Who Pays After a Boating or Jet Ski Injury in Massachusetts?

Nobody automatically, and that is the first thing to understand about a Massachusetts boat crash. When two cars collide, a no-fault layer called personal injury protection starts paying medical bills within days no matter who caused it. On the water there is no such layer. Boats are governed by M.G.L. c. 90B, a completely separate chapter from the c. 90 motor vehicle law, and chapter 90B never mentions insurance at all. The flip side is just as important and almost nobody mentions it: because the pain and suffering threshold in M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 6D applies only to motor vehicle cases, a boating claim is not gated by the two thousand dollar medical bill rule or the fracture requirement that blocks so many car cases. A boating injury claim is an ordinary negligence claim against whoever was careless, funded by whatever liability coverage that person happens to carry. If you were hurt on the water in Massachusetts, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the line is answered 24 hours a day and the first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

The Chapter That Governs Is Not the One You Think

Almost every page on this site about a Massachusetts injury claim eventually runs through M.G.L. c. 90, the motor vehicle chapter. A boating case never touches it.

Vessels are registered, regulated and policed under M.G.L. c. 90B, administered by the office of law enforcement in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Environmental Law Enforcement rather than by the Registry of Motor Vehicles. The chapter’s definitions do a lot of work, and they are worth reading before anything else.

A “vessel” is defined about as broadly as language allows:

watercraft of every description, except a seaplane on the water used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on water

A “motorboat” is narrower. It is

any vessel propelled by machinery whether or not such machinery is the principal source of propulsion, but not a vessel which has a valid marine document issued by the Bureau of Customs of the United States government or any federal agency successor thereto

That distinction matters more than it looks, because several of the duties discussed below are written to reach the operator of a “motorboat” and not the operator of every “vessel”. A sailboat under sail alone, a canoe and a kayak are vessels. They are not motorboats.

A “personal watercraft” gets its own definition, and it is written functionally rather than by brand name:

a vessel propelled by a water jet pump or other machinery as its primary source of motor propulsion that is designed to be operated by a person sitting, standing or kneeling on the vessel rather than being operated in the conventional manner by a person sitting or standing inside the vessel and shall include, but not be limited to, jet skis, surf jets, wetbikes and water jet devices

The “water jet device” limb is the modern one. The statute defines it to include “jetlevs, flyboards, flyrides, jetovators, hydrolifts and jet-packs”, which is the Legislature reaching the water propelled hoverboards that show up at Cape and Islands rental operations.

An “operator” is not only the person at the wheel. It is

a person who operates or who has a charge of the navigation or use of a motorboat or vessel

Someone who takes charge of the navigation of a boat is an operator even if a second person is physically steering. In a case where the boat owner was drinking and handed the wheel to a guest, that definition is where the argument starts.

The chapter reaches the “waters of the commonwealth”, which the statute defines as all coastal and inland waters as defined in the c. 131 fisheries and wildlife chapter, “except ponds less than ten acres in area and owned by one person, and is not open to the public”. A private pond of under ten acres with a single owner sits outside chapter 90B entirely. That does not mean nobody is responsible for an injury there. It means the question becomes an ordinary premises liability question, and if the owner was letting the public swim or paddle there for free, the recreational use statute may be the controlling law instead.

One definition sits on the boundary between the two worlds. An “amphibious landing vehicle” is defined in chapter 90B as “a motor vehicle that can travel on land and water”. That is the Boston duck boat, and it is the one craft the Legislature wrote into the boating chapter by calling it a motor vehicle. Whether the no-fault benefits described in the next section respond to a particular amphibious vehicle depends on how that vehicle is registered and what policy covers it, and this page does not answer that question.

There Is No PIP on the Water, and There Is No Threshold Either

This is the part that surprises people, and it cuts both ways.

