Daily Herald opinion: Setting standards for boating safety: We can’t stop every scofflaw, but rules still have practical value

Opponents to new proposals for stricter boating regulations on the Fox River near the Chain O’ Lakes offer a familiar, and not irrelevant, complaint.

It’s not boats that cause problems like the July 25 collision in McHenry that took the life of a Des Plaines woman and seriously injured her fiance. It’s bad boaters.

And, by definition, bad boaters like the Lisle suspect who authorities say was drunk and pushing his 31-foot pontoon at more than 80 miles an hour in a no-wake zone that tragic day have no respect for laws and won’t be limited by them.

“Someone like that (driver) doesn’t give a damn about any speed limits,” Ryan Tarosas, the owner of Fox 14 Marina on the river in Algonquin, said in a Chicago Tribune story by Robert McCoppin we published Monday.

At a surface level, that point is true enough. One need look no farther than a Chicago expressway to see the limited impact that speed limits have on highway driver behavior.

But whether the issue is gun access or driver behavior on roadways or rivers, it is not entirely accurate to say that laws have no practical value. At minimum, especially in the case of guns or, say, limits on the size of motors allowed on boats, regulations can make it harder for bad actors to behave irresponsibly.

Beyond that, especially in the case of speed limits, they at least put a standard of safety in the mind of all operators. They have the potential to modify the thinking of even someone willfully disregarding them. When supplemented with significant fines, they can provide an attention-getting level of enforcement, as authorities on other Illinois rivers and waterways attest.

The Fox River and Chain O’ Lakes are diverse water systems that can be jammed in the boating season with heavy watercraft traffic of all sorts, skiers, jet skis, and swimmers navigating a range of piers and bridges. It’s a setting where it can’t simply be assumed that everyone will act responsibly.

Indeed, dangerous boating behavior has captured the attention of many enthusiasts there. One of them, Amy Aponte, started a Change.org petition calling for more regulations.

“I had safety concerns for a long time, and that tragedy was enough for me to be like, something needs to be done,” Aponte told McCoppin, who reported that state Rep. Steve Reick is preparing legislation that could be ready as soon as the fall legislative session.

A Republican from Woodstock, Reick is no Big Brother proponent indifferent to the rights of individuals. We haven’t seen his proposals yet, but if they are sensible, serious and restrained, we’re confident that they can have an impact on dangerous boating behavior without inhibiting the fun for the overwhelming number of Fox users who enjoy the waterways responsibly.