On the afternoon of July 4, 2011, Operator, and her dad was each riding PWC’s in the King’s Lake Cove of Lake D’Arbonne.  At approximately 3:30pm, they were riding side by side approximately 15 feet apart, with Operator being on the left and Dad on the right.  As Operator passed Dad, he made an abrupt turn to the left, hitting the PWC operated by Operator on the rear Starboard side of her PWC.  The impact crushed the rub rail and upper hull of her PWC and put a severe crack in the lower hull.  There was significant damage to the port side of the PWC operated by Dad, including a crack to the upper hull, a crushed rub rail, and a cracked lower hull.  Neither was injured.  On the morning of July 5, Senior Agent as notified of the accident.  Both PWC’s were located at a fiberglass repair shop in West Monroe.  We met with  Operator, the husband of Operator.  We photographed the damaged PWC’s and gave  Operator a boating incident report to give his wife.  Due to Dad residing north of Shreveport, Sgt.  contacted Lt.in Region 1 and requested an agent from their area provide Dad with a boating incident report.  Both Operator and  Dad returned the reports.

After reviewing the reports, it was determined that  Dad was at fault.  In his report, he states that he only has approximately 10 hours of operating time on a PWC. The primary cause of the accident (#1) was operator inexperience.  The secondary (#2) cause of the accident was careless/reckless operation due to the fact that Dad was operating in close proximity to another PWC and he made a sharp left hand turn causing an accident with significant damage to two PWC’s.  The tertiary (3) cause of the accident was the speed in which Dad was operating, did not allow him to stop or make any maneuvers to avoid the accident.  It was also determined that Operator was not a fault due to the fact that she was on the left of Dad (passing situation-rules of the road) and was maintaining course and speed at the time of the incident.  There was no drug or alcohol use suspected.
Farmerville                   