- Personal water craft (PWC) focus of new campaign calling out bad behaviour
- PWC operators offending at nearly four times the rate of other WA skippers
- Excessive speed data prompts warning to ‘Cool your jets’
Badly behaved personal water craft (PWC) hoons are the target of a new safety education campaign this summer after statistics revealed they are offending at nearly four times the rate of other skippers in Western Australia.
Despite accounting for only 9.1 per cent of the registered recreational fleet in WA, PWC operators were responsible for 33.9 per cent of all offences in 2023-24. Further analysis of the data shows that a PWC is 3.7 times more likely to attract an offence than another registered vessel.
Hooning has been identified as a major problem with a record number of fines and warnings issued to PWC for excessive speed on the water last year accounting for 512 or more than 40 per cent of the total 1,191 infringements and cautions issued to operators of the craft.
In response, the Department of Transport (DoT) has adapted a Victorian safety education campaign for use in WA during the summer holiday period with the main message to PWC operators: ‘Cool your jets’.
The video campaign, fronted by safe boating ambassador David Mundy, highlights the need for PWC operators to have their Recreational Skipper’s Ticket, slow down, be courteous and only freestyle in approved areas, wear their lifejacket and ensure others onboard do also.
It also supports and builds on the work of DoT officers who are out patrolling our waterways educating skippers and reinforcing the rules.
There has been a rapid rise in the use of PWCs in WA in recent years, with the number of craft registered growing from 7,039 in 2019-20 to 9,388 in 2023-24, rising from 7.1 per cent to 9.1 per cent of the State’s total number of registered recreational vessels (102,830).
On WA waterways there were two fatalities involving PWC use in the last eight years – a period that claimed a total of 61 lives in on-water incidents, three more than the previous 13 years.
Over the past 10 years the average number of deaths per year increased to 7.1, significantly up on the previous ten-year average of 4.7.
To view the campaign or for more information about the use of PWC in WA visit https://www.transport.wa.gov.au/imarine/boating-behaviours-and-initiatives.asp .
As stated by Minister Assisting the Transport Minister David Michael:
“This is a very concerning long-term trend, where PWC account for a disproportionate level of offences on the water and while some operators do the right thing, clearly many are not.
“Encouragingly, DoT has already been working closely with peak organisations to address the bad behaviour of operators resulting in a slight decline in PWC offences from 35.7 per cent in 2022-23 to 33.9 per cent in the past year.
“The new safety campaign will bolster these efforts and support our safety compliance patrols by capturing and educating a larger audience of users to change behaviours and further decrease the unacceptable offence rates for this type of craft.
“We’re putting PWC operators on notice this summer, telling them to slow down, do the right thing and share our waterways safely.
“Skippers navigating dangerously or under the influence of drugs or alcohol face significantly higher penalties this summer following the successful passage of new laws through State Parliament.”
