I’ll start with the breakaway tiller idea. I have been sailing with a tiller head that I designed 10 years ago that has a slot in the front. I rely on bolt/nut tension and friction to hold the tiller in the head when starting a race. I have no idea if it will actually release in a collision…
This is a good idea. However I think some time needs to be invested into designing and testing a system that releases consistently at a target impact load. I have no idea what that load should be. Also the system should NEVER release while sailing along or while starting. If we leave this up to the sailors to figure out on their own I worry that we will end up with a bunch of half baked solutions that don’t really work. We could have collisions caused by tillers that release when they are not supposed to. We will probably also have a bunch of designs that don’t release and still cause injury. If someone sells a “safe” tiller head that somehow still causes any injury will they be exposed to lawsuit? I’m sorry I don’t have definite answers but as this is written I don’t think it will result in much of a change in safety. It needs more thought and detail defining exactly what the release mechanism needs to do.
Steve