Marine Safety in Victoria Report 2007-2008 (PDF, 1.3 MB, 72 pp.)

Table 14 Provisional ranking of boating-related recreational activities based on frequency of
fatalities and hospital-treated injury cases, Victoria July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007
Deaths
(NCIS)
(n=2)
Hospital
Admissions
(VAED)
(n=223)
ED
presentations 1
(VEMD)
(n=679
N % N % N %
1. Water skiing and other towed sports - - 91 41 297 44
2. Motor boating/boating unspecified - - 41 18 238 35
3. Personal Water Craft (PWC) riding - - 29 13 51 8
4. Sailing - - 16 7 37 5
5. Wind/Kite surfing - - 19 9 20 3
6. Fishing from a boat 3 100 17 (2) 8 11 2
Source: National Coroner’s Information System, Victorian Office (fatalities), VAED (hospital admissions) and VEMD (ED presentations)
Note:
(1) ED presentations data underestimate the size of the problem because identification of cases relies on specific information on
activity being included in text narratives, which vary in quality by hospital
(2) Admissions for ‘fishing from a boat’ are underestimated as the activity coding does not disaggregate fishing from a boat from
other fishing. Only 17 cases were identifiable as fishing from a boat based on the fact that their activity code was fishing and
they attracted one of the ‘Water transport accident’ external cause of injury codes.
5.5.1 Towed water sports (n=388)
Towed water sports include water skiing, wake or knee boarding, and riding on inflatables (tubes, biscuits
etc). Coding issues in both hospital datasets results in underestimation of cases.
In the VAED (the hospital admissions dataset) waterskiing, wakeboarding and ski boarding cases are
grouped together under the one sports activity code ‘Waterskiing’ and cases cannot be disaggregated. The
VAED coding manual does not specify where kneeboarding should be classified. Tubing is classified with
water sliding under the ‘other specified individual water sport’ code and cases cannot be disaggregated.
Ninety-one admissions in 2006/7 attracted a towed water sport code.
ED presentations are selected by text searching VEMD case narrative data. The quality of cases narratives
varies across the 38 hospitals that contribute data. The text search identified 297 cases.
There were 388 hospital-treated injuries related to towed water sports in 2006/7 (91 admissions and 297
presentations) compared with 372 in 2005/6 (81 admissions and 291 ED presentations). The trend from
1999/2000 to 2007/8 is shown in Figure 10.
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