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Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning (2013)

lsllc 5y ago
From 2013, but still highly relevant and something all adults should be aware of.
- abfan1127 5y ago
  this type of training should accompany CPR training, something all adults should know also.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    The last time I took CPR certification the instructor said it shouldn't be taught anymore because it is essentially useless in day-to-day life. The speed at which the brain dies without immediate hospital attention is just too rapid for CPR to be effective outside of a hospital. EDIT: I'm not lying, I was literally told this by the person performing the certifications. She said only 1 in 20 people survive without severe brain damage. Which is better than death to some people I guess.
    - lsllc 5y ago
      According to the American Heart Association [0], CPR can double or triple the chances of survival: "Each year nationwide, more than 350,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital; only about 10 percent survive. When the heart stops beating, a lack of oxygenated blood can cause death within minutes. If CPR is performed immediately, it can keep blood flowing to the brain and other vital organs, doubling or tripling a person’s chance of survival." [0] https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/08/22/cpr-training-at-school-now-required-in-38-states https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/08/22/cpr-training-at-sch...
      - pdovy 5y ago
        Not to mention that AED's are more prevalent in public spaces these days. If you can provide CPR _and_ use the AED the chances of survival increase dramatically.
      - deleted 5y ago
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      - choeger 5y ago
        Counter example: Danish captain at the Euro 2020 opening game.
        lsllc 5y ago
        I think this proves the point -- Simon Kjaer was hailed a hero for 'life-saving' response to Christian Eriksen's collapse [0] and Eriksen was discharged from the hospital 6 days later (he had a defibrillator implanted). Had no-one done CPR he may well have died. [0] https://news.sky.com/story/euro-2020-denmark-captain-simon-kjaer-hailed-a-hero-for-life-saving-response-to-christian-eriksen-collapse-12331399 https://news.sky.com/story/euro-2020-denmark-captain-simon-k...
    - willyt 5y ago
      That sounds like nonsense and it's certainly not what I've been taught when I've taken advanced first aid courses. It's true that the statistics are not on your side in that the CPR has only a 1 in 5 chance of being successful and that is if you start immediately after the persons heart stops, but that's no reason not to try it. Recently, an acquaintance of mine was saved by two of his employees who performed CPR on him for 30 mins until the ambulance arrived. He was very lucky to have collapsed in front of them and that they had both been in the army and had good first aid medical. He was hospitalised for 3 weeks and he has memory problems now, but he's out of bed and there for his kids.
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Confiks 5y ago
If you want to try yourself if you can identify drowning, there's this great educational 'game': http://spotthedrowningchild.com http://spotthedrowningchild.com It's pretty hard to spot it before your hear the lifeguard blowing their whistle. Turns out [1] that the game was actually inspired by a HN thread on the same article in 2015 [2]. [1] https://github.com/FrankSalad/spot-the-drowning-child https://github.com/FrankSalad/spot-the-drowning-child [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I was a lifeguard and I never felt very confident in it tbh. But I do win this "game" every time. So... idk, what that says.
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    Sounds like a good mentality for a lifeguard I think, probably keeps you alert. And combined with the fact that you are good at spotting drowning people means that you really are a good fit for the job.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I think that's the only way I could do this job, if I was pretty much constantly terrified I might miss something, never comfortable, not at all. That has to be a hard state of mind to maintain when you might go a fairly long time in between crisis.
- dgan 5y ago
  Watching these videos make me extremely emotional :( I had no idea that's how drowning looks, I am also scared of water, so I guess (?) I am safe on that..
  - cogman10 5y ago
    IMO, it's important to take swimming classes. You never know when it'll come in handy and there are bodies of water everywhere.
March_f6 5y ago
As someone who recently almost drowned a couple weeks ago this article is spookily accurate. I was surprised how indifferent everyone on the shore was when a wave finally coughed me up onto the sand. My only assumption, post stress headache, was that it just didn’t look like I was drowning.
- libria 5y ago
  What was the cause of duress? Undertow? Fatigue? Inexperienced swimmer?
  - March_f6 5y ago
    I suspect it was a mix of a couple things. Here’s how it went: 1. I exhausted myself to a fair degree when I first swam out in order to get past the point at which the waves were breaking. Once I was in a calm area I began to rest and catch my breath. 2. I began to feel what I can only describe as a slight panic attack when I noticed that the current was behaving slightly like a rip (a current pushing away from the shore). 3. The cold temp of the water mixed with the newfound anxiety and my exhaustion began to make me feel shorter and shorter of breath. 4. At this point I was in full panic mode and started using all of my energy to get back to the shore or at least to the point at which the waves were breaking to carry me in. So I think in general you could categorize it as an inexperienced swimmer because I couldn’t spot the rip from the shore but I don’t think its always so obvious since even a small one could carry you away.
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      Yeah, never fight the rip tide, you won't win. Move laterally - rip currents are usually narrow, and you can swim out of them sideways. The lack of control, though, is freaky and unsettling.
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devoutsalsa 5y ago
When I was in the army, one of my roommates drowned right in front of a bunch of people he was swimming with. He was in about 3 meters of water, got a leg cramp, went under, and never came back up. I found him face down on the bottom of the lake with his face in the mud. He was later declared dead. Took a while to get over that.
- leaveyou 5y ago
  I'm a very amateur swimmer and I try to understand why people drown from cramp in one leg? Because me being a novice, I learned how to swim without using the legs too much (mainly because it takes skill to coordinate everything well) and one of the very first things was me floating by turning my head hard backwards while standing vertically in the water and sinking in water up to the nose, basically sticking as little of my face above water as possible and IIRC I was floating fine with very little help from hands and no use of the feet at all. That seemed easy, especially in dense cold water..
  - Rendello 5y ago
    My lifeguard mother almost drowned from a leg cramp (see my sibling comment), she explained that the pain of movement becomes so unbearable that your body basically goes into the fetal position and sinks to the bottom.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I occasionally wake up from extreme leg cramps. It literally feels like someone is taking a knife on the serrated edge and pulling it down from the top of your calf muscle for a solid 20 seconds. All you can do is writhe in agony and scrounge up into a ball because naturally that is your response. After it's over you're in a ton of fatigue, your heart is racing, and just want to rest. Now do that in a pool.
    - leaveyou 5y ago
      Ok, I understand.. it seems I had milder versions of cramps. The one I remember the most was when I basically had to grab the toes of my foot and pull hard counter to the cramping muscle and basically it ceased after several seconds. It was very painful but I didn't know they can be paralyzing.
