Hawaiʻi drivers will soon be able to get a license plate with famed Hawaiian waterman Duke Kahanamoku. The plates will raise money to help promote water safety.
Gov. Josh Green signed Senate Bill 116 on Wednesday to authorize the special license plates. He also signed Senate Bill 2841 to designate May 15 as Water Safety Day.
State health department figures show that drowning is the leading cause of death for children under the age of 17.
“This is about an issue that is often taken for granted, like traffic fatalities and other things that we’ve just sort of come to accept in Hawaiʻi," Sen. Chris Lee said. He chairs the Committee on Transportation and Culture and the Arts, which the bills needed to pass to become law.
"I think too often we realize there are some terrible statistics here. They happen year in, year out, and we just get used to it. But this is a moment when we can look at that and say it doesn’t have to be this way. Almost every situation is preventable with the right training, the right awareness, the right eyes on the situation," Lee said.
Money raised from the new license plates will go to the Duke Kahanamoku Foundation and be distributed as drowning prevention grants across the state for programs such as junior lifeguards and learn-to-swim.
Allison Schaefers is a water safety advocate. Her daughter drowned in a flooded detention pond in Hawaiʻi while trying to save another child in 2004.
The detention pond had flooded overnight to "the size of a quarter of a football field and about 8 feet deep and pitch black. It would have been impossible really for an adult to get out."
Schaefers said her daughter could swim, but the other child could not.
"When I think about it, she never hesitated to jump in and save this child and she lost her life doing it," Schaefers said. "So my mantra in all of this is, if a five-year-old can be a hero, we can all be heroes. So let's all work together as a state so that this doesn't happen anymore. Let's all be heroes."
The law authorizing the license plates goes into effect on July 1.
