Early work
In 2012, NASBLA's Engineering, Reporting & Analysis Committee (ERAC) began the trek toward understanding human error and the "how" and "why" factors underlying performance failures in recreational boating incidents. A year later, the committee adopted a “lite” version of the Department of Defense’s Human Factors Analysis and Classification (HFACS) for analyzing cases, and used tools developed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine whether more human factors information could reasonably be gathered in the context of recreational boating incident investigations. The result was the release in 2014 of "HFACS-lite" guidance and a supplemental report form for officers and investigators in states wishing to augment their investigations, add to the knowledge about human factors, and use it to evaluate their own safety programs and strategies.
Lessons learned
An analysis of the results from a pilot test by investigators in Tennessee prompted significant revisions to the guidance and form in 2016. As preparation for more extensive field testing, an ERAC member conducted a successful "HFACS-lite" examination of some case reports from Florida (2017) using the revised guidance. However, even with the significant revisions to the guidance and supplemental form, the recruitment of pilot states remained a challenge--not due to belief that the role of human factors in incidents was insignificant, but rather because the collection was still too broad in scope and too much of a burden for already-taxed officers and investigators.
Focus on distractions
One component of the "HFACS-lite" supplemental report form focuses on operator distractions, with good reason. "Operator inattention" and "improper lookout" have taken the top spots as the primary contributing factors in recreational boating incidents for a number of years. Marine law enforcement and partners in the boating safety community anecdotally report how recreational boaters are carrying everyday distractions onto the water and not paying attention to navigating their vessels. The challenge to the goal of identifying and analyzing the underlying circumstances and distractions and then mitigating the unsafe behavior, though, is to find the most meaningful and least burdensome ways of recording the distractions so that they can be easily extracted from the reporting system.
In 2019, Florida began collecting distraction data, initially for fatality incidents but with gradual expansion to all applicable incidents. The collection was based on a menu of "distraction codes" associated with "Operator Inattention" / "Improper Lookout" as had been incorporated into proposed revisions to the contributing factors/causes list (see 2012 and 2020 versions at Standardized Incident Reporting Terms & Definitions). In 2025, Tennessee similarly incorporated the codes into fields in their reporting system and began collecting data for all incidents involving those contributing factors.
Watch this page as additional states are onboarding in 2025 or have expressed interest in collecting the data once they transition to different third party reporting systems.
Facilitating the collection
For an overview of the rationale for and value of collecting the distraction data, basic information on how to transition to the collection, and contact information, see "From Distraction to Prevention: Incident Insights to Improve Boating Safety" (NASBLA State RBS Workshop, Lexington, KY, March 12, 2025).
For the basic report form, see Boat Incident Report (capturing distraction and inexperience codes in a modified HFACS-lite form).
To assist states that would like to readily collect the distraction codes through various methods, a "tool" / instruction packet to accompany the report form is in development by an ERAC charge team. The product will be released by the 4th quarter of CY 2025 and posted here.