oalders 5y ago
On a swim safety note, if you're going to be swimming in open water, I highly recommend getting yourself a swim buoy for visibility. You can also use it to stash your phone, keys, etc if you've got a dry bag. https://outdoorswimmer.com/product-reviews/tow-floats-and-dry-bags https://outdoorswimmer.com/product-reviews/tow-floats-and-dr...
- alex_anglin 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing. I wasn't aware these existed and am already looking at getting one. As others in the discussion have noted, it doesn't a lot of depth or distance for bad things to happen.
  - oalders 5y ago
    They're handy to have. I think most of them are technically not life saving devices, but you can use them for a bit of extra flotation if you need them. They're handy to rest your head on if you're taking a break and hopefully they make you more visible to other traffic on the water. If you're swimming with buddies it helps them to see where you are at in the water, especially if you're farther apart or if the water isn't flat. I'll sometimes swim with a group at sunrise. We swim out about 750m from shore. Having the buoys helps us see where the other swimmers are at and ensure that everyone is safe. Also, if the swimmers ahead of you have good lines and they're sighting on the same thing as you are, you can be a bit lazy and just follow their buoys instead of having to pick out a landmark on the horizon. You can even put an LED inside of some of them to get a bit of extra visibility depending on conditions. Lots of options!
    - s5300 5y ago
      >We swim out about 750m from shore. Yeesh, this for some reason invokes a likely unreasonable bit of fear in me. I completely understand sucking it up and getting over things if money is involved (like working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea), but that far out for leisure activity spooks me. I was always a pretty good swimmer and had my lifeguard license for a bit as a teen through boyscouts activities. I've always been aware of risks of open water and riptides and how to deal with them... for as long as I can remember. However, a few years back now at Blacks Beach in La Jolla (reputation of the best yet most dangerous surf in California AFAIK), in a normal beachspot I'd spent a lot of time around away from the surf, I mind bogglingly got hit by an outlier of a wave out of nowhere in otherwise calm waters, close to shore. I had prescription glasses on with no safety, stupid, but I'd had no plans of being in anything higher than my low waist, and only for a short while. Glasses got knocked off (I'm really near sighted without + severe static vision), wave brought me down under to the sand, and I was pulled out by the most insane force. I'm a mechanical engineer, so well aware of the sheer insanity of the forces involved with bodies of water and currents, but it was just an unreal and out of nowhere rip. Got myself quickly situated and calm but internally scared as all fuck, was pulled out probably 1.5 miles by the time I swam out of the rip. Swimming back in was hell because I was mostly physically exerted from hiking already. Nobody noticed what had happened and there wasn't a damn thing anybody could've really done about it either. Not too sure why I felt the need to write this out... but stay safe. I can only want to get my swimming done in a pool at this point, unless I'm around highly competent lifeguards with boats and rescue equipment (I'm sure there's a chance you are perhaps around boats when doing this?). Just so much that can go wrong so fast.
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soco 5y ago
It's incredible how much text there's about it and zarroh video material. So difficult to hire an actor and show us dummies how drowning does look like? There's enough CPR videos, thanks a lot for them, yet about drowning just blah and confusing animations. </angryrant>
- canniballectern 5y ago
  Here's another comment with some excellent demonstration video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27984716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27984716
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Look at the post further up were a poster pointed to http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ which uses videos.
  - soco 5y ago
    I'm missing the explanatory, clear, close-up videos. The gamea with a pixel-wide kid somewhere in the background would then work to check on that learning.
    - Natsu 5y ago
      The game is very good to train yourself even without knowing ahead of time what you're watching for. That said, there's a relatively close up video here and it actually takes the lifeguard a while to react: https://www.webmd.com/parenting/video/can-you-spot-drowning https://www.webmd.com/parenting/video/can-you-spot-drowning
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Refresh a few times, it seems to present examples randomly, and some are much more close up than pixel-wide. Regardless, consider the job of the lifeguard: They don't have the benefit of clear close-up sight of all swimmers. If you can't spot the drowner when you know there will be one, imagine how much more difficult it is for a lifeguard who doesn't know when a crisis will occur. Unless you're willing to go to lifeguard school, learn to train yourself on the hard-to-spot examples without explanatory details: you'll be a lot more likely to gain a potentially life-saving skill.
gamegoblin 5y ago
So, at the risk of doing the SV "how can we ML this" thing, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to apply computer vision. I'm sure OpenAI or Deepmind or whoever could build a lot of good will by training such a model and freely distributing it. I'm sure it will be tricky due to lack of training data, though. You could maybe even do this without an end-to-end ML system, and just use ML to do the head+arms detection, and then do a rules-based approach to determine the drowning status. This is probably much more tractable and doesn't have the lack of training data.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  Strongly agreed in theory, but… That goodwill ends when the company is found to be uploading all footage to the cloud to evaluate everyone’s physical fitness and body shape for future insurance company use, and to build a picture of your social web for Facebook one day, and heck, whatever else people will pay to know, including to serve warrants against other people incorrectly identified by other ml systems as commuting some crime I’ll become 100x more pro-machine vision once severe laws get made to restrict how it’s used.
- bigmattystyles 5y ago
  Yes we can - and what people miss, you don't have to be ML only or Human only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML, especially at places like beaches where the horizon to scan is much larger. I suppose the danger is of the human becoming complacent. As far as training data, if we know what it looks like, we can create virtual scenes that simulate different conditions and scenarios and train on that. Obviously, it won't be perfect but if it gets deployed, we can start getting more real life data and augment the training on that. Not for lifeguards, but I've always imagined a future vision system that would track me in my lap swim workout. At the end, it would tell me my stats, length swam, times, stroke done (with count) and maybe even down the line coaching my form.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    you don't have to be ML only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML Yep, when it comes to such things my background leans towards NLP. Not sure what the OCR state of the art is these days, but it used to be side-by-side human-assisted computer: The computer did the bulk of the work. For language translation (at least in lower stakes applications) it was the reverse: A human assisted by a computer. Even within computer-only NLP methods, they often benefited from a mixed-model approach using both rule-based & stochastic methods together.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
(2010)! (it's a republish) Some previous discussions of this old piece resubmitted often by usual suspects: 11 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835 6 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 5 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667755 3 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17170593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17170593
