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• Anonymous

  Please add to the bill a yearly $20.00 boat fee for enforcement! Its about time someone paid the freight in this state besides snowmobilers and jet skiers.

• Anonymous

  How about only for people that don’t buy hunting or fishing licenses as it’s the IFnW that would end up enforcing it on inland waters.  Our license fees pay for their service but everyone else just gets the benefits.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

  Another nanny state law. Simply to generate money. Either safety is the issue or money is. Until those who ride motorcycles are required to wear a helmet then all these laws and rules are nothing then money generators. Either all safety or nothing. Leave people alone!!

• Anonymous

  Just what we need another law the the State doesn’t have the resources to enforce.

• Mr_Spuddy

  Common sense shouldn’t have to be mandated.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MLCBUEDI5ADWEABOPWJUJJM4GE karenr

  Why does the government need to tell me what to do.  I am over the age of consent and know the consequences.   keep your nose out of my business.  If I am not smart enough to wear one then I will take the consequences not you.  Leave me alone.  Make a law that protects our children on school buses, they aren’t buckled in.   By making a law requiring me to wear a life jacket you are telling me I am not smart enough to make my own choices.  I ride a motorcycle and do not wear a helmet but know all the things that can happen and still choose not to.  Why do you think you need to tell me what to do and think.  Sorry I like my freedom and like to make my own choices as to what is right for my life not you.  Stay out of it please.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q4AP5EYCYRCGZGIJGWI6TLIUEA Tom

  More nanny state gobbledygook, this time from a Republitard.

• http://twitter.com/brodeurpc Brodeur PC

  Another stupid law… My life, my choice, not theirs.

• Anonymous

  Personally I never get into either a kayak or canoe without wearing a PFD but that is MY choice.  We don’t need some bureaucrat telling us how to live our lives.  I also CHOOSE to wear a motorcycle helmet most of the time but do occasionally ride without one.

• Anonymous

  More laws to “save me from myself”. Can you say “Nanny State”?

• Anonymous

  No.  Period.  If I choose to take my life jacket off on a hot summer day on the pond, I don’t need a game warden cashing in on the act.  No. 

• Anonymous

  I get your point, but helmets don’t make motorcycles safe and life jackets don’t save lives. The helmets increase the chances that someone will be able to recognize the dead biker and the life jackets make it so nobody has to drag the bottom of the lake or ocean to find victims, or worse, the corpses don’t get found by some poor soul. 

  If you wanted to make bikes safe you’d have to add airbags, roll bars and a way to keep them from vaulting. Something would have to absorb the front and back impact as well as impacts from both sides. If you want to make kayakers safe you’d have to design equipment, such gyroscopic sensors, airbags, Onstar, and automatic righting of the boat. 

• Anonymous

  I can swim to the middle of the lake,  I can take an air mattress to the middle of the lake and I can take my 12 foot boat on the lake without wearing a life jacket but I can’t take a canoe or kayak on the lake without wearing a life jacket?

• acadiawoods

  Most of the respondents thus far are opposed to the PFD requirement because it infringes on their rights.  So how about the legislation be written in such a way that PFDs will not be required by those who absolve the state of any responsibility for locating their remains unless their family wishes to anti up the thousands of dollars that will be spent on the mission. 
  And why single out paddle boaters.  The majority of them do wear PFDs. 

• http://twitter.com/NorthernRants Bill Buck

  So now we will have to pay for someone to police this, huh?

• Anonymous

  simplify it if it is a watercraft then life jackets are required.  My children would where them or they wouldn’t use them.

• poormaniac

  From Hancock , how about an ammendment to require all lobstermen and clammers to wear one also. When will this stupidity stop ? We need legislators who are interested in solving problems not creating them !

• Anonymous

  Okay.  
  But if you really think that they drag for bodies for the benefit of the dead persons family…. you are totally fooled by the nanny state. 

• Anonymous

  If you don’t,  don’t pass a law that people will ignore.
  It is just  gate way to a life of crime.   % )

• Anonymous

  Augusta cannot balance their budget but is oh so concerned we paddle without a worn life jacket.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MLCBUEDI5ADWEABOPWJUJJM4GE karenr

  Sounds like a good plan but your government wont do it.  they think they know better than me and need to protect me from myself.   If  I was  kayaking or canoeing or boating and died because of it I would rather spend eternity at the bottom rather than in a casket.  I died doing what I love. do you realize how many people spread their ashes in a body of water?  Just don’t pick me out to be cremated and thrown back in there cause its where I wanted to spend eternity anyway! I will sign a document to that effect if it gets me out of wearing a PFD because the government says so.  Same thing with a helmet on my bike.  Leave me for coyote bait and it will be discarded of natures way. 

• http://www.facebook.com/laplants Seth Laplant

  So my canoe will be safe if I strap a motor it to it?  How about a law requiring people renting equipment need to wear a life jacket or in salt water only.  There were a number of people that died this year when paddling but most of them were tourists in sea kayaks. 

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

  One of my first jobs was driving a wrecker right outside Washington DC in the MD suburbs. Helmets save lives. I have seen it many many times first hand. A helmet is the major form of protection for those riding a motorcycle. Leathers second.  How many motorcycle races have you seen a death in? They wear good helmets and good leathers plus they understand how to crash IE they lay out on there back if possible to dispel energy. Helmets do make motorcycles safer.

  That said one has to ask are the laws to make us safe or increase revenue. Until seat belts are MANDATORY in school buses and helmets for motorcycles then I have to say it has more to do with money then safety.     

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

   Those folks are the reason this law was wrote. To follow that logic we need to ban ice fishing and snow sleds cause we loose quite a few visitors to thin ice and snow sleds meeting solid objects at high speed.

  Wait that’s it ban all visitors and lift all the stupid nanny state rules. Problem solved!!!!