Maybe it's a cultural thing? I've done all of my boating in Canada...
Scott Welch
Island Eagle
Could be, I don't know. I keep hearing and reading that the US leads the world in the number of lawyers per capita and the number of lawsuits and the number of seemingly frivolous or greed-inspired lawsuits that are actually won.
There is another aspect of this that's not popular or politically correct these days, and that is how one feels about personal responsibility. I believe that a person is responsible for themselves and if they don't have the wherewithal to keep themselves out of trouble, that is their problem, not mine. While genuine accidents happen, it's been my observation that the vast majority of boating accidents happen because the people involved did a dumb thing, or a chain of dumb things that led to the accident. So, their problem, their job to solve it is the way I tend to look at it.
Some things do happen that aren't anyone's immediate fault. An engine breakdown is one, although I suspect many of these can be traced back to poor maintenance or operation. But for these, there is plenty of professional assistance available in most places be it government or private. The Vessel Assist guy is trying to make a living doing what he does so my attitude is to let him do what he does as opposed to my trying to do it.
In more remote areas like up the coast here where vessel assist services are not available, the decision to help or not becomes a little more difficult. But until we are ever actually placed in this position-- the chances of which are extremely remote--- our baseline decision is not to lend physical assistance of any kind outside of extreme, life-threatening situations. But there is no way to know or predict exactly what we would do until presented with the situation.
But our, or at least my, attitude is that if someone wants to take a boat out on the water they had better be prepared to take themselves out and get themselves back totally on their own including dealing with a problem should it arise. "Dealing with it" may require calling for and hiring professional assistance, but that's part of their responsibility, too.
This business of heading out willy-nilly, which an amazing number of boaters do, and then relying on "being saved" when something goes wrong is not anything I'm interested in promoting. They can fend for themselves and maybe they'll be a bit smarter and better prepared the next time they go out.