To be upfront, I intend this to be constructive, I apologize if this is taken wrong by anyone.
In road racing cars the elders have a saying, "Remember when sex was safe and racing was dangerous?" It took many decades to achieve this in cars. Safety is a reactionary and evolutionary process of development. One thing we finally had to give into was there is a weight gain needed to make vehicles safe. I keep hearing that proper safety capsules will make the boats heavy. My thoughts are to get over it. I build race cars and have become used to what I add to them to insure my drivers make it back to work after every event. I will never skimp on what is needed. I have lived through a hard crash myself.
If race capsules are claimed to be safe, in large boats I do not see this is fully achieved yet. Give in and add the structure needed to make the boats really safe.
IF pleasure boats are to be enclosed, either have them withstand all foreseeable impact loads or give them big windows, good airconditioning and state that they are not built to racing standards. These to me are like running 200+ in a car with no safety devices, you will make the headlines someday.
It may be possible some of the development costs could be shared with some of the large insurance companies. Unless these boats are self insured It may be possible that a million up front may well save the companies many millions over the years in dealing in the horrors we just witnessed, and will again.
I mean no disrespect to anyone in the industry, the fans of or any family or relation to anyone affected.
Racing and any high speed sport will never be safe, and we will never quit playing with our toys that go fast nor will we stop further development to go faster or improve safety.
