Edit mine…yes, this…just creepy…
I went on one for the first time when I went to DC earlier this month and I’ll go on one again.
The duck boat that sank in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1999 also did not have windows—just a canopy. It sank in 30 seconds, and 13 (out of 20) passengers drowned.
I realize that duck boats in various cities take multiple trips every day without incident. But riding them is outside my personal comfort zone.
And people safely ski dive, bungee jump and ride hot-air balloons every day, but when something goes wrong in those activities, they tend to go horribly wrong, OK, I realize jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is not the same as taking a boat ride, but I think your phrase of, ‘Outside my personal comfort zone’ applies to all of those activities for me…
I think the difference is if you engage in risky activity, you assume risks beyond ordinary existence. You might take extra precautions accordingly. At least you are aware that you are tempting fate to a greater degree than sitting on the beach in a lawn chair.
But a ride on a duck boat is not promoted or considered as a high-risk activity. Yet history shows that it is.
Does it, though? All that has been brought up so far are anecdotes. What are the actual risk rates? Are they actually particularly risky?
And, in the current case, how much of it was the risk inherent to the DUCKs and how much was the error of going out in bad weather? In other words, if the weather starting out is safe, then what are the risk rates?
People can of course make their own decisions without that data, based on their own comfort zones. But I do think we’d make better informed decisions if we knew. I don’t want to be like people who refuse to fly because of a plane crash.
But there’s the rub. Things like driving or taking a plane are stuff we need to do. Riding a 70 yo, un-maintained water craft in water and weather that are iffy. Driven/captained by people who are not necessarily well informed or trained is not something I need to do. YMMV. And that is your prerogative.
I won’t be riding a duck in this life. Nope. Not gonna happen.
I have spend 35+ years flying around the world for business, and I would never equate a flight to a duck boat trip…yes, flying is much more complex and far more inherently dangerous, but it’s precisely for this reason flying is far more regulated and controlled…I have looked out over the Pacific Ocean on numerous flights to Asia and thought, if we go down now, nobody will ever know…and it’s only really happened once in recent time, Malaysia flight 370…
But, to your point, how much was the error in going out in bad weather - evidently pretty bad…those things are not designed for much draft, once swamped, they are (pardon the pun), sinking ducks, so, in fair weather, probably fine, in bad weather, not good…this was certainly a perfect storm of weather conditions, the design of the canopy, the design of the exhaust allowing water in, when you watch the full video, it was still moving towards shore, they were not that far off, but the wind was blowing them back, when it finally swamped and sank, it did so in seconds, one moment it was there, the next moment, the people shooting are saying, “Where did it go?”
They did rescue some of the survivors from the paddle boat where the video was taken…just horrific…
As a surprising number of people here have done, I rode it in Boston. (The Boston ducks are run by the Museum of Science). Rode them with my parents and daughter, in fact, who they let drive the thing, even though she was all of five at the time.
They’ve been saying here that they have more stringent rules in Boston about when the boats can go out (and when they have to come in) than they had in Branson. I’m sure they did this mainly to reassure the customers on the Boston ducks, but it might explain in part what happened in Missouri.
There used to be a Duck service in Salem, Mass. (“Moby Duck Tours”) but they seem to have folded several years ago.
No, it’s a private company. They use the MoS as one of the starting points; the other two are the Pru and the Aquarium.
I believe a pedestrian was killed by a duck boat (driving on the street) in Boston a while back.
Family That Lost 9 Wants Duck Boats Banned. The problem lies with “the boat operators violat[ing] the company’s own policies by putting the boat into the water despite the weather warnings [and] the captain violat[ing] protocol by not telling passengers to put on life jackets when the water got rough”, not the boats.
You just know the company is encouraging as many trips out per day as can be managed. That could make the drivers complacent and reckless in my opinion.
A person on a scooter was killed in Boston; a pedestrian was killed in Philadelphia.
…& the lawsuit is also asking for $100 million.
Updating this thread three individuals (the captain, the operations supervisor, and the general manager) have finally been charged with multiple crimes, mostly involuntary manslaughter in the Branson, Missouri duck boat disaster:
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.
Years ago we rode in the one in Branson and lived to tell the tale.
The wife and I took one in Singapore. It was okay.
Ride The Ducks is a franchise operation?