- deleted 5y ago
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- ineedasername 5y ago
  resubmitted often by usual suspects Do you mean you think they were posting/reposting things purely for upvotes? If so, I still don't care: As something both interesting & important, popping up on the front page seems like a good thing every few years. I don't care if @tomte or whoever is doing it just to get meaningless internet points. Different people rotate in & out of HN, so anything really interetsing/important is just fine by me if it keeps popping up.
- Natsu 5y ago
  Honestly, this is a useful thing that should be republished at the start of every summer when people start to go swimming again.
- kergonath 5y ago
  If it ends up on the front page every time, it means that people are interested in it. Guidelines say it’s ok to repost every other year.
drucik 5y ago
Article seems to be spot on - it's good to remind people about it once in a while. When I was a kid I jumped into a semi-empty pool, where depth was more or less equal to my total height. Bad judgment on my part. I couldn't swim so all I could do was bouncing of the bottom, gasping for air with each bounce. That was the only thing I could think of doing. Lifeguard was there but he didn't notice drowning kid, nor did people around me in the pool. Fortunately my father was more aware, and jumped in, fully clothed, to drag me out. I don't remember if it lasted 30 seconds or 2 minutes but I do remember the scared face of the 'lifeguard' when we were walking past him. edit:grammar, at least what I've noticed
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opium_tea 5y ago
I've seen this as an LPT or similar posted on Reddit. I think it helped save a life in the New Year pre-pandemic. I'd stopped at a picnic location near a rocky Atlantic (European) coastline with my partner. It was a picturesque location but the sea was inhospitable - huge swell and waves that just looked violent. We'd sat down at a bench with a view of the sea and set out our lunch. At some point after that I noticed two people in the sea, maybe 30-50m out. They were bobbing about in the swell. Initially I was confused. It didn't look right but my mind tried to make explanations - maybe the locals just swim out there in crazy conditions? After some time it became clear that they were in trouble, I guess that's when the "drowning doesn't look like drowning" advice came to me. Luckily the beach (tiny strip of sand between cliffs) had a well-labelled sign with an emergency number that I called and managed to ask for an English speaker and described the situation. Whilst waiting for the response one of the people in the water started trying to tow the other towards shore but made no progress. They kept disappearing behind large waves and at some point I could only pick out one of them, then I saw a pair of shoes or sandals floating then I saw the other person face down in the water, occasionally visible behind the swell. There was some dithering where a local official came to the beach to check out the report but eventually we heard helicopters and one person was rescued and the body of the other recovered. It turned out there was a group of three tourists, two sons (teenage/early 20s) and their dad. A local had taken them to a fishing spot - a flat rock that spanned out towards the sea close to water level. A large wave had washed the dad and one of his sons out to sea. The dad died. I witnessed the other son - who hadn't been washed out to sea - being interviewed by police, as utterly distraught as i've ever seen a person, understandably. Looking back on it I should have realised the severity of the situation sooner but perhaps without this advice I would have left it too late and neither would have made it.
wkearney99 5y ago
We had our 9mo child take 'Infant Swim Rescue' courses, basically anti-drowning lessons. The concern being the waters near us are cloudy and it'd be impossible to see someone if they went under. Classes went well. At a neighbors party a 2.5yo fell into the pool. I saw it happening and the little girl just SANK LIKE A STONE. With a panicked look on her face. Little feet hit the bottom, let out a blurp of air and did nothing. Her Dad was already in the air diving into the water before I could get up. The child was fine, thankfully. Her folks immediately asked about the classes I'd mentioned before. I can still see the complete bewilderment on that child's face. She just had NO IDEA what to do and would have drowned had it not been for quick actions. My point here is lessons are absolutely worth considering starting MUCH earlier than you might guess. This isn't learning to 'swim', it's learning how 'not to drown'.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  We had our 9mo child take 'Infant Swim Rescue' courses, basically anti-drowning lessons Can you expand on what that included? Was it focused on parents identifying children in distress, or did it in some way help train kids on what to do if in distress?
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    They teach the kids to seek out the edge of the pool, to try to turn towards the edge and grab it if they fall off the edge, and to try to get at least an elbow up on the edge of the pool. I suspect a lot of it is a preamble to learning to swim at a later age. By exposing the children to water at a very early age, they learn to accept it without a lot of fear. It preconditions them so they are more successful at actual swim classes when they're a little older. We have two kids. I kick myself for not getting our youngest (3) started earlier. He didn't start classes until he was about 20 months. We all had a lot of health problems after he was born (all unrelated!), so his first year was a bit of a rollercoaster. Our oldest (5), we started at about 10 months, then had about a year and a half long break before starting him again. There's a stark difference in their comfort level in the water, even comparing how the 5-yr-old acted when he was 3, versus how his younger brother acts now. Yet they are the complete opposite regarding risk-taking behavior on dry ground.
lamontcg 5y ago
There's a video out there of three Indian guys who filmed themselves drowning when they went swimming in a pool of water. Most people seem to think it looks fake/staged. I won't bother linking to it, but I'm sure google can turn it up if you go looking.
srean 5y ago
I continue to be amazed by what lifeguards can do. Even if drowning looked like drowning there is just so much going on in a crowded pool I cannot imagine how people can pick on anything. To me it seems like an audio-visual version of drinking from a firehose. If I was in their place the best strategy that I could conceive of adopting would be to a for loop checking each one out, and perhaps dwelling a little longer on those who I think maybe particularly susceptible. But this would be a terrible strategy, too easy to miss someone, too much latency in revisit time. So a hat tip to all lifeguards on HN, deeply appreciate your work.
- Natsu 5y ago
  > Even if drowning looked like drowning there is just so much going on in a crowded pool I cannot imagine how people can pick on anything. To me it seems like an audio-visual version of drinking from a firehose. Watch for the kid playing on their float or doing other dangerous things, I'm convinced it's what most of the lifeguards are doing.
zengineer 5y ago
This article actually "saved my life". I read it back then in 2013 and in 2014 I almost drowned. Just before I felt that something was very wrong I remembered that this post said that if you drown it is already too late to scream for help. So I shout to my friend, who was also with me in the water, that I am about to drown. He then tried to help me but then he struggled too because of the current and the strong waves which came out of nowhere. It took us a lot of effort to get back to a point where we were able to stand. Until today I try to avoid to go deeper than I can actually stand.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  For your last sentence, do you mean "to this day"? "Until today" means something that ended/stopped today. Or are you a good enough swimmer now that you feel comfortable swimming in deep water?
