As more people get out on the water leading into summer, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) is reminding them to wear their life jackets or personal flotation devices (PFDs).
OHP says any life that is lost could have been saved had that person used a life jacket.
Oklahoma state law says anyone age 12 and under is required by law to wear a life jacket when they are on boats less than 26 feet.
OHP said anyone who can’t swim should have a life jacket on if they are within 50 feet of the water. Anyone water skiing or on a personal watercraft, such as a jet ski, must wear a life jacket. The same goes for water skis or a tube.
If you go to the lake and forget your life jacket or just need to borrow one, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has loaner stations for life jackets at Corps lakes.
OHP Trooper Ryan Griffith is with marine enforcement. He said even though it isn’t the law for those age 13 and older to wear a life jacket on a boat, it is so important to wear one.
Oklahoma law states a life jacket must be onboard a vessel for each passenger, but Griffith said the life jacket doesn’t work if you don’t use it.
“They don’t work if they’re sitting in the bottom of your boat. They don’t work if they’re in a box that you’re sitting on top of the box lid. They don’t work if they’re attached to the side of your boat next to the railing. PFDs only work if you wear them. Just like your seatbelt,” he said.
Griffith said a common reason people get unintentionally too far out on the water is that they go after a beach ball or something like that.
Griffith said the wind blows it out on the water, either from the shore or from a boat. Then, someone without a life jacket on goes in the water to get it, thinking it’s close, but then the wind just keeps blowing it farther away.
He said, before the swimmer realizes it, they’re way far out from the shore in deep water.
“Once you get out there a little ways you think, ‘oh, I’ve got this,’ and then you get tired and then the inflatable device, which in your mind was closer to the shoreline. So you continue to swim after an inflatable object that’s floating away from you quicker than you can swim to it,” he said.
