Posted: Fri, 25 Sep 2015 07:44 AM - 39,683 Readers

By: Adela Uchida

Investigators are still working to find out why a duck boat crashed Thursday morning in Seattle, killing four people. You can find duck boat tours in just about any popular tourist city -- and that includes Austin.

The pictures and video show a gash in the side of the charter bus, where it appears the duck boat hit the bus on a bridge in Seattle. Here in Austin, the accident caught the attention of Paul Mahler, who owns Austin Duck Adventures. "As a business owner obviously safety's our main concern and that would be a nightmare," he said.

Mahler is very familiar with the amphibious vehicles used in duck tours around the country, although he owns a different brand than the one involved in the Seattle accident. "Speed probably had an issue in it," he said. "I think I did hear on the news that the vehicles may have been traveling at 55 miles an hour."

Duck boats are big vehicles, built on a bus chassis. In Austin, though, they don't go very fast. "On our tour there's no spot where we travel more than 30 miles an hour," Mahler said. He added that his duck boats are maintained regularly, and his drivers are commercially licensed and have regular safety training.

Duck boat accidents are rare -- one happened earlier this year in Philadelphia, when a Texas woman was killed as she was crossing the street looking at her phone and was hit by one. Before that, the last report of a duck boat KEYE found happened in 2010, also in Philadelphia.

Mahler says his 75 minutes tours through Downtown Austin and into Lake Austin are safe, and will continue running. "I have not heard of any safety issues with amphibious trucks travelling on the road," he said.