  - zengineer 5y ago
    Yes, to this day. Thanks! :)
MarkMarine 5y ago
One thing I learned in naval aviator swim qual was how easy it is to float for a very long time, given the right technique. (Called a dead man’s float. Link: https://www.sportsrec.com/prone-float-8623477.html https://www.sportsrec.com/prone-float-8623477.html ) We naturally try to swim with our heavy head out of the water, but with full lungs most people will easily float for almost an unlimited amount of time, only popping your head up for a breath. Somehow, the more nervous you are, the more you struggle to keep your head out of the water. Learning that I could float like this for hours if needed keeps me calm in the water, I recommend you all try it, and keep it in mind to fall back on if you ever start to panic in the water.
- Rapzid 5y ago
  I grew up on lakes in Florida. I wasn't taught to "swim" as much as I was taught to survive in water. Swim classes should be reframed as water survival classes IMHO.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    You have to find the right swim classes. We started our children in swim classes at 2 years old, but I was never very satisfied with the instruction they were receiving. I could see them struggling with things and the instructors would just sort of give them nudges in the water to get them to go in the direction they wanted, but weren't really working on explaining things. They also made the kids sit on the side of the pool when it wasn't their turn, so 2/3rds of the 30 minutes they were there, they weren't in the water, getting comfortable with it, learning not to fear it. When our youngest turned 3, they moved him up to a class where I no longer got in the pool with him, and he was not ready for that. I told them he wasn't ready and they didn't listen. Ultimately, he wasn't getting enough time in the water to get over his fear of getting his face wet, and the instructors were rushing him too much that he started hating going. So we took him out and I bought a 12' diameter, 20" deep pool for the back yard (oof, getting the ground leveled to set it up was quite an ordeal). He is still aprehensive when he first gets in, but usually after about 30 minutes he's asking me to put on goggles so he can stick his face in the water. He'll get there. Our oldest is 5. His first swim classes were at a different place entirely, but we moved out of there and had to find a new place (the place I hate). So I think he got a better foundation of familiarity with the water to then be able to get something out of the classes at the later school. He swims like a fish now. He recently attended a pool party for a friend's birthday and swam non-stop for pretty much 2 hours. The "large kiddie pool" or "small above ground pool" was a good balance of cost (I probably put $300 total into the pool, setting it up, and care equipment/chemicals) and capacity for what they need, which is really just "figuring out how their bodies work in water." The school that I hate is called Goldfish. They're a national chain. Avoid them, if at all possible.
okareaman 5y ago
After watching the videos around the time this article came out, I spotted a man drowning in the ocean. I was on a cliff looking down at some tourists not familiar with the ocean. I couldn't get down to him or make myself heard to shout a warning. Fortunately, he pulled out of it and got to shore. It was the most helpless I ever felt.
krumpet 5y ago
Something else that is important to mention is that young kids can easily slip into a pool or jacuzzi and not make a sound. We might think we would hear a "splash!", but that isn't necessarily true. I watched my daughter step of the ledge in a jacuzzi once and it was completely silent. One second she was walking and the next she was under water. Keep your eyes on young children near water at all times. If they are really young and can't yet swim, either be with them or have them wear an approved flotation device. Going under can happen in a split second when your back is turned.
lazyant 5y ago
Also: stay away from low head dams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYgODmmiAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYgODmmiAM
andrewem 5y ago
The author of this has some videos related to swimming (0). See for example the one called "1-10-1 Final" where he jumps into cold water that is about 40 degrees F (4 degrees C) and stays in for a number of minutes, showing what to do. [0] https://vimeo.com/mariovittone https://vimeo.com/mariovittone
seriousquestion 5y ago
What an odd title. Drowning does look like drowning. How could it be any other way, given that it's involuntary?
- ineedasername 5y ago
  It's pretty clear from the article that it means drowning IRL doesn't look like how drowning is portrayed in most media.
minitoar 5y ago
This is great, just shared it with my partner. Definitely eye opening to the danger. I wonder if there'd be some value in an automated throwable PFD launcher as an early response -- launch a pfd out over the top of the probable victim, and slowly tow it in to a shallow ramp.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Humans should do what humans are good at and come up with technological solutions to this. Maybe a small waistband flotation device that inflates via a CO2 cartridge once your fitbit recognizes that you're not breathing normally, giving you enough buoyancy to stop panicking and get to shore?
volume 5y ago
I wonder if the same applies to companies, departments or marriages?
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anonymousiam 5y ago
As a pre-teen who frequently went to the beach alone to bodysurf, I was once rescued from a riptide by an alert lifeguard. I was in a group of strangers who were all taller than me. The waves were pounding me relentlessly and I was in distress, but the group was oblivious. Fortunately the lifeguard was paying attention and came to my aid.
kergonath 5y ago
> And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why. That’s some really sound advice.
topkai22 5y ago
I lifeguarded throughout my teens. Definitely a good first job. However, almost 20 years on, I have difficulty turning off my sense of vigilance at pools/bodies of water. It’s not that I can’t enjoy pools or swimming, but you’ll see me scanning and silently counting heads, secretly sorting other swimmers by swim level, and quietly scooting over closer to where the kids are maybe getting a little too deep for their own good.
mlang23 5y ago
Wow. This is the kind of information that really should be spread more. The article, and the spotting game! In fact, if there were a fundraiser to promote the game, I would be willing to donate $20. It feels like this could make a difference if more people knew about it.
CalChris 5y ago
Drowning is the worst way to die. Think of it as waterboarding.
TheRealNGenius 5y ago
Drowning does look like drowning. Drowning might not look like what you think drowning looks like.
- snet0 5y ago
  I imagine you're kidding, but that's literally the point of the title. Of course X looks like X, but there are different contextual implications for what "drowning" refers to here. The fact the title takes the form "X doesn't look like X" obviously implies it's discussion two different contextual X's.
  - TheRealNGenius 5y ago
    ok
hujun 5y ago
I was snorkeling Sunday, it was a beautiful morning with clear sky, I come back to beach after around 20 minutes in water to a shocking scene that a few life guards are doing CPR on a unresponsive man(or maybe an teenager); That water is packed with people, and it is not deep, only around waist of an adult at where people snorkeling; but this still happened, and I didn't even notice it while I was in the water ...
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Similar to how life-threatening depression often doesn't look like life-threatening depression
saint_olms 5y ago
I almost drowned this way when I was a child. Parents were less than a meter away, thought I was 'playing', since I was right next to the stairs. It's chilling that this response is still fairly specialist knowledge. I would be dead if it wasn't for a random woman walking by who happened to know about it at the right second.

