Boaters on Lake Michigan in Chicago would be required to wear life jackets under a new proposal, and if they don’t, could face a hefty fine.<\/p>\n
Ald. Stephanie Coleman, of the city’s 16th Ward, proposed an ordinance in response to the drowning of Zahrie Walls, a stylist on Chicago’s West Side, in late June. Under the ordinance, all boaters on the lake and waterways in Chicago would be required to wear a personal flotation device, or operators could face a fine of up to $500.<\/p>\n
“If you do not have swimming experience then you have to agree to wearing a floatation device aka a life vest while on board…” she said. <\/p>\n
Coleman pointed to lives that were saved the weekend of Zahrie’s death because they were wearing life jackets, adding that enforcement would require a partnership between police, the fire department and the U.S. Coast Guard.<\/p>\n
“Boating life in Chicago has grown,” she said. “There is a need for more marshals. Officers and other public safety partners, so that a Zahrie Walls accident won\u2019t occur again.”<\/p>\n
Chicago Harbor Safety Committee President Mike McElroy, president of the Chicago Harbor Safety Committee, said it would be very difficult to enforce such a law without significantly strengthening the current force.<\/p>\n
“Are there enough search and rescue to be able to respond to the number of calls that are happening?” And there simply is not,” he stated.<\/p>\n
David Linnear, a marine captain who\u2019s been an independent contractor out of Burnham Harbor, showed NBC Chicago three different types of life preservers boaters can use. <\/p>\n
“I am all in favor of anything that brings about safety. How do you make sure that the person is using the proper type of life preserver?” he said.<\/p>\n
Illinois law requires that life vests be available for each person onboard, but only those under 13 years old must wear the devices.<\/p>\n
“How do we educate the people, passengers getting on the boat, the boat owners, the charter companies, all these people on this new law?” Linnear said. “Because a lot of the enforcement would come from the fact that people don\u2019t even know about it.”<\/p>\n
Some boaters are skeptical of the ordinance, which has been pushed to the transportation committee.<\/p>\n
“Enforcing it and ticketing people who may have been boating 30 years and never had an incident and to force them to put on a vest and then a $500 fine, boating is expensive enough,” said Matthew Taylor, a boat captain. “So I don\u2019t think that\u2019s fair, but I understand the reasoning\u00a0and logic behind it.”<\/p>\n
Coleman’s goal is for the ordinance to be approved by September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boaters on Lake Michigan in Chicago would be required to wear life jackets under a new proposal, and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":90088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,5405],"class_list":{"0":"post-90087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-lake-michigan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114911246079528075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}