Picture this: Your next-door neighbor gets into a new Maserati, starts the engine, floors the gas pedal and goes speeding down the interstate. The only thing is, he doesn't actually have a driver's license. In fact, he's never actually been behind the wheel of a car and has no idea what all those traffic signals and signs mean.

It's scary, eh? And it's illegal, too.

Now substitute the words 38-foot powerboat for Maserati, and replace the driving terminology with crowded channel, rules of the road, and boating safety course. The scenario is just as frightening–and more real than you might think.

Opponents say licensing is unnecessary, but supporters say it helps get bad boaters off the water. Support may be building for licenses. You need a license to drive a car, a motorcycle or a piece of heavy machinery like a tractor or dump truck, but in a boat all you need in most cases are the keys. There is often nothing preventing an unlicensed and unlearned boater from taking the wheel of a six-ton sailboat or a trawler with 400 horsepower. On the water, it seems, almost anything goes.

SAILING BLIND

Unlike would-be car drivers, boaters don't actually have to pass a test to prove they can operate a vessel, or demonstrate that they can "park" in a slip. While the occupants of a car must wear safety belts, few states require boaters to wear life-jackets. Unless you're operating a personal watercraft, like a Jet Ski or Sea-Doo, there's usually no minimum age.

Only Alabama requires that boaters obtain licenses at all, and that's actually just an "endorsement" stamped on a boater's regular driver's license–similar to the one needed to operate motorcycles or big trucks–that shows he has successfully completed an approved boating safety course, either in class or online. Boaters who don't have drivers' licenses can obtain special photo I.D. cards with a endorsement for operating vessels.

For now, there's little enthusiasm in other states to go even that far toward licensing boaters. Major interest groups such as BoatUS (the Boat Owners Association of the United States) are still adamantly opposed to what they characterize as licensing for licensing's sake. And both federal and state lawmakers have been reluctant to put the issue on the table.

But the times may be changing, if slowly. The National Transportation Safety Board, the independent federal agency that investigates serious accidents involving all forms of transportation, has stepped up the call for boater licensing–a measure the agency has been urging regularly since a 1993 study that focused on the issue.

Last June, Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen proposed requiring recreational boaters to meet minimum proficiency standards and to carry a photo identification card to show boarding officers. The draft legislation he finally sent Congress this past summer, watered down from his original suggestion, falls short of mandating federal boat operators' licenses.

Instead, it would require boaters to take an approved boating safety course and would permit Coast Guard boarding officers to demand to see a boat operator's driver's license–something that, surprisingly, they are not authorized to do under current law unless they have probable cause.

CROWDED WATERS

The reason for the new emphasis is simple: While license-free boating may have been okay in the past when the waves seemed to easily outnumber boaters, the number of recreational boats has grown dramatically in recent years. Boats are also a lot bigger these days, and their engines are far more powerful. The result is that waterways are more crowded.

Yet in most states, you don't need a license – or even a safety course – to take the helm. Although more than 40 states claim they require boaters to take boating safety courses, few require all boaters to do so. About half those states have boater education laws that affect only children or teenagers – mainly those who want to operate personal watercraft. And 18 states exempt boaters who are middle-aged or elderly.

Moreover, boating courses in most states are rudimentary. While they include a smattering of nautical rules of the road, many omit the bulk of the regulations and descriptions of navigational aids that critics say boaters ought to know in order operate a vessel on anything but a small lake.