From 2013, but still highly relevant and something all adults should be aware of.

abfan1127 5y ago
this type of training should accompany CPR training, something all adults should know also.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  The last time I took CPR certification the instructor said it shouldn't be taught anymore because it is essentially useless in day-to-day life. The speed at which the brain dies without immediate hospital attention is just too rapid for CPR to be effective outside of a hospital. EDIT: I'm not lying, I was literally told this by the person performing the certifications. She said only 1 in 20 people survive without severe brain damage. Which is better than death to some people I guess.
  - lsllc 5y ago
    According to the American Heart Association [0], CPR can double or triple the chances of survival: "Each year nationwide, more than 350,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital; only about 10 percent survive. When the heart stops beating, a lack of oxygenated blood can cause death within minutes. If CPR is performed immediately, it can keep blood flowing to the brain and other vital organs, doubling or tripling a person’s chance of survival." [0] https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/08/22/cpr-training-at-school-now-required-in-38-states https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/08/22/cpr-training-at-sch...
    - pdovy 5y ago
      Not to mention that AED's are more prevalent in public spaces these days. If you can provide CPR _and_ use the AED the chances of survival increase dramatically.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - choeger 5y ago
      Counter example: Danish captain at the Euro 2020 opening game.
      - lsllc 5y ago
        I think this proves the point -- Simon Kjaer was hailed a hero for 'life-saving' response to Christian Eriksen's collapse [0] and Eriksen was discharged from the hospital 6 days later (he had a defibrillator implanted). Had no-one done CPR he may well have died. [0] https://news.sky.com/story/euro-2020-denmark-captain-simon-kjaer-hailed-a-hero-for-life-saving-response-to-christian-eriksen-collapse-12331399 https://news.sky.com/story/euro-2020-denmark-captain-simon-k...
  - willyt 5y ago
    That sounds like nonsense and it's certainly not what I've been taught when I've taken advanced first aid courses. It's true that the statistics are not on your side in that the CPR has only a 1 in 5 chance of being successful and that is if you start immediately after the persons heart stops, but that's no reason not to try it. Recently, an acquaintance of mine was saved by two of his employees who performed CPR on him for 30 mins until the ambulance arrived. He was very lucky to have collapsed in front of them and that they had both been in the army and had good first aid medical. He was hospitalised for 3 weeks and he has memory problems now, but he's out of bed and there for his kids.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