Massachusetts personal injury protection is not a free-floating benefit. The statute defines it as a set of

provisions of a motor vehicle liability policy or motor vehicle liability bond

and every person it pays is defined by their relationship to a motor vehicle: the named insured under that policy, household members, “any authorized operator or passenger of the insured’s or obligor’s motor vehicle including a guest occupant”, and “any pedestrian struck by the insured’s or obligor’s motor vehicle”. No boat appears anywhere in that chain. Our full explanation of how that benefit works is on the PIP page, and the compulsory coverage every registered Massachusetts car must carry is set out in the car insurance requirements article.

Section 34A’s own definition of “motor vehicle” adds only one thing to the general definition. It “shall, in addition to the meaning prescribed by section one, include a trailer, as defined by said section one”. So the question runs back to M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 1, which defines motor vehicles as “all vehicles constructed and designed for propulsion by power other than muscular power”, subject to a list of exclusions.

The Supreme Judicial Court has told us how far that definition actually reaches. In Hein-Werner Corp. v. Jackson Industries, Inc., 364 Mass. 523 (1974), the Court read the exclusions in section 1 and concluded:

Beyond doubt, this definition includes only the vehicles which are designed for regular use in the transportation of persons and property on the traveled part of public highways.

The same opinion makes the registration point that the Court has repeated since: “No motor vehicles are required by the terms of c. 90 to be registered simply by virtue of their status as such.” Chapter 90 regulates uses of ways, not the mere existence of machinery. A boat is not designed for regular use on the traveled part of a public highway, it is not registered with the Registrar, and no motor vehicle liability policy is written on it. There is no PIP.

And chapter 90B does not supply a substitute. Every one of the sixty-three sections the chapter currently contains was read for this article. The words insurance, insurer, liability policy and financial responsibility do not appear once in any of them. Massachusetts requires a certificate of number for a motorboat principally used in the Commonwealth, and as of 2026 it requires a safety certificate for the operator, but the statutes do not condition either on carrying liability coverage the way c. 90, sec. 1A conditions a car’s registration.

Now the part that helps you. M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 6D, the tort threshold, opens with a limitation on its own reach:

In any action of tort brought as a result of bodily injury, sickness or disease, arising out of the ownership, operation, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle within this commonwealth by the defendant

A boating claim is not an action arising out of the use of a motor vehicle. The threshold does not apply to it. In a car case, a claimant with three thousand dollars of soft tissue treatment and no fracture spends real energy proving they cleared the serious injury threshold before pain and suffering damages are even on the table. In a boat case that gate is simply not there. The claim rises or falls on negligence, causation and damages like any other injury claim.

What is there instead is the coverage question, and it is a factual one. A boat owner may carry a watercraft liability policy. A homeowner policy may or may not respond depending on what it says about watercraft, horsepower and length. A rental operator, a marina or a charter will have commercial coverage. None of that is set by statute, so the only honest answer to “what covers this” is that somebody has to read the actual policies.

Massachusetts appellate law shows why the c. 90 and c. 90B divide can decide that question. In MacLean v. Hingham Mutual Fire Insurance Company, 51 Mass. App. Ct. 870 (2001), the Appeals Court held that a homeowner policy covered an all terrain vehicle injury, concluding that

because the ATV in question is not subject to motor vehicle registration under G. L. c. 90, but instead is subject only to environmental registration under G. L. c. 90B, the exception to the exclusion applies

MacLean is an ATV case and it turns on the specific words of that policy’s motor vehicle exclusion. Watercraft usually sit under a different clause with its own carve outs, so nothing here says a homeowner policy will cover your boat. What MacLean does show is that the registration scheme a craft falls under is not a technicality. It is often the fact the coverage argument is decided on.

What the Operator Has to Do After a Boating Accident

M.G.L. c. 90B, sec. 9 is the water’s answer to the crash reporting duties every Massachusetts driver knows. It is written in four subsections and each one carries something a claimant should know.

Subsection (a) creates a duty to help. The operator of any motorboat involved in a collision, accident or other casualty must, so far as able without serious danger to his own or other vessels or to any persons,

render to other persons affected by the boating accident such assistance as may be practicable and as may be necessary in order to save them from any danger caused by the boating accident

That is a rescue duty the road law does not impose in the same terms, and it exists because a person in the water has a problem a person on the shoulder of Route 24 does not.

