State leaders dispute the company’s claim, saying they have given Duck Boat Tours the driver’s complete record for the past 10 years.
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The duck boat was carrying about 30 passengers when it collided with the woman’s scooter near Boston Common at around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.
Also in Philadelphia, a Ride the Ducks vehicle struck and killed a woman in 2015 who witnesses say was crossing the street, distracted by her cellphone.
Boston Duck Boat Tours has regularly requested and received the driving record of the duck boat operator involved in a fatal accident with a motor scooter over the weekend, according to officials at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. There are no reports of any injuries to duck boat passengers.
Boston Duck Tours began in 1994.
Boston Duck Tours said Tavares had an exemplary record while driving for them for the six years prior to last week’s deadly crash. Just previous year, four worldwide students were killed in Seattle after a charter bus and Seattle Duck Boat collided.
Philadelphia-based attorney Robert Mongeluzzi has represented the victims in two fatal Duck Boat accidents there and his investigators did these 3-D laser scans which he says show the massive blind spots for duck boat drivers.
At the time of the accident it was reported that 26 to 28 passengers were on the duck boat.
Her friend, a 32-year-old man, was also on the moped but he was not seriously injured.
The U.S. Army first recognized the usefulness of the amphibious vehicles, then known by the designation DUKW, during World War II, using thousands of them for various missions.
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Mongeluzzi and his legal team seek “an immediate federal moratorium on duck boat tour operations nationwide”. Once the war was over, they were used by civilian law enforcement agencies and also converted to sightseeing vehicles in USA cities.