If you want to try yourself if you can identify drowning, there's this great educational 'game': http://spotthedrowningchild.com http://spotthedrowningchild.com It's pretty hard to spot it before your hear the lifeguard blowing their whistle. Turns out [1] that the game was actually inspired by a HN thread on the same article in 2015 [2]. [1] https://github.com/FrankSalad/spot-the-drowning-child https://github.com/FrankSalad/spot-the-drowning-child [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237

spywaregorilla 5y ago
I was a lifeguard and I never felt very confident in it tbh. But I do win this "game" every time. So... idk, what that says.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Sounds like a good mentality for a lifeguard I think, probably keeps you alert. And combined with the fact that you are good at spotting drowning people means that you really are a good fit for the job.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I think that's the only way I could do this job, if I was pretty much constantly terrified I might miss something, never comfortable, not at all. That has to be a hard state of mind to maintain when you might go a fairly long time in between crisis.
dgan 5y ago
Watching these videos make me extremely emotional :( I had no idea that's how drowning looks, I am also scared of water, so I guess (?) I am safe on that..
- cogman10 5y ago
  IMO, it's important to take swimming classes. You never know when it'll come in handy and there are bodies of water everywhere.

March_f6 5y ago

As someone who recently almost drowned a couple weeks ago this article is spookily accurate. I was surprised how indifferent everyone on the shore was when a wave finally coughed me up onto the sand. My only assumption, post stress headache, was that it just didn’t look like I was drowning.

libria 5y ago
What was the cause of duress? Undertow? Fatigue? Inexperienced swimmer?
- March_f6 5y ago
  I suspect it was a mix of a couple things. Here’s how it went: 1. I exhausted myself to a fair degree when I first swam out in order to get past the point at which the waves were breaking. Once I was in a calm area I began to rest and catch my breath. 2. I began to feel what I can only describe as a slight panic attack when I noticed that the current was behaving slightly like a rip (a current pushing away from the shore). 3. The cold temp of the water mixed with the newfound anxiety and my exhaustion began to make me feel shorter and shorter of breath. 4. At this point I was in full panic mode and started using all of my energy to get back to the shore or at least to the point at which the waves were breaking to carry me in. So I think in general you could categorize it as an inexperienced swimmer because I couldn’t spot the rip from the shore but I don’t think its always so obvious since even a small one could carry you away.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    Yeah, never fight the rip tide, you won't win. Move laterally - rip currents are usually narrow, and you can swim out of them sideways. The lack of control, though, is freaky and unsettling.

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devoutsalsa 5y ago

When I was in the army, one of my roommates drowned right in front of a bunch of people he was swimming with. He was in about 3 meters of water, got a leg cramp, went under, and never came back up. I found him face down on the bottom of the lake with his face in the mud. He was later declared dead. Took a while to get over that.

leaveyou 5y ago
I'm a very amateur swimmer and I try to understand why people drown from cramp in one leg? Because me being a novice, I learned how to swim without using the legs too much (mainly because it takes skill to coordinate everything well) and one of the very first things was me floating by turning my head hard backwards while standing vertically in the water and sinking in water up to the nose, basically sticking as little of my face above water as possible and IIRC I was floating fine with very little help from hands and no use of the feet at all. That seemed easy, especially in dense cold water..
- Rendello 5y ago
  My lifeguard mother almost drowned from a leg cramp (see my sibling comment), she explained that the pain of movement becomes so unbearable that your body basically goes into the fetal position and sinks to the bottom.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I occasionally wake up from extreme leg cramps. It literally feels like someone is taking a knife on the serrated edge and pulling it down from the top of your calf muscle for a solid 20 seconds. All you can do is writhe in agony and scrounge up into a ball because naturally that is your response. After it's over you're in a ton of fatigue, your heart is racing, and just want to rest. Now do that in a pool.
  - leaveyou 5y ago
    Ok, I understand.. it seems I had milder versions of cramps. The one I remember the most was when I basically had to grab the toes of my foot and pull hard counter to the cramping muscle and basically it ceased after several seconds. It was very painful but I didn't know they can be paralyzing.

oalders 5y ago

On a swim safety note, if you're going to be swimming in open water, I highly recommend getting yourself a swim buoy for visibility. You can also use it to stash your phone, keys, etc if you've got a dry bag. https://outdoorswimmer.com/product-reviews/tow-floats-and-dry-bags https://outdoorswimmer.com/product-reviews/tow-floats-and-dr...

alex_anglin 5y ago
Thank you for sharing. I wasn't aware these existed and am already looking at getting one. As others in the discussion have noted, it doesn't a lot of depth or distance for bad things to happen.
- oalders 5y ago
  They're handy to have. I think most of them are technically not life saving devices, but you can use them for a bit of extra flotation if you need them. They're handy to rest your head on if you're taking a break and hopefully they make you more visible to other traffic on the water. If you're swimming with buddies it helps them to see where you are at in the water, especially if you're farther apart or if the water isn't flat. I'll sometimes swim with a group at sunrise. We swim out about 750m from shore. Having the buoys helps us see where the other swimmers are at and ensure that everyone is safe. Also, if the swimmers ahead of you have good lines and they're sighting on the same thing as you are, you can be a bit lazy and just follow their buoys instead of having to pick out a landmark on the horizon. You can even put an LED inside of some of them to get a bit of extra visibility depending on conditions. Lots of options!
  - s5300 5y ago
    >We swim out about 750m from shore. Yeesh, this for some reason invokes a likely unreasonable bit of fear in me. I completely understand sucking it up and getting over things if money is involved (like working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea), but that far out for leisure activity spooks me. I was always a pretty good swimmer and had my lifeguard license for a bit as a teen through boyscouts activities. I've always been aware of risks of open water and riptides and how to deal with them... for as long as I can remember. However, a few years back now at Blacks Beach in La Jolla (reputation of the best yet most dangerous surf in California AFAIK), in a normal beachspot I'd spent a lot of time around away from the surf, I mind bogglingly got hit by an outlier of a wave out of nowhere in otherwise calm waters, close to shore. I had prescription glasses on with no safety, stupid, but I'd had no plans of being in anything higher than my low waist, and only for a short while. Glasses got knocked off (I'm really near sighted without + severe static vision), wave brought me down under to the sand, and I was pulled out by the most insane force. I'm a mechanical engineer, so well aware of the sheer insanity of the forces involved with bodies of water and currents, but it was just an unreal and out of nowhere rip. Got myself quickly situated and calm but internally scared as all fuck, was pulled out probably 1.5 miles by the time I swam out of the rip. Swimming back in was hell because I was mostly physically exerted from hiking already. Nobody noticed what had happened and there wasn't a damn thing anybody could've really done about it either. Not too sure why I felt the need to write this out... but stay safe. I can only want to get my swimming done in a pool at this point, unless I'm around highly competent lifeguards with boats and rescue equipment (I'm sure there's a chance you are perhaps around boats when doing this?). Just so much that can go wrong so fast.

