Here are the dangers of jumping from a moving boat into the water. (Photo: Getty)
Updated July 11: This article was originally published on July 6.
When you are on a moving boat, don’t jump into the water. Just don’t—no matter what people on TikTok may be telling you. Videos posted on social media with the hashtag #boatjumping apparently have been motivating people to jump off of boats that are in motion.
It’s not clear how many people may have already suffered injuries from trying such #boatjumps. WVTM-TV the NBC affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, had originally reported that this trend had led to the deaths of four people in Central Alabama over the past four months. Douglas had quoted Captain Jim Dennis with the Childersburg Rescue Squad as saying, “The four that we responded to when they jumped out of the boat, they literally broke their neck and, you know, basically an instant death.” But on July 10, Taylor Lang indicated for WVTM-TV that, “There are no recorded deaths in the state that can be directly related to the TikTok trend of boat jumping.” But just because there haven’t been official deaths from #boatjumping yet doesn’t mean that you should start launching yourself off of moving watercraft.
If you search TikTok and other social media for #boatjumping and other combinations of “boat” and “jump”, you’ll find various videos of people doing a-boat faces and leaping off of various watercraft into the water. In some cases, the boat is stationary and the water seems relatively still. However, in other cases, the boat is actually moving, sometimes as rather rapid speeds as can be seen in a video posted by @dayyachtcharters and another one posted by @nataliejillfit on TikTok:
Someone responded to that latter post with “That’s so dangerous, not cool.” To that, another TikToker responded, “Not really it’s a v drive so the prop is under the boat,” which kind of missed the boat on the issue. The prop—presumably short for propeller— is not the only thing to worry about when jumping off of a moving boat. That propped-up response to the first response garnered the following response from @desireehinkson: “It’s dangerous. I live in Alabama, and Four people have died doing this in the last six months. Broke their neck and either died instantly or drowned.”
Yeah, your neck is kind of important. It’s what connects the rest of your body to your head, you know that thing that decides whether to follow a social media challenge. When you break your neck, there may not be a neck’s-time, so to speak. Damage to any of the seven bones that comprise the cervical vertebrae of your neck can have series neck level consequences. Your spinal cord runs through the center of these bony vertebrae. Damaging your cervical vertebrae can in turn damage your spinal cord, which essentially serves as the central nervous system connection between your brain adn the rest of the body. Such damage can result in paralysis from the next own or even death, which can be instant.
When you jump off of any moving object—whether its a car, a boat, or Jason Mamoa running—you may not be able to control what position you are in when you land. On top of that, unless you are boating in a septic tank—which, in general, is not a great idea—the water itself can be moving. In general, jumping from something moving into something that’s moving makes the landing all that more difficult.
Moreover, when people are on boats, surprise, surprise, they may be drinking alcohol. Yes, people can drink alcohol when riding nearly anything, whether it’s a boat, a parade float, or a yak. And here’s a shocker, when you drink alcohol, your judgment kind of gets impaired. That’s why things don’t tend to end well when you combine the words “drunk”, “marriage”, “Las Vegas” and “elephant.” When your judgement is impaired, your chances of doing something stupid can go that much higher. So the chances of executing a perfect jump from a moving boat into moving water can rapidly decrease with every sip your take.
There can be a tendency to think of the water differently from the ground. That can goad people into doing more foolish things like driving a boat while drunk. And jumping off a moving boat. But the water isn’t exactly like a pile of feathers, a vat of warm Brie, or anything else that you might jump into readily. Water can smack you surprisingly hard.
Just because someone does something seemingly successfully on TikTok, YouTube or any other social media platform doesn’t mean that you should try it. That could be a bit like saying, “Kanye West did it. Why shouldn’t I?” Plus, these days with video editing and plus you can’t even tell when something is real versus fake. You may be imitating something that other people aren’t really actually doing.
So, here’s a stern warning: jumping off a moving boat can leave you ship out of luck, so to speak. That’s because the boat can be moving at literally break neck speeds.