The identification duty comes next and is stated plainly:

Such operator shall also give his name, address and identification of his vessel to any person injured and to the owner of any property damaged in the boating accident.

Then the reporting trigger, and note how low the threshold is:

In cases where death, personal injury or property damage over five hundred dollars occurs, the operator or any person authorized to enforce the provisions of chapter ninety B, shall immediately notify the division of law enforcement.

Any personal injury triggers it. There is no dollar floor on the injury limb at all, unlike the property damage limb at five hundred dollars. And the statute does not leave the investigation to the parties: “The director or his designee shall investigate the accident.”

Subsection (b) sets the paperwork clocks, and they are short:

Whenever death results from a boating accident, a written report shall be submitted within forty-eight hours. For every other boating accident a written report shall be submitted within five days.

Forty eight hours for a fatal case is a hard deadline landing on a family in the worst week of their lives. The report also

shall conform to the requirements of a boating accident report under the laws of the United States

which is why the Massachusetts form tracks the federal boating accident report.

For comparison, the equivalent duties after a car crash are on our page about reporting a Massachusetts crash. The clocks and the thresholds are different, and mixing them up is a real risk if you are working from car accident advice.

The Report You Are Not Allowed to Use

Here is the provision that changes how a Massachusetts boating case is actually built, and it is the reason this article exists. Subsection (c) of section 9 says:

Except as provided in subsection (d), individual boating accident reports shall not be public records, and shall not be admissible in evidence in a court of law other than in a proceeding petitioning for a review of a decision of the director.

Read that twice. The single most obvious piece of evidence in a boating case, the operator’s own official written account of what happened, filed within five days while memory is fresh, is by statute neither a public record you can request nor something a court will receive in evidence. The only carve out is a proceeding petitioning for review of a decision of the director.

Subsection (d) closes the other door. Boating accident reports may be released for statistical study “provided, that information from individual reports shall not be disclosed”.

That is close to the opposite of the car world, where the operator’s crash report is a routine early building block of a claim. On the water, a case has to be built out of everything except the report: the responding officers’ own investigation and testimony, the physical damage to both hulls, photographs, marine survey work, GPS and chartplotter data, engine control module data on newer outboards, rental and livery paperwork, marina and launch ramp records, cell phone location data, and witnesses. Preserving all of it early matters more here than almost anywhere else, and so does not destroying your own. The rules on preserving evidence, including what happens if you delete posts, are covered on our page about social media in an injury claim.

If an insurer calls you before you have gathered any of that, read our page on giving a recorded statement first.

New in 2026: The Boater Safety Certificate

Massachusetts changed its boating law in a way most boaters have not caught up with yet, and the timing matters this month.

St. 2024, c. 350, titled “AN ACT RELATIVE TO BOATER SAFETY TO BE KNOWN AS THE HANSON MILONE ACT” and approved January 8, 2025, added sections 9C through 9F to chapter 90B. SECTION 15 of that act sets the date:

Sections 9D to 9F, inclusive, of chapter 90B of the General Laws shall take effect on April 1, 2026; provided, however, that no operator of any motorboat or personal watercraft shall be assessed a penalty for a violation of section 9B of said chapter 90B until September 1, 2026.

So the requirement itself has been law since April 1, 2026. The grace clause is worth reading closely rather than paraphrasing, because by its own terms it delays penalties for a violation of section 9B, while the operating requirement added by the act is in section 9E and the penalty for violating section 9E is in section 9F, which carries no delayed date of its own. Whether that reference reaches section 9E is a question the text leaves open, and no court appears to have addressed it. What is not open is the date on the requirement.

