Dinner cruise accidents and injuries happen often and may involve crew members or passengers. These accidents are largely preventable. Contact a maritime lawyer for advice and guidance if you were hurt on a dinner cruise.
How Safe Are Dinner Boat Cruises?
Dinner cruises are short trips on boats, often on rivers or lakes, that serve meals. Groups can also rent them and use them to host parties. Most dinner cruises are in the evening, so it is often dark, but some take place during daylight hours.
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The Coast Guard regularly inspects vessels with more than six paying passengers. Dinner boats fall under this category of inspected passenger vessels. Before traveling on a dinner cruise, check that it has a current Certificate of Inspection.
The Coast Guard inspects these vessels for seaworthiness, electrical systems, firefighting systems, navigation equipment, training drills, and other factors vital for safety. Depending on the type of vessel, it must undergo inspection every year or every five years.
What Kinds of Accidents Occur on Dinner Cruises?
As with any vessel on the water, accidents can happen with and on dinner cruise boats. These are smaller boats that generally travel on rivers or lakes for short periods of time. They may go up and down the coast or cruise around harbors in coastal areas.
These are some of the types of accidents that might occur on these vessels and cause injuries to passengers or workers:
- Collisions with other vessels, bridges, or docks
- Groundings or capsizing
- Fires or explosions
- Electrical shocks
- Slips, trips, and falls
- Falls overboard
- Equipment accident
Because they serve food and drinks, dinner cruise boats can also have food poisoning and food-borne illness incidents. With alcohol on board, passengers may become inebriated, which can increase the risk of accidents or lead to fights or assaults.
Accidents on dinner cruises can lead to a variety of injuries: fractures, crush injuries, burns, illness, strains and sprains, lacerations, hypothermia, and drownings.
What Are the Causes of Dinner Cruise Accidents?
Many different factors can lead to accidents on dinner cruises. Even with precautions, accidents can happen. For instance, the crew cannot always account for bad weather, which can cause collisions or even capsizing in extreme situations.
Most incidents occurring on dinner cruises result from preventable causes. Proper training, maintenance, and careful procedures should prevent most accidents and injuries. These are some examples of avoidable causes of dinner cruise accidents:
- Slip and trip hazards on deck
- Lack of safety gear
- Inadequate training of workers
- Failure of workers to follow procedures
- Equipment failure due to poor maintenance
- Inadequate lighting
- Workers not following hygiene and sanitation procedures
- Not having the required inspections, certificates, and licensing
Examples of Dinner Boat Accidents
A dinner cruise should be a fun and relaxing evening. These examples demonstrate what can happen when accidents occur on dinner boats.
Dinner Cruise Collision
A popular dinner cruise boat in Florida collided with a sailboat in 2023 while attempting to dock at the Sanford Marina. The Barbara-Lee is a paddle-wheeler that takes people out for lunch and dinner cruises on Lake Monroe in Central Florida.
The owner of the Barbara-Lee stated that a gust of wind pushed the boat into a sailboat, snapping its mast. Without thrusters, the paddlewheeler has minimal control in these situations. Although the sailboat was badly damaged, no one was injured in the accident.
Fatal Overboard Accident on Dinner Cruise
Another dinner cruise accident occurred in Florida in 2020 and was more tragic. A man fell overboard from the dinner cruise boat Capt. JP into the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers. The U.S. Coast Guard called off the search for the man after nearly 12 hours.
Witnesses reported seeing the man slip and fall while going down from the third to second deck. The surfaces were wet due to rain. The man was not wearing a life jacket and was presumed to have drowned.
What to Do if You Were Injured on a Dinner Cruise
Both crew members and passengers should seek any necessary medical care immediately following an accident. It is also important to report and record accidents and injuries as soon as possible after they occur.
For crew members, this means following the chain of command, reporting to senior officers, and ensuring a detailed report is filed. Passengers should report to crew members and ensure a report gets filed.
Your next step should be to contact a maritime lawyer. Passengers may be entitled to file a lawsuit to recover damages if the ship owner or crew members were negligent in the accident. Crew members may be entitled to make a claim for compensation based on applicable maritime laws. In either case, working with a lawyer gives you the best chance of getting compensation.