Studies have found some boaters are tolerant of PWCs. Since PWCs appear to accept boaters, tolerant boaters could be allowed to operate within the PWC areas and times. The real thrust of separation is to allocate the non-tolerant boaters a chance to have the resource to themselves for a while. This is somewhat similar to a coed gym having a women only workout hour. Those women that do not like working out with men, have an opportunity to workout with other women.
Studies indicate the number of actual encounters is very important.
Reservoir managers should make extra efforts to plant trees and construct other line of sight and noise barriers to restrict view and noise of high use PWC areas from other areas of the reservoir. Separate launching facilities should also be considered. If boaters anticipated a high number of contacts with PWCs but moderate or few contacts actually occurred, then boaters would feel less conflict. On the other hand if they anticipated only a few contacts, but higher levels actually occurred, then boaters felt higher levels of conflict. Then, most of time boaters would actually encounter fewer PWCs than they anticipated and less conflict would occur.