Section 9E states the rule:

No person shall operate a motorboat or personal watercraft on the waters of the commonwealth unless the person complies with the boater safety educational requirements established under section 9D and has on board and available for inspection an original valid boater safety certificate

The certificate has to be on the boat, not at home in a drawer. Section 9E then lists eight exemptions, and the practical one for most families is the first: a person does not need their own certificate if they are

accompanied on board and directly supervised by a person not less than 18 years of age who has on board and available for inspection a valid boater safety certificate

Others cover holders of a merchant mariner credential, non-residents carrying an approved jurisdiction’s certificate, active members of the armed forces qualified to operate motorboats, a new owner within six months holding a temporary certificate, a student operating in a prescribed course of instruction, and the operator of a commercial fishing vessel subject to the federal Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act of 1988.

There is a hard floor on age. Subsection (b) provides:

Notwithstanding subsection (a), no person less than 12 years of age shall operate a motorboat on the waters of the commonwealth unless the person is accompanied on board and directly supervised by a person not less than 18 years of age who holds a valid boater safety certificate.

Section 9D adds that “No person under 12 years of age shall be issued a boater safety certificate”, and that certificates, once issued, “shall be valid for the lifetime of the person named on the certificate, except as otherwise provided by law, court judgement or order or administrative hearing conducted by the director or a designee”.

The fine is modest. Section 9F: “Whoever violates any provision of section 9E shall be punished by a fine of not less than $50 or, for a second or subsequent offense, $100.” The fine is not the point. The point is the next section.

The Provision That Reaches the Boat Owner

Buried in section 9E is a liability rule that has nothing to do with fines and that most summaries of the new law leave out entirely. Subsection (d)(1) provides:

An owner of a motorboat or other person not less than 18 years of age, having custody or control of a motorboat, who knowingly permits a person under the age of 18 to operate the vessel in violation of this section, shall be held liable, jointly and severally with the operator, for any violations, damages or injuries caused by such person’s operation of the vessel and for any fines, penalties or restitution resulting therefrom.

Joint and several liability for damages and injuries, written into the statute, attaching to the adult who knowingly let an uncertified minor take the boat out. And subsection (d)(2) removes the two defenses that adult would reach for first:

Lack of ownership of the vessel or mistake as to the age of the operator shall not be defenses in an action filed pursuant to this section.

In a case where a teenager on a family boat injures a swimmer or a passenger, that provision is a direct statutory route to the adult who is far more likely to carry meaningful liability coverage than the teenager is. Whether a given set of facts fits it turns on the words “knowingly permits” and on whether the operation was in fact in violation of the section, both of which are for the jury.

Massachusetts already had a related idea in the recreational vehicle part of the same chapter. Section 9E puts it in the boating part, and it took effect this year.

Personal Watercraft Have Their Own Rulebook

Section 9A applies to jet skis, surf jets and wetbikes specifically, and it is short enough to read whole:

No person shall operate a jet ski, surf jet or wetbike (a) on waters of the commonwealth unless the person is sixteen years of age or older, (b) within one hundred and fifty feet of a swimmer, shore or moored vessel, except at headway speed, (c) on waters of the commonwealth of less than seventy-five acres, (d) without wearing an approved personal flotation device or (e), between sunset and sunrise.

Five rules, and four of them show up constantly in the fact patterns that produce injuries: an operator under sixteen, a machine at speed inside a hundred and fifty feet of a swimmer or a moored boat, a machine on a pond too small for it, and a night run. The statute defines the speed it demands near people as “the slowest speed at which a personal watercraft, jet ski, surf jet or wetbike can be operated and maintain steerage way”.

Note that section 9A requires the flotation device to be worn, not merely carried. That is a stricter rule than the one for boats generally, and it is one of the few places in the chapter where the statute itself says worn.

What section 9A does not do is give anyone a right to ride. The Appeals Court settled that in Mad Maxine’s Watersports, Inc. v. Harbormaster of Provincetown, 67 Mass. App. Ct. 804 (2006), which upheld a Provincetown by-law confining personal watercraft to a narrow channel at headway speed. The plaintiffs argued the by-law conflicted with section 9A. The Court disagreed, holding that the section’s plain words

are more reasonably construed as setting forth minimum regulatory guidelines and standards for the operation of personal watercraft

and that the section

cannot be read as conferring an absolute and unregulable right on individuals to operate jet skis or other personal watercraft in waterways of greater than seventy-five acres

The Court also drew the contrast with the road law directly, observing that “There are, however, no similar statutory rights to operate a watercraft set forth in G. L. c. 90B”, unlike the right to operate on the ways of the Commonwealth that the motor vehicle statutes create.

