USCG Drops proposed 17 Digit HIN

I normally do not comment in my BLOG on news items, or take a political position on them. But the following item which appeared in Soundings Trade Only requires commenting on, if only to set the record straight.

NMMA: Coast Guard drops expanded hull ID numbers
Posted on January 28, 2011

At a recent National Boating Safety Advisory Council meeting, the Coast Guard formally announced that it is withdrawing any action on its proposed expanded 17-digit hull identification number, the National Marine Manufacturers Association reported.
The Coast Guard's proposal would have extended the existing HIN number to add additional digits on all recreational boats and created significant, unnecessary expense for boat manufacturers, dealers and lenders, according to the NMMA.
The NMMA had previously challenged the Coast Guard's proposal, filing comments outlining the detriment to the recreational boating industry because of costs involved in overhauling computer systems to adapt to the new HIN and the lack of overall benefits of an extended HIN.
The NMMA also worked closely with the Coast Guard and other groups to craft an alternative that would provide necessary information for field investigators. The result was a partnership with the National Insurance Crime Bureau to have boatbuilders begin providing information to the bureau, similar to what is done for autos, the association said.
http://www.tradeonlytoday.com/home/508580-nmma-coast-guard-drops-expanded-hull-id-numbers


Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story.
The HIN requirement first became a regulation in the early 1970's as part of the regulations implementing the the Federal Boating Safety Act. It was not long before the National Association of Marine Investigators (now the International Association of Marine Investigators, IAMI) and the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) began petitioning the Coast Guard to change the 12 character HIN to a 17 Character HIN, (see http://newboatbuilders.com/pages/hin17.html) that they felt would enhance law enforcement's ability to track stolen boats and detect bogus HINs. They even convinced the American Boat and Yacht Council (http://www.abycinc.org) to develop and publish a standard for the 17 character HIN.

In response to this over more than 25 years the US Coast Guard has made numerous proposals, conducted multiple studies, held public hearings (I held some of them at various places around the country) and published various proposed regulations for this. The results of these, was a massive amount of public comment opposed to changing the regulation. The public and the industry has always been opposed to this and the sole supporters of it are NASBLA and IAMI. If the truth be known, we at the USCG were also opposed to it. But we were prohibited by law from making our own comments either for or against. Every year we analyzed the types of violations of the Federal Standards made by boat manufacturers and incorrect HINs always headed the list and usually outnumbered anything else by a factor of three. Our reasoning was, if the manufacturers can't get the 12 digit HIN right, what are they going to do with a 17 digit HIN?

In this article the press has unfairly branded the US Coast Guard as the bad guy, but the truth is they never wanted it and were only responding to pressure from outside groups. Soundings has done the Coast Guard a disservice by making it look as if this were their idea when all along it was not.

 

Thou it's not my headache got to say you make a good point..

 

Thanks for the info and the clarification.

 

Wow 17 Digits?

Maybe thats because so many boat companies go out of business.


How About somthing really Novel like just the Boat Builders name and sequetial hull number.

ie: TixTaxTowBoatCo #0001

People would not need to have a Enigma machine to figure out what kind of boat they have.


Simple? Yea
Would it work? Yea.
Would the Govt ever do it?
NOPE!


Get Ready for Ground Hog Day.

Dont let that little Rodent see his Shadow tommorow!

 

If you look here
http://newboatbuilders.com/pages/hin17.html
you will see how it works. Actually it's simpler than it looks. Back in the mid 80's I wrote a small computer program to do the math. It would run on old DOS machines but it doesn't work on Windows XP or 7. I must have sent out several hundred to law enforcement, but I can't remember sending any to boat manufacturers.

Also spreadsheets such as excel are great for doing the calculation for the check digit.

 

Changing the amount of digits would make them not in compliance with CE standard either. That is something to take into consideration.

 

That is over 20 digits.

Do you know what we celebrate on Groundhog Day? Sausage!