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Opinion of the Court
cation numbers, maximum capacity and warnings of such capacity, and minimum boat flotation. They did not include any propeller guard requirement. After those federal regulations became effective, the Secretary limited the scope of his original blanket exemption to pre-empt those "State statutes and regulations" that concerned requirements covered by the 1972 regulations. See 38 Fed. Reg. 6914-6915 (1973). Existing state laws that regulated matters not covered by the federal regulations continued to be exempted from preemption. Ibid.
In the years since, the Coast Guard has promulgated a host of detailed regulations. Some prescribe the use of specified equipment, such as personal flotation devices and visual distress signals, 33 CFR pts. 175(B), (C) (2001), and certain procedures, such as compliance labeling by manufacturers and prompt accident reporting by operators, pts. 181(B), 173(C). See generally pts. 173-181. Other regulations impose precise standards governing the design and manufacture of boats themselves and of associated equipment, such as electrical and fuel systems, ventilation, and "start-in-gear protection" devices. Pt. 183; cf. Chao v. Mallard Bay Drilling, Inc., 534 U. S. 235, 242 (2002) ("Congress has assigned a broad and important mission to the Coast Guard. . . . [T]he Coast Guard possesses authority to promulgate and enforce regulations promoting the safety of vessels . . .").
Coast Guard Consideration of Propeller Guard Regulation
In May 1988, the Coast Guard decided that the number of recreational boating accidents in which persons in the water were struck by propellers merited a special study.8 Acting
8 Between 1976 and 1990, the Coast Guard officially reported about 100 propeller-strike injuries in the United States per year. App. in Lewis v. Brunswick, O. T. 1997, No. 97-288, p. 170. A 1992 study by members of the Johns Hopkins University Injury Prevention Center and the Institute for Injury Reduction concluded that, when adjusted for underreporting,
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