The reason towns can do this is section 15. Subsection (b) preserves local power:

Nothing in this section shall be construed as prohibiting any city or town from regulating, by ordinance or by-law, not contrary to the provisions of this chapter or of any rule or regulation made under authority hereof, other than numbering, of such vessels on such waters of the commonwealth as lie within the city or town, or such activities which take place thereon.

Subsection (c) adds the condition that makes those by-laws findable: “No such ordinance or by-law shall be valid unless it shall have been approved by the director and published in a newspaper of general distribution in said city or town not less than five days before the effective date thereof.”

The practical consequence for an injured person is that the rule that was broken may be a town by-law rather than a state statute, and the harbormaster’s office is where you find it. A speed limit inside a mooring field, a no wake zone, a launch restriction and a swimming area boundary are typically local.

Life Jackets, Unsafe Boats and Divers

Three more sections come up often enough to name.

Section 5A is the flotation device rule for vessels not covered by the equipment classes in section 5. Every such vessel, including unpowered ones such as canoes and kayaks,

shall carry at least 1 United States Coast Guard approved wearable personal flotation device of appropriate size and type for each person on board in good and serviceable condition in a readily accessible location

and additional devices as the director may require. The section then exempts a specific list: “This section shall not apply to vessels used in competitive rowing, sculling or supervised intercollegiate sailing programs, rafts, surfboards, sail fish or any similar type of vessel.” Note the word carry. Outside the personal watercraft rule in section 9A, the statute’s baseline demand is that the devices be aboard and accessible. Additional requirements about who must actually wear one live in the director’s regulations at 323 CMR rather than in the statute, and this page does not quote or characterise them, so check the current regulation before relying on any wearing rule.

Section 12A lets an officer who sees a boat operating without required flotation devices, overloaded, or in another unsafe condition presenting a substantial risk of injury or loss of life

terminate such use and direct the operator to take whatever immediate and corrective steps which are necessary for the safety of the persons aboard such motorboat or vessel, including, but not limited to, directing the operator to proceed to a mooring and to remain there until such motorboat or vessel is deemed to be safe

The section then defines “other unsafe condition” as a closed list of five: no navigation lights between sunset and sunrise, fuel leakage from the fuel system or engine, fuel accumulated in the bilges or a compartment other than a fuel tank, failure to meet ventilation requirements for tanks and engine spaces, and failure to meet backfire flame control requirements. A prior termination order on the same boat is the kind of fact that turns a negligence case into a much stronger one.

Section 13A governs divers, and it imposes duties on both sides. A diver must display a red flag with a white diagonal stripe, at least twelve inches by fifteen inches, extending at least three feet above the water, and must stay within one hundred feet of it while at or near the surface. The boat operator’s duty is specific:

A boat operator within sight of a diver’s flag shall proceed with caution and within a radius of one hundred feet of such flag shall proceed at a speed not to exceed three miles per hour.

Three miles per hour, within one hundred feet, whenever the flag is in sight. That is one of the clearest speed rules in Massachusetts law, and it is the controlling standard in a case where a diver or snorkeler is struck.

Breaking One of These Rules Is Evidence, Not Automatic Liability

Massachusetts does not treat a safety statute violation as negligence per se, and a boating case is no exception. In Perry v. Medeiros, 369 Mass. 836 (1976), the Supreme Judicial Court quoted the settled rule from Dolan v. Suffolk Franklin Sav. Bank, 355 Mass. 665 (1969):

The general rule in Massachusetts is that violation of the safety statute or ordinance does not in itself give rise to a cause of action but is evidence of negligence.

