Finnish authorities are considering tougher boat safety laws, including a requirement that children wear life vests on board, reports the Savon Sanomat on Monday. Under current legislation, there must be a flotation vest for each person on a vessel, but their use is not required.
Also under consideration are stricter, clearer speed limits for waterways. The reforms are being discussed ahead of a bill to be submitted to Parliament next year, says the paper, based in Jyväskylä in the Finnish lake district.
Neighbouring Sweden is considering legislation that would require children under 15 to wear life vests while in pleasure boats.
In Norway, the use of vests is obligatory for anyone on board boats under eight metres in length. The skipper of each vessel is required to ensure that kids under 15 are wearing vests.
Tangle of red tape
Finland's Transport Ministry will circulate draft wording of the new legislation for comment before the government considers it.
Savon Sanomat has seen an official memo for reform of the Waterborne Traffic Act of 1996 as well as 17 other boating laws and other rules. The intention is to streamline them all into one clear new boating statute.
Ministry bureaucrats have so far been collecting boating data from police, the Transport Safety Agency (Trafi), the Finnish Transport Agency, the Interior Ministry, the ELY Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, the Border Guard and Customs.
According to the plan, the main points of the new law are to be readily accessible by the public via smartphone services and electronic maps.
Crackdown on flimsy homemade vessels, sauna barges
Officials are weighing changes to restrictions on boat speeds, wake formation and blood alcohol limits, for instance – all of which are now governed by different regulations and bodies. The new law is also to lay down ground rules for the use of non-traditional vessels such as jet skis and sauna barges, which have proliferated lately.
Every summer, for instance, rescue squads and border guards have to save people trying to cross the Gulf of Finland or some lake on flimsy homemade vessels, often based on a bet or dare. Officials want clearer rules on what kinds of floating devices can be used safely and legally to limit risks and cost.
Finland has an estimated 188,000 lakes and 4,600 kilometres of coastline.
