I grew up down south where bass fishing is huge, and plenty of boats go that fast. I don't see why they need to just for fishing, but a tourney angler told me that their usualy on a time crunch for weigh in, and depending on the conditions, if the bite might be on the other side of a large lake, they need to haul *** to get there cause time is a big factor. Serious bass fishing is big money, I've seen 40K bass boats with navigation, GPS to mark good holes and ledges, and a slim, trim bass boat with a 250 merc on it is pretty common. Of course average joe doesn't need a boat like the pros, but you know how that goes.....we all want what the pro's have. On people getting impaled, there was a story in the Dallas Morning News waaaaaay back when I was a kid, a farmer got caught up in a tornado, running from his barn he tried to make it in his house, getting pelted with flying debris, he got knocked down, when he got up he noticed a large peice of barn timber, kinda like a 2x4 in his side, well, the timber ran through him side to side like a ka-bob,passing just in front of his spinal column and kinda pushing his guts forward, he had about 1ft sticking out the left and 1-2 ft sticking out the right side of him, almost zero blood loss cause of the seal it made, and the dude drove himself to the county hospital! I remember my dad passing the paper to me to read that story and it had a photo of the guy in full recovery. I have pictures of grass stuck in fence posts and street signs wrapped around thier poles from some twisters. Never went through one myself, but seems they were a common occurance in neighboring towns growing up in Texas.

 

That nurse in the back looks kinda hot.