The same opinion adds the limit that comes with it: the violation is evidence of negligence “as to all consequences that the statute, ordinance or regulation was intended to prevent”. So an operator who ran a jet ski at speed within a hundred and fifty feet of a swimmer has handed the injured swimmer powerful evidence, not a verdict. And the reverse is true too. If the injured person broke a rule of their own, that goes into the comparative negligence calculation, where a Massachusetts plaintiff recovers so long as their share of the fault is not greater than the defendant’s, with the award reduced by their percentage.

If the operator had been drinking, the analysis of who else may answer for the harm is the same one set out on our page about drunk driving crashes, including the limits Massachusetts puts on claims against a social host or a licensed server.

When Federal Maritime Law Takes Over

Massachusetts has a long coastline, and some boating cases are not purely state law cases at all.

Under 28 U.S.C. 1333(1), the federal district courts have original jurisdiction over

Any civil case of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction, saving to suitors in all cases all other remedies to which they are otherwise entitled.

That saving to suitors clause is why a maritime claim can still be brought in state court. It does not mean state law governs it.

The Supreme Court reached recreational boating directly in Foremost Insurance Co. v. Richardson, 457 U.S. 668 (1982). The question there was “whether the collision of two pleasure boats on navigable waters falls within the admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts”, and the Court held

that a complaint alleging a collision between two vessels on navigable waters properly states a claim within the admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts

Two pleasure boats, no commercial use, and the case was still in admiralty. Whether a given Massachusetts body of water is navigable for this purpose, and whether a particular accident satisfies the connection to maritime activity that later Supreme Court decisions require, are fact specific questions this page does not attempt to answer. What matters for a reader is that they exist. A collision in Boston Harbor, in Buzzards Bay or off Nantucket may be governed by a different body of law, with different rules on comparative fault and different deadlines, than a collision on an inland lake. That is a question to raise on day one rather than on the eve of a limitations deadline.

How Long You Have

The ordinary Massachusetts personal injury deadline applies. M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A:

Except as otherwise provided, actions of tort, actions of contract to recover for personal injuries, and actions of replevin, shall be commenced only within three years next after the cause of action accrues.

Three years, and our fuller treatment is on the statute of limitations page.

Two situations change the arithmetic and both come up on the water. If someone died, the claim is a wrongful death claim with its own statute and its own requirement that an estate representative bring it. And if the defendant is a city, a town, the Commonwealth or a public entity such as a state park or a municipal beach operation, there is a written presentment requirement with a much shorter fuse, described on our page about suing a government body in Massachusetts. A maritime claim can carry a different period again, which is another reason to identify the water early.

If You Rented the Boat or Signed Something

Rental and livery operations almost always put a release in front of the customer. Massachusetts generally enforces those documents for ordinary negligence, with real limits, and the whole analysis is on our page about whether liability waivers are enforceable. A signed waiver is not the end of a boating claim. It is the beginning of a different argument, and it does not reach gross negligence, it does not usually help a defendant who is not a party to it, and it does not bar a passenger who never signed anything.

Chapter 90B does define a “livery boat” as “a boat hired or available for hire from a person who offers boats for hire as a regular business”, and section 7 conditions departure from a boat livery on compliance with the section 5 equipment requirements. A livery that sends a boat out short of required equipment has a problem beyond the fine.

If the injury came from the boat itself rather than from how it was driven, a steering failure, a fuel system fire or a defective throttle, the analysis is product law, and Massachusetts routes that through the implied warranty rather than strict liability in tort. That is set out on our page about defective product injuries.

What to Do After a Massachusetts Boating Accident

The practical list, in the order it matters.

Get medical attention and say what actually happened, including immersion, cold water exposure, near drowning and any loss of consciousness. Water incidents produce injuries that present late.

Get the identifying information the statute entitles you to. The operator owes you a name, an address and the identification of the vessel. Write down the registration number on the hull.

Make sure the division of law enforcement was notified. Any personal injury triggers that duty, and the director is required to investigate. If nobody called it in, call it in.

