Your headline is wildly incorrect. Ride the Ducks is not the only company running duck tours. You can ride a duck in Washington, DC, as well as Chattanooga, Albany, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston, Miami, and Wisconsin Dells, as well as numerous cities in other countries, including Montreal, Toronto, Singapore, Liverpool, Belfast, Dublin, Osaka, Malacca, and Krakow.
There are Duck operations ongoing all over the country, but after this accident, Seattle might be the last with the original WWII vehicles. And really, we should be rid of them too.
Ride the Ducks should get some new amphibious vehicles before something smiliar happens here.
I've watched those "ducks" in the water and have always been nervous. They have so little freeboard, even a small wave splashing on their side could swamp the things, with results similar to what we're reading about today.
I've worked on boats with a couple of people who used the Ducks back in the day, and every one of them said the things are basically tin cans with wheels. They were built to be cheap and functional, not tourist-level safe.
Which is just as well. If tourists didn't get their feet dirty occasionally, white sneaker manufacturers would go out of business.
What was [once] good enough for our troops ought to be good enough for the tourists, dammit.
I predict great opportunities a half-century from now in cruising the mean streets of Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, Newport, Ky., Branson, Mo., etc. with up-armored HumVees and Strykers brimful of vacationers. Children, small animals, and the elderly are forewarned.
Will @14, you are completely wrong AGAIN. Nothing at the WaPo or CNN suggests any such thing BECAUSE IT ISN'T TRUE.
At your age, the hope that reading comprehension will suddenly appear is unrealistic. Better for everyone that you just stop posting -- even better, run out and get hit by a train.
You shouldn't board a ship without sufficient bulkheads or flotation. If the Ducks can't meet reasonable safety standards, then they should be modified until they do, or taken out of the water and replaced with ships that do.
By the way, the EPA announced a few new sets of regs nobody is talking about today. Going to be fun reading about it next week after the talk shows pick it up.
Oh, people are always dying of some bullshit or other. Liberals like to argue that this means we shouldn't be (let's say) firing our guns wildly into the air, but consider this: they chose to be liberals.
@21, both CNN and WaPo maintain websites. Please feel free to provide a link to any page therein that supports your contention that all duck boat tourist operations in the US besides Seattle's have been suspended.
As I understand it, the vehicles as well as the operators are inspected and licensed by both the d.o.t. and the u.s. coast guard. While being subject to the oversight of two government agencies should lead to safe and thouroughly inspected operations, it actually creates huge loopholes that allow for poorly equiped machines and crew, which shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a commercial waterway.
In the nineties, someone died in a paddle boat accident on Green Lake. Yet those deattrap paddleboats are still allowed operate, and the Stranger is silent! Conspiracy? You be the judge.
... aside from Boston, and probably a bunch of other cities.
but, i guess, don't let that get in the way of your headline.
Ride the Ducks should get some new amphibious vehicles before something smiliar happens here.
I won't go near them.
http://www.wisconsinducktours.com/
$#@#!# things always broke down, because they run on WWII era parts held together with paperclips and a prayer.
So yeah, the headline isn't at all accurate.
Dom is right.
Which is just as well. If tourists didn't get their feet dirty occasionally, white sneaker manufacturers would go out of business.
I predict great opportunities a half-century from now in cruising the mean streets of Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, Newport, Ky., Branson, Mo., etc. with up-armored HumVees and Strykers brimful of vacationers. Children, small animals, and the elderly are forewarned.
At your age, the hope that reading comprehension will suddenly appear is unrealistic. Better for everyone that you just stop posting -- even better, run out and get hit by a train.
By the way, the EPA announced a few new sets of regs nobody is talking about today. Going to be fun reading about it next week after the talk shows pick it up.
I'll just wait over here.
sinking Ducks only kill tourists.
nature selects!
And my middle finger will get a rest.