How Can I Help

the Propeller Guard Information Center
Reduce Propeller Injuries?
by Polson Enterprises

This page is part of the Propeller Guard Information Center.

We have several projects going on many fronts to reduce propeller injuries and could really use your help. Our efforts include:

  • Encouraging boat and marine drive manufacturers to acknowledge and respond to the problem.

  • Provide those responding to the problem with the tools, data, and background information they need.

  • Encouraging boaters to be safer on the water.

  • Providing boaters with tools to evaluate their risk of propeller accidents and help them select the best options to reduce their risk depending on their specific situation.

  • Identifying encouraging fields for further research in reducing propeller injuries and encouraging researchers and college students to research those areas.

You can view a more complete list of our current and recent projects in our 14-15 July 2007 post in our Propeller Injuries: A Blog of Our Recent Thoughts, and our Mission on our home page.

We are looking for a few people with specific skills (such as basic computer graphics /artwork), some with some tools (ability to build prototypes), some just to visit with about their experiences in this and other industries, college students to select propeller safety devices for their design projects, thesis and phd work, some extra eyes and ears in the field to send in materials we may have missed, some just to read some educational materials, and many more. A list is below.

We would greatly appreciate your assistance with any task below. If none of them seem appropriate for you, you probably know someone who could take on one of them, please encourage them to participate. Thanks for your help. Together we can reduce propeller injuries!

Helping Opportunities

  • Some computer graphics help (drawing images, create logo's, sketches, very rough 3D CAD drawings, etc)

  • Somebody to shoot some digital photos of boats on the water (it doesn't matter where you live)

  • Some public health and accident prevention policy professionals that work with trying to get the general public to lose weight, quit smoking, look both ways at railroad crossings, use seat belts, stop drop and roll in fires, don't drink and drive, don't leave your kid or dog in the car in the hot summer, etc that would be willing to visit about parallels to changing propeller safety behaviors.

  • Anybody in the military working on or around boats less than 35 feet with propeller guards or other propeller injury avoidance devices. We would like to visit with you.

  • Anybody working on fire, rescue, or patrol boats with propeller injury avoidance devices, anybody with a houseboat with a propeller guard or other propeller injury avoidance device. We would like to visit with you.

  • Somebody with a houseboat in north eastern Oklahoma (probably on Keystone or Grand, we don't care if it has a guard or not). We would like to visit with you.

  • Any college student looking for a senior design project / capstone project or graduate students in about any field looking for a thesis/phd topic or masters project. We would like to visit with you.

  • Boat companies, marine drive companies and manufacturers of propeller injury avoidance devices willing to work with college students and researchers on propeller safety design projects and propeller safety research.

  • A company, organization, or person willing to donate some products or money for use as prizes in a college student design project focused on propeller safety.

  • Some boaters to review our new propeller risk evaluation tool and provide us some feedback.

  • Any survivor advocates pushing for change in other industries. We would like to visit with you about parallels to trying to introduce change into this industry.

  • Someone willing to build a prototype of a cage type guard of our new swinging design. It could be built out of about any type of metal as is meant to be a desktop demonstration at this time. Or if anybody has one of the old PropBuddy guards they don't need, it would be a great base for the prototype.

  • If you or a friend were involved in a propeller accident this year, please make sure it was reported to the State Boating Law Administrator in the state the accident occurred. Be sure the report is accurate and specifically lists the accident as a propeller accident. If you need assistance in identifying your State Boating Law Administrator, there is a link to them by state, along with contact information on the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators web site. Whenever possible, please report the accident within 48 hours, however if you did not file within that time, please report it as soon as possible, even if you are months late. If you cannot find the proper place to file the report, please contact us.

  • If you have seen a newspaper or other media report for a propeller an accident not listed on our Propeller Accidents Blog, please send a copy of it to us, or send us the reference of where you saw it.

  • If you see anything you think might be of interest to us, please send it to us.

  • Boaters willing to use our new propeller risk evaluation tool, then actively try to make some of the changes it suggests in their behavior, education, and equipment. If you are willing to visit with us during or after making those changes, fine. If not, fine too, we have still accomplished part of our task of trying help boaters reduce their risk of propeller injuries one boater at a time.

  • Boaters to just read the U.S. Coast Guard's Propeller Injury Awareness Brochure.

  • We are always eager to visit with boat builders and marine drive manufacturers that would like to visit about the problem and/or discuss potential solutions.

  • If any company, organization, or person would like to donate some money toward the cause so we could spend more time working on it and less time holding down a handful of day jobs to support our efforts here, we would be very happy to visit to you.

  • We tend to focus on technical and research issues, if you are more attracted to the issues surrounding emotional healing after a propeller accident, propeller strikes to children, legislative or regulatory propeller safety issues, we encourage you to join efforts with SPIN (Stop Propeller Injuries Now), another propeller safety advocate group.

Again, if you would like to contribute and nothing on the list above "floats your boat", please think about your friends and try to interest one of them in one of the items above. Plus if you have any skills or materials you think might be useful in our effort that are not listed, we would be happy to visit with you as well.

If you could help us out with any of these items, please contact us. If you email us, please use Propeller as the first word in the subject line so your message doesn't get lost in all the spam.

Feedback

If you have any questions about how you can help in our efforts to reduce propeller injuries, any comments about actions you took as a result of this "How Can I Help?" page, or any other comments, please email us.

This Help page was launched 16 July 2007.

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