Photograph both boats, the damage, the water conditions, the shoreline, any marker or buoy, and the flag if a diver was involved. Do it the same day.

Get names and numbers from every witness, including people on other boats and on shore. There are no traffic cameras out there.

Preserve the electronics. Chartplotters, fish finders, GPS units and newer engine control modules hold track and throttle data that overwrite themselves.

Find out whether the water you were on has a local by-law, and get a copy from the harbormaster. A by-law violation is evidence in your case.

Do not assume there is no coverage because there is no PIP. Ask what watercraft, homeowner, umbrella and commercial policies exist, and let someone read them.

Do not give a recorded statement to anyone’s insurer before you understand what your own claim is.

Fees for this kind of case work the way they do for other Massachusetts injury claims, and how that arrangement is structured, along with the costs and expenses that are handled separately from the fee, is explained on our page about what personal injury lawyers charge. If medical bills have already been paid by someone, the question of who gets repaid out of any recovery is covered on our page about liens on an injury settlement.

Questions People Ask

Q: Does my car insurance PIP pay for a boating injury in Massachusetts?

A: No. Personal injury protection is defined by M.G.L. c. 90, sec. 34A as provisions of a motor vehicle liability policy, and every person it pays is defined by a relationship to a motor vehicle: the named insured, household members, an authorized operator or passenger of the insured’s motor vehicle, or a pedestrian struck by it. A boat is registered under M.G.L. c. 90B rather than c. 90 and no motor vehicle liability policy is written on it, so there is no PIP layer in a boating case. That means no automatic payment of the first medical bills, and it means the source of any recovery is whatever liability coverage the person at fault carries.

Q: Do I have to clear the two thousand dollar threshold to recover for pain and suffering after a boat crash?

A: No, and this is the part that works in your favor. M.G.L. c. 231, sec. 6D applies only to “any action of tort brought as a result of bodily injury, sickness or disease, arising out of the ownership, operation, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle within this commonwealth by the defendant”. A boating claim does not arise out of the use of a motor vehicle, so the threshold, the two thousand dollar medical expense test and the fracture and disfigurement exceptions do not apply to it at all. Your claim is judged as an ordinary negligence claim.

Q: Does Massachusetts require boat owners to carry liability insurance?

A: Chapter 90B does not. Every one of the sixty-three sections currently in that chapter was read for this article and none of them contains the word insurance, insurer, liability policy or financial responsibility. Massachusetts requires a certificate of number for a motorboat and, since April 1, 2026, a boater safety certificate for the operator, but the boating chapter does not condition either on carrying coverage the way the motor vehicle law conditions a car’s registration. A marina, a lender or a rental contract may require insurance, and most boat owners carry it, but that is a private requirement rather than a statutory one.

Q: Can I get a copy of the boating accident report?

A: Not as a public record, and you cannot put it in evidence. M.G.L. c. 90B, sec. 9(c) says that “individual boating accident reports shall not be public records, and shall not be admissible in evidence in a court of law other than in a proceeding petitioning for a review of a decision of the director”. Subsection (d) allows the reports to be used for statistical studies but adds that “information from individual reports shall not be disclosed”. That is close to the opposite of the rule for car crash reports, and it is why a boating case has to be built from the investigating officers, the physical evidence, the electronics and the witnesses instead.

Q: How quickly does a boating accident have to be reported in Massachusetts?

A: There are two clocks. Immediate notice to the division of law enforcement is required where there is death, personal injury or property damage over five hundred dollars, and any personal injury triggers it with no dollar floor. Then a written report has to be filed with the division: within forty-eight hours whenever death results, and within five days for every other boating accident. The reporting duty in section 9 is written to reach the operator of a motorboat.

Q: Do I need a boater safety certificate in Massachusetts now?

