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Interestingly, according to a news report, there were fewer deaths and accidents this midsummer compared to... well, it just said it had "calmed down", so maybe last year or maybe not.
Unforunately one of them was in our town (well, municipality - it's like a county in the US, that is, the part outside of city limits but under the same division, but Wax gets really upset when I refer to these areas as "counties" because "Finland doesn't have counties and has never had counties!"), outside the city limits and on the next island over at the swimming beach. Presumably, then, not due to drunken boating, but it didn't say.
Drunken boating is a HUGE cause of death on Midsummer in Finland, like, insanely huge. Wax and I were thinking about this a few weeks ago, and we concluded it's probably because although drunk boating is potentially as dangerous as drunk driving (I don't have any stats here, but it would be hard to make stats since boating isn't regulated quite as tightly as road vehicles - but at least it's potentially fatal in multiple ways, put it that way), people don't think of boating as being as dangerous as driving at all, or being akin to driving, and for much of the time it doesn't involve anything like traffic laws or other people's boats. It's totally reasonable that you don't have to go through the same kinds of education and testing to get a boating license as you do to get a car, and given road fatalities it's also reasonable that far more effort is put into anti-drunk-driving campaigning. But at the same time, the risk of drunk boating definitely seems to be simply underestimated. Maybe the answer is tighter regulation, or a more sustained public health campaign, I don't know.
Obviously drowning apart from boats is also greater around Midsummer, and I imagine being drunk doesn't help at all with swimming either, but drunk boating is the standout statistic we hear about for the summers. I wonder if the increasingly hot summers are going to cumulatively result in more deaths of this type? (Seems both Wax's brothers and their families were out in boats yesterday.)
Unforunately one of them was in our town (well, municipality - it's like a county in the US, that is, the part outside of city limits but under the same division, but Wax gets really upset when I refer to these areas as "counties" because "Finland doesn't have counties and has never had counties!"), outside the city limits and on the next island over at the swimming beach. Presumably, then, not due to drunken boating, but it didn't say.
Drunken boating is a HUGE cause of death on Midsummer in Finland, like, insanely huge. Wax and I were thinking about this a few weeks ago, and we concluded it's probably because although drunk boating is potentially as dangerous as drunk driving (I don't have any stats here, but it would be hard to make stats since boating isn't regulated quite as tightly as road vehicles - but at least it's potentially fatal in multiple ways, put it that way), people don't think of boating as being as dangerous as driving at all, or being akin to driving, and for much of the time it doesn't involve anything like traffic laws or other people's boats. It's totally reasonable that you don't have to go through the same kinds of education and testing to get a boating license as you do to get a car, and given road fatalities it's also reasonable that far more effort is put into anti-drunk-driving campaigning. But at the same time, the risk of drunk boating definitely seems to be simply underestimated. Maybe the answer is tighter regulation, or a more sustained public health campaign, I don't know.
Obviously drowning apart from boats is also greater around Midsummer, and I imagine being drunk doesn't help at all with swimming either, but drunk boating is the standout statistic we hear about for the summers. I wonder if the increasingly hot summers are going to cumulatively result in more deaths of this type? (Seems both Wax's brothers and their families were out in boats yesterday.)