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soco 5y ago

It's incredible how much text there's about it and zarroh video material. So difficult to hire an actor and show us dummies how drowning does look like? There's enough CPR videos, thanks a lot for them, yet about drowning just blah and confusing animations. </angryrant>

canniballectern 5y ago
Here's another comment with some excellent demonstration video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27984716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27984716
cycomanic 5y ago
Look at the post further up were a poster pointed to http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ which uses videos.
- soco 5y ago
  I'm missing the explanatory, clear, close-up videos. The gamea with a pixel-wide kid somewhere in the background would then work to check on that learning.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    The game is very good to train yourself even without knowing ahead of time what you're watching for. That said, there's a relatively close up video here and it actually takes the lifeguard a while to react: https://www.webmd.com/parenting/video/can-you-spot-drowning https://www.webmd.com/parenting/video/can-you-spot-drowning
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Refresh a few times, it seems to present examples randomly, and some are much more close up than pixel-wide. Regardless, consider the job of the lifeguard: They don't have the benefit of clear close-up sight of all swimmers. If you can't spot the drowner when you know there will be one, imagine how much more difficult it is for a lifeguard who doesn't know when a crisis will occur. Unless you're willing to go to lifeguard school, learn to train yourself on the hard-to-spot examples without explanatory details: you'll be a lot more likely to gain a potentially life-saving skill.

gamegoblin 5y ago

So, at the risk of doing the SV "how can we ML this" thing, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to apply computer vision. I'm sure OpenAI or Deepmind or whoever could build a lot of good will by training such a model and freely distributing it. I'm sure it will be tricky due to lack of training data, though. You could maybe even do this without an end-to-end ML system, and just use ML to do the head+arms detection, and then do a rules-based approach to determine the drowning status. This is probably much more tractable and doesn't have the lack of training data.

gentleman11 5y ago
Strongly agreed in theory, but… That goodwill ends when the company is found to be uploading all footage to the cloud to evaluate everyone’s physical fitness and body shape for future insurance company use, and to build a picture of your social web for Facebook one day, and heck, whatever else people will pay to know, including to serve warrants against other people incorrectly identified by other ml systems as commuting some crime I’ll become 100x more pro-machine vision once severe laws get made to restrict how it’s used.
bigmattystyles 5y ago
Yes we can - and what people miss, you don't have to be ML only or Human only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML, especially at places like beaches where the horizon to scan is much larger. I suppose the danger is of the human becoming complacent. As far as training data, if we know what it looks like, we can create virtual scenes that simulate different conditions and scenarios and train on that. Obviously, it won't be perfect but if it gets deployed, we can start getting more real life data and augment the training on that. Not for lifeguards, but I've always imagined a future vision system that would track me in my lap swim workout. At the end, it would tell me my stats, length swam, times, stroke done (with count) and maybe even down the line coaching my form.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  you don't have to be ML only - it can be Human lifeguard augmented by ML Yep, when it comes to such things my background leans towards NLP. Not sure what the OCR state of the art is these days, but it used to be side-by-side human-assisted computer: The computer did the bulk of the work. For language translation (at least in lower stakes applications) it was the reverse: A human assisted by a computer. Even within computer-only NLP methods, they often benefited from a mixed-model approach using both rule-based & stochastic methods together.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

(2010)! (it's a republish) Some previous discussions of this old piece resubmitted often by usual suspects: 11 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835 6 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 5 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667755 3 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17170593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17170593

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ineedasername 5y ago
resubmitted often by usual suspects Do you mean you think they were posting/reposting things purely for upvotes? If so, I still don't care: As something both interesting & important, popping up on the front page seems like a good thing every few years. I don't care if @tomte or whoever is doing it just to get meaningless internet points. Different people rotate in & out of HN, so anything really interetsing/important is just fine by me if it keeps popping up.
Natsu 5y ago
Honestly, this is a useful thing that should be republished at the start of every summer when people start to go swimming again.
kergonath 5y ago
If it ends up on the front page every time, it means that people are interested in it. Guidelines say it’s ok to repost every other year.

drucik 5y ago

Article seems to be spot on - it's good to remind people about it once in a while. When I was a kid I jumped into a semi-empty pool, where depth was more or less equal to my total height. Bad judgment on my part. I couldn't swim so all I could do was bouncing of the bottom, gasping for air with each bounce. That was the only thing I could think of doing. Lifeguard was there but he didn't notice drowning kid, nor did people around me in the pool. Fortunately my father was more aware, and jumped in, fully clothed, to drag me out. I don't remember if it lasted 30 seconds or 2 minutes but I do remember the scared face of the 'lifeguard' when we were walking past him. edit:grammar, at least what I've noticed

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opium_tea 5y ago

I've seen this as an LPT or similar posted on Reddit. I think it helped save a life in the New Year pre-pandemic. I'd stopped at a picnic location near a rocky Atlantic (European) coastline with my partner. It was a picturesque location but the sea was inhospitable - huge swell and waves that just looked violent. We'd sat down at a bench with a view of the sea and set out our lunch. At some point after that I noticed two people in the sea, maybe 30-50m out. They were bobbing about in the swell. Initially I was confused. It didn't look right but my mind tried to make explanations - maybe the locals just swim out there in crazy conditions? After some time it became clear that they were in trouble, I guess that's when the "drowning doesn't look like drowning" advice came to me. Luckily the beach (tiny strip of sand between cliffs) had a well-labelled sign with an emergency number that I called and managed to ask for an English speaker and described the situation. Whilst waiting for the response one of the people in the water started trying to tow the other towards shore but made no progress. They kept disappearing behind large waves and at some point I could only pick out one of them, then I saw a pair of shoes or sandals floating then I saw the other person face down in the water, occasionally visible behind the swell. There was some dithering where a local official came to the beach to check out the report but eventually we heard helicopters and one person was rescued and the body of the other recovered. It turned out there was a group of three tourists, two sons (teenage/early 20s) and their dad. A local had taken them to a fishing spot - a flat rock that spanned out towards the sea close to water level. A large wave had washed the dad and one of his sons out to sea. The dad died. I witnessed the other son - who hadn't been washed out to sea - being interviewed by police, as utterly distraught as i've ever seen a person, understandably. Looking back on it I should have realised the severity of the situation sooner but perhaps without this advice I would have left it too late and neither would have made it.

