Sorry excon, but dozens didn't die on a Duck Boat in Seattle. Three years ago a Duck Boat had a mechanical malfunction (it fell apart) on the Aurora Bridge in Seattle and it collided with a tour bus killing 5 people.

My opinion based on my 40 plus years on the water and frequently driving the streets on the Seattle waterfront where these boats operate is that Duck Boats are a menace and should be scraped. First of all many of these boats are 75 years old and they were never intended to haul elderly civilians, they were intended to ferry soldiers from ships to the beach in beach assaults. They aren't really a boat and they aren't really a bus. They worked great for their intended purpose but their intended purpose wasn't to haul elderly civilians.

I frequently drive over the Aurora bridge and have followed these vehicles over that bridge many times. I give them as much room as I possibly can because they're so obviously dangerous. They're too wide for the bridge and too wide for the streets in Seattle on which they travel. They're so old that they're falling apart (and the owners obviously don't do the necessary maintenance) and that's exactly what caused the 5 deaths on the Aurora Bridge 3 years ago.

As a boat they're a sick joke because the hull integrity is terrible. The hulls are 75 year old aluminum. Think metal fatigue. If there's a breach in that 75 year old hull that stupid boat could sink very quickly because the bilge pumps can only do so much providing they've been properly maintained and function as intended, but if a seam rips open those pumps might not keep up. To make maters worse, these "boats" have a lot of weight that normal boats don't have. They have all the heavy running gear of a WW2 era truck, frame, axels, wheels, leaf springs, brake drums or disks and everything else you find under a truck. The weight of all that gear can only cause it to sink more quickly.

And then there's the greed component. That these operators would allow a piece of crap like that to operate on rough water while full of civilians should be cause to run that operator out of business forever.

Put the old ladies on a nice comfortable bus and haul them to the waterfront and then put them on a good seaworthy and safe boat.

Those duck boats are extreme examples and cannot be used to indicate a broader duck boat problem. That being said, it is appropriate to be wary of any potentially extreme boating situation, not only with duck boats, even if duck boats tend to be the primary cause of extreme boating situations today. It would be a step too far to call for a ban on duck boats. But perhaps there should be a boycott against specific brands of duck boats that produce a disproportionate number of extreme duck boating situations.

That is so sad. I will pray for the families...............................................................................