD and swimsuit.

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