Would I ride on one? I think I already did, at some point in the early 2000’s, in Seattle, as others posting here earlier have done.
In 2015, there was a horrific crash involving a duck boat, not in the water but on a bridge. This is the Aurora bridge, really scenic and major thoroughfare through the city, but a bit notorious for terrible accidents.
Soon after I moved to Seattle in the late 1990’s there was an incident where the driver had a heart attack, causing the bus to swerve to the side and through the guardrail, and over the side, falling a long distance, maybe 100 feet to the neighborhood below. Godawful.
Meanwhile, this CNN article is about the $123 million settlement after the Seattle Duck boat crash on that bridge in 2015. It hit a tour bus coming the other way, full of foreign students visiting Seattle, and some of them were killed. Looks like they are holding the manufacturers to most of the responsibility for the crash, which may indicate that these boats may be on the way out.