Water Safety

Here in New Zealand they are good at letting us know the stats for most things.
Holiday Death Toll
Drownings since New Year
Last Day of Rain

Of course the holiday session has finished for Christmas, but we are just about to enter 2 long weekends. The first being Anniversary Weekend, so we have Monday off and the second (2 weeks later) being Waitangi Day (Feb 6), which just happens to fall on a Friday this year, so therefore creates a long weekend.

Death Tolls on the Roads are something that New Zealand go on about a lot, they are always trying to find ways to make the roads safer.
Water safety is also another biggy for NZ, seeing as we are an island, then water plays a big part of life here in NZ, well unless you live in Hamilton, like us, then you couldn't be further away from the sea if you tried!
Over Christmas there was a lot in the papers about accidents on the water and the amount of drownings we had had so far this year. It is about 15 - 18 drownings since Jan 1.

One that stood out for me was one mentioned in the newspaper. (NZ Herald)
Apparently these 2 male relatives had gone out on their 12m aluminium run about, for a fishing trip. BUT, they had been drinking prior to going and were drinking while fishing.
Unfortunately their boat capsized, one of the guys made it to shore using a chilly bin as a float, sadly the other never made it.
Neither men were wearing a life jacket.

A relative of the missing man had this to say:
"Fishing is not somethng new to him - it's his love, and every summer he takes the boat out a couple of times a week"

So what immediately jumped out at me, was, where were the life jackets? He apparently was experienced in fishing, so why not have safety equipement?
It saddens me to hear of families loosing loved ones, especially at sea (I have a fear of drowning) but when you then hear more about the incident, then you have to wonder what they were thinking when the accident happened and could have been preventable with a few safety tips.

You always hear on the headlines "They had no life jackets"
But you never hear "Sadly they drowned but they had a life jacket on"

Why do people take water saftey so lightly?