Wisconsin had the nation’s third-highest number of alcohol-related boating deaths last year, the same year a legislative bill to stiffen penalties on drunken boaters went nowhere.
Intoxicated boating killed eight people in the state last year, ranking Wisconsin behind only New York and Florida. In comparison Minnesota and Michigan, which also provide plenty of boating opportunities, combined for four deaths, the Press-Gazette Media reported.
The U.S. Coast Guard said the threat of drunken boating extends beyond intoxicated boat drivers causing a crash or hitting swimmers. Drunken passengers also are at risk of drowning when they swim away from anchored vessels.
Republican state Rep. Garey Bies represents a district with more than 300 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline in Door and Kewaunee counties. In late 2011 he proposed a bill that would have prohibited a person from driving a boat for 12 to 16 months after a drunken-boating offense.
The bill also would have allowed judges to impose jail time and suspend car-driving privileges for people convicted of a second offense within five years of the first.
That would be considerably tougher than current law. A woman from Little Suamico was convicted of first-offense drunken boating in a 2011 incident that killed a 54-year-old woman who had fallen into a lake. The boater was charged with a forfeiture, which is less severe than a misdemeanor, and ordered to pay about $450.
Bies’s bill died in committee. However, lawmakers are considering re-introducing it this year.
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