Tragedy Spurs Push for Mandatory Boater Education Across New York

The August 2005 collision off Bay Shore, New York, still haunts the families involved and has prompted renewed calls for stronger boater education. Frank and Gina Lieneck were aboard a 24-foot Bayliner with three children when a 25-foot Grady-White, reportedly traveling at full throttle, plowed into the starboard side. The impact tore a large gash through the Bayliner, mounted its gunwale and nearly pushed over the boat.

The crash left both parents hospitalized with severe injuries, including brain trauma that they continue to manage. Their 11-year-old daughter, Brianna, died from injuries sustained in the accident. Gina Lieneck remembers the canopy collapsing on Brianna and breaking her neck; many of the child’s organs were damaged.

In memory of Brianna, the New York Assembly passed legislation this past June known as “Brianna’s Law.” The bill did not clear the state Senate before the legislative session ended, but Assemblywoman Kimberly Jean-Pierre, who sponsored the bill, says she and co-sponsoring Senator Phil Boyle plan to reintroduce it when the legislature reconvenes in January.

“He’s committed to making it a priority and having more discussions over the summer to make sure it’s concrete legislation that can pass in both houses, and that can help keep New York’s waterways safe,” Jean-Pierre told Soundings.

Brianna’s Law would require every person operating a mechanically propelled vessel on New York waterways to complete a boater safety course. Under current state law, only operators born after 1996—roughly those aged 22 and younger at the time the bill was proposed—are required to complete certified boater education.

The driver of the boat that struck the Lienecks’ vessel was a 33-year-old air traffic controller. Gina Lieneck points to that fact when urging lawmakers to broaden mandatory training. “When you look at the Coast Guard statistics, it’s not the young ones causing accidents,” she said. “It’s the old ones. It’s mostly people 30 and older.”

Coast Guard data from the Recreational Boating Statistics for 2017 support her concern. Operators aged 36 and older were involved in fatal boating accidents that led to 421 deaths, while operators 35 and younger were involved in 191 fatal accidents. Where operator education history was known, 81 percent of deaths occurred on vessels where the operator had not received boating safety instruction; only 14 percent of deaths occurred where the operator held a nationally approved boating safety education certificate.

“Just because you’ve been doing something for 50 years doesn’t mean you’re doing it right,” Jean-Pierre said, underscoring the case for statewide training.

New York is currently among fewer than half a dozen states without a comprehensive mandatory boater education requirement for all operators. David Kennedy, government affairs manager at BoatUS, says his organization supports boater education in principle but raised concerns about the original version of Brianna’s Law when it would have required in-person, classroom-only instruction for every boater.

“That was a major problem for us,” Kennedy told Soundings. “We absolutely oppose that. Online education is where things are going and how people want to get this kind of education. It works.” The bill was amended to allow online courses, but questions remain about verifying that the person completing an online course is the same person who will be operating a boat. Jean-Pierre says the state Department of Parks would have to develop a verification process to ensure certificate integrity.

Another concern raised by BoatUS was the proposal to require all 450,000 registered boat owners in New York to complete the course at the same time. Kennedy warned that such a simultaneous deadline can create a bottleneck, even with online options available. “When you put this big bottleneck through, it absolutely jams the system,” he said, arguing that a phased approach avoids overwhelming classroom and administrative capacity.

States taking phased approaches include California, which implemented mandatory boater education beginning with younger operators and incrementally raising the age each year. Virginia used a similar strategy and reported a successful rollout, although some veteran boaters resisted the new requirement. “They just did not like it,” Kennedy said of those who opposed spending the time to take a class. “It requires you to spend some time and take the class. But they were lobbying the Virginia legislature to try and get out of it. Somebody once said, ‘Once the dock lines come off, everybody’s a libertarian.’”

Opposition in New York has included fishing tournament organizers and boat dealerships, who worried the law might reduce participation or hurt sales. Jean-Pierre disputes those concerns, citing other states with strict boating laws—such as Ohio and Pennsylvania—that have not seen declines in boating activity or boat sales.

For the Lieneck family, the debate is personal and urgent. Gina asks skeptics to consider the human cost before rejecting mandatory instruction. “It’s frustrating to me that people say they don’t want to sit through an eight-hour class,” she said. “I had to wait a month to bury my daughter because my husband and I were both critically injured, and then I had to sit through her funeral. You have to sit through an eight-hour class, and you only have to do it once. Just do it.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2018 issue.