A: Yes, if you operate a motorboat or personal watercraft on the waters of the commonwealth. Sections 9D to 9F of chapter 90B were added by St. 2024, c. 350, the Hanson Milone Act, and SECTION 15 of that act provides that they “shall take effect on April 1, 2026”. The certificate has to be on board and available for inspection, not left at home. There are eight exemptions in section 9E, the broadest being that you do not need your own certificate if you are accompanied and directly supervised by someone at least eighteen years old who has a valid certificate on board.

Q: Can a child operate a boat in Massachusetts?

A: Section 9E(b) says no person under twelve years of age may operate a motorboat on the waters of the commonwealth unless accompanied on board and directly supervised by a person at least eighteen years old who holds a valid boater safety certificate, and section 9D says no person under twelve may be issued a certificate at all. For jet skis, surf jets and wetbikes the age floor is higher and absolute: section 9A prohibits operation by anyone under sixteen.

Q: The boat owner let a teenager drive. Can the owner be held responsible?

A: Section 9E(d)(1) provides that an owner of a motorboat, or any person at least eighteen years old having custody or control of it, who knowingly permits a person under eighteen to operate the vessel in violation of that section “shall be held liable, jointly and severally with the operator, for any violations, damages or injuries caused by such person’s operation of the vessel and for any fines, penalties or restitution resulting therefrom”. Subsection (d)(2) adds that lack of ownership of the vessel and mistake as to the age of the operator are not defenses. Whether the facts fit turns on the words knowingly permits.

Q: What are the jet ski rules in Massachusetts?

A: Section 9A prohibits operating a jet ski, surf jet or wetbike by anyone under sixteen, within one hundred and fifty feet of a swimmer, shore or moored vessel except at headway speed, on waters of less than seventy-five acres, without wearing an approved personal flotation device, or between sunset and sunrise. Headway speed is defined in the same section as the slowest speed at which the machine can be operated and maintain steerage way. Note that the flotation device must be worn, not merely carried.

Q: A town says I cannot ride my jet ski in the harbor. Is that legal?

A: Generally yes. M.G.L. c. 90B, sec. 15(b) lets a city or town regulate vessels on the waters within its borders by ordinance or by-law, so long as the rule is not contrary to chapter 90B, and section 15(c) requires the director’s approval and newspaper publication at least five days before it takes effect. In Mad Maxine’s Watersports, Inc. v. Harbormaster of Provincetown, 67 Mass. App. Ct. 804 (2006), the Appeals Court upheld a by-law confining personal watercraft to a narrow channel at headway speed, holding that section 9A sets minimum standards and “cannot be read as conferring an absolute and unregulable right on individuals to operate jet skis or other personal watercraft in waterways of greater than seventy-five acres”.

Q: A boat hit me while I was diving. What rule applies?

A: M.G.L. c. 90B, sec. 13A. A diver has to display a red flag with a white diagonal stripe, at least twelve inches by fifteen inches, extending at least three feet above the surface, and has to stay within one hundred feet of it while at or near the surface. The operator’s duty is specific: a boat operator within sight of a diver’s flag must proceed with caution and, within a radius of one hundred feet of the flag, at a speed not to exceed three miles per hour.

Q: Does a rental waiver stop my claim?

A: Not by itself. Massachusetts generally enforces releases for ordinary negligence, but they do not reach gross negligence, they do not usually protect someone who is not a party to the document, and a passenger who signed nothing is not bound by what the renter signed. A rental operator also has its own statutory obligations, including section 7 of chapter 90B, which conditions departure from a boat livery on compliance with the equipment requirements in section 5. Our page on whether liability waivers are enforceable in Massachusetts goes through the limits in detail.

Q: How long do I have to bring a Massachusetts boating injury claim?

A: The ordinary three year period in M.G.L. c. 260, sec. 2A applies to a state law negligence claim, which provides that actions of tort “shall be commenced only within three years next after the cause of action accrues”. Two things can change that. A claim against a city, town or the Commonwealth carries a written presentment requirement with a much shorter deadline, and a claim that falls within federal admiralty jurisdiction can carry a different period. Because Massachusetts coastal water raises the admiralty question, the deadline is something to pin down at the start rather than assume.