Legal Advice – Sharing Hazards via MMC/SD

Here’s a question for all of you legal guru’s out there.

I’m thinking about sharing all the hazards stored on my GPS
via MMC and/or SD cards.

What I’ve done is inserted a skull & crossbone icon representing every single stump on Lake Wisconsin into my Lowrance. (theres a lot of them)
I’ve also used this icon to record the location of the car ferry and all of the rail road bridge pilings.

This took a great deal of time and plenty of gas to do but it has proven invaluable everytime I go out in the dark or fog.

I’m thinking about making these GPS icons availble to others on MMC and SD cards.

What liablilities would I incurr by doing this?

Thanks much for your input.

Joel “Boog” Ballweg

Perhaps the best advice would be to contact Navionics or Lakemaster… that said – I am guessing their concern will be that not all hazards are marked and that putting any of them them on their maps will open them to liability when someone hits an unmarked one. I am not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV – but that is my first gut reaction. It’s a litigious country. Chuckles

Ever notice the annoying warning when turning on your Lorance GPS…and the only way to get past that screen is to hit EXIT.

It basicly says not to use it as the sole source of navigation…and if you hit something…it’s your fault.

Heck, in this day of sueing, I had a lawyer make up a release for my night guide trips. I pray I’ll never have to see if it holds up in court.

Bk,

Thats pretty much what I’m thinking about doing. Having a lawyer write up some sort of release to go with the cards.

but did you stay at a HolidayInn Express

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Iam not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV

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Bk,

Thats pretty much what I’m thinking about doing. Having a lawyer write up some sort of release to go with the cards.

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It’s sad when a person trying to help another out has to jump through legal hoops before they are allowed to help that other person out.

But…we all want to keep our property and stay out of the pen….sigh.

Joel, Isn’t part of being a responsible person learning the area you fish for yourself? I was at the Priceston ramp on the Mississiippi earlier this summer and a guy with Linn County plates (75 miles away) busses in and unloads his boat in front of me. No big deal… I wasn’t in any hurry to get out on the water. I put my boat in and tied it off to the dock and as I’m walking back up to park my PU/trailer he asks me, “Is there anything in the river to hit, I’m not from around here?” How do you answer that question without being a total [censored]? I told him that he might consider staying in the marked channel, but I’m not sure he knew green from red.

In any event, if I were you and you are going to provide this information I would think you’d want a waiver of liability at a minimum, which BTW doesn’t prevent someone from suing you and you having to defend yourself. Tut

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Isn’t part of being a responsible person learning the area you fish for yourself?

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That’s funny!

I’m guessing there isn’t a locator or gps in your boat?

…and what the heck are you doing on the internet!

I respect the folks that want to learn areas on their own…although that seldom really happens. Friends, coffee at Country Kitchen, seeing others fish an area…ect.

But it’s the year 2007. Use the technology to be a safer fisherman and enjoy it.

For the boater that isn’t experianced with rivers, that is a problem. Best thing I can think of is tell him to register on IDA and ask questions here…next time before he leaves for areas unknown.

PS I’m not ripping on anyone here…there are some that get as much enjoyment with learning areas as there are guys that love tourneys. Nothing wrong with that!

Boog,

I would certainly be interested in something like that. I’ve been marking stumps as I fish, but I know I’ve only got about 20% of them. I’ve been on that lake 100 times and still use the same amount of caution as the first time I went there.

If you accidentally include all your hot spots, I promise not to fish in them.

John

Brian, I guess your right. I wasn’t ripping on the guy, but it just seemed inconceivable to me that anyone would ask a question like that. I see so many people hammering up and down the river with little or no thought regarding safety (theirs or anyone else’s.) At a minimum I should have told him about the locks and dams up and downstream, nothing to say about the 100’s of wingdams, logs, rock piles, sand bars, mud flats and a nuke plant. Maybe what we need is a satellite that beams a message to our GPS units that lets us know that taking a 12 foot john boat with a 15 hp Johnson to the middle of Mille Lacs is probably a bad idea in a thunderstorm.

Your advice about being nice and sharing is receive with the same spirit in which I think it was given. It’s hard sometimes… It’s kind of like trying to quit chewing tobacco… you always seem to revert back to the cesspool from which you originally crawled out of. Tut

Don’t want to hi jack this thread…so I’ll just post this link to a post I did in Aug of ’05.

I thought it was a great conversation by all re: “If you don’t know how are you to know what to ask”.

…back to Booges regularly scheduled program.

What’s a wing dam? OR Insurance? What insurance!