wkearney99 5y ago

We had our 9mo child take 'Infant Swim Rescue' courses, basically anti-drowning lessons. The concern being the waters near us are cloudy and it'd be impossible to see someone if they went under. Classes went well. At a neighbors party a 2.5yo fell into the pool. I saw it happening and the little girl just SANK LIKE A STONE. With a panicked look on her face. Little feet hit the bottom, let out a blurp of air and did nothing. Her Dad was already in the air diving into the water before I could get up. The child was fine, thankfully. Her folks immediately asked about the classes I'd mentioned before. I can still see the complete bewilderment on that child's face. She just had NO IDEA what to do and would have drowned had it not been for quick actions. My point here is lessons are absolutely worth considering starting MUCH earlier than you might guess. This isn't learning to 'swim', it's learning how 'not to drown'.

ineedasername 5y ago
We had our 9mo child take 'Infant Swim Rescue' courses, basically anti-drowning lessons Can you expand on what that included? Was it focused on parents identifying children in distress, or did it in some way help train kids on what to do if in distress?
- moron4hire 5y ago
  They teach the kids to seek out the edge of the pool, to try to turn towards the edge and grab it if they fall off the edge, and to try to get at least an elbow up on the edge of the pool. I suspect a lot of it is a preamble to learning to swim at a later age. By exposing the children to water at a very early age, they learn to accept it without a lot of fear. It preconditions them so they are more successful at actual swim classes when they're a little older. We have two kids. I kick myself for not getting our youngest (3) started earlier. He didn't start classes until he was about 20 months. We all had a lot of health problems after he was born (all unrelated!), so his first year was a bit of a rollercoaster. Our oldest (5), we started at about 10 months, then had about a year and a half long break before starting him again. There's a stark difference in their comfort level in the water, even comparing how the 5-yr-old acted when he was 3, versus how his younger brother acts now. Yet they are the complete opposite regarding risk-taking behavior on dry ground.

lamontcg 5y ago

There's a video out there of three Indian guys who filmed themselves drowning when they went swimming in a pool of water. Most people seem to think it looks fake/staged. I won't bother linking to it, but I'm sure google can turn it up if you go looking.

srean 5y ago

I continue to be amazed by what lifeguards can do. Even if drowning looked like drowning there is just so much going on in a crowded pool I cannot imagine how people can pick on anything. To me it seems like an audio-visual version of drinking from a firehose. If I was in their place the best strategy that I could conceive of adopting would be to a for loop checking each one out, and perhaps dwelling a little longer on those who I think maybe particularly susceptible. But this would be a terrible strategy, too easy to miss someone, too much latency in revisit time. So a hat tip to all lifeguards on HN, deeply appreciate your work.

Natsu 5y ago
> Even if drowning looked like drowning there is just so much going on in a crowded pool I cannot imagine how people can pick on anything. To me it seems like an audio-visual version of drinking from a firehose. Watch for the kid playing on their float or doing other dangerous things, I'm convinced it's what most of the lifeguards are doing.

zengineer 5y ago

This article actually "saved my life". I read it back then in 2013 and in 2014 I almost drowned. Just before I felt that something was very wrong I remembered that this post said that if you drown it is already too late to scream for help. So I shout to my friend, who was also with me in the water, that I am about to drown. He then tried to help me but then he struggled too because of the current and the strong waves which came out of nowhere. It took us a lot of effort to get back to a point where we were able to stand. Until today I try to avoid to go deeper than I can actually stand.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
For your last sentence, do you mean "to this day"? "Until today" means something that ended/stopped today. Or are you a good enough swimmer now that you feel comfortable swimming in deep water?
- zengineer 5y ago
  Yes, to this day. Thanks! :)

MarkMarine 5y ago

One thing I learned in naval aviator swim qual was how easy it is to float for a very long time, given the right technique. (Called a dead man’s float. Link: https://www.sportsrec.com/prone-float-8623477.html https://www.sportsrec.com/prone-float-8623477.html ) We naturally try to swim with our heavy head out of the water, but with full lungs most people will easily float for almost an unlimited amount of time, only popping your head up for a breath. Somehow, the more nervous you are, the more you struggle to keep your head out of the water. Learning that I could float like this for hours if needed keeps me calm in the water, I recommend you all try it, and keep it in mind to fall back on if you ever start to panic in the water.

Rapzid 5y ago
I grew up on lakes in Florida. I wasn't taught to "swim" as much as I was taught to survive in water. Swim classes should be reframed as water survival classes IMHO.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  You have to find the right swim classes. We started our children in swim classes at 2 years old, but I was never very satisfied with the instruction they were receiving. I could see them struggling with things and the instructors would just sort of give them nudges in the water to get them to go in the direction they wanted, but weren't really working on explaining things. They also made the kids sit on the side of the pool when it wasn't their turn, so 2/3rds of the 30 minutes they were there, they weren't in the water, getting comfortable with it, learning not to fear it. When our youngest turned 3, they moved him up to a class where I no longer got in the pool with him, and he was not ready for that. I told them he wasn't ready and they didn't listen. Ultimately, he wasn't getting enough time in the water to get over his fear of getting his face wet, and the instructors were rushing him too much that he started hating going. So we took him out and I bought a 12' diameter, 20" deep pool for the back yard (oof, getting the ground leveled to set it up was quite an ordeal). He is still aprehensive when he first gets in, but usually after about 30 minutes