Lifejackets will need to be worn, not just carried, on recreational craft 6 metres or less after Hon Dr Shane Reti\u2019s bill was passed unanimously by Parliament today.<\/p>\n
\u201cPassing this bill has been described as the biggest drowning prevention opportunity in a generation\u201d says Dr Reti.<\/p>\n
The select committee heard that 15% of all drownings last year were on small recreational craft where lifejackets were not worn. <\/p>\n
\u201cOfficials estimate that an average of 10 lives per year could be saved. Tasmania had a 60% reduction in their first year of policy introduction and we are looking for the same benefits\u201d says Dr Reti.<\/p>\n
There are currently various lifejacket bylaws across the country, councils with roughly half of regional councils having a bylaw like this already in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemoving variability with a nationally consistent policy will benefit water users and monitoring authorities. All existing exemptions such as surfers and sports events are retained\u201d says Dr Reti.<\/p>\n
Maritime NZ will work with the Safer Boating Forum (including Coastguard and Water Safety NZ), and others in the sector to educate New Zealanders about the new rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lifejackets will need to be worn, not just carried, on recreational craft 6 metres or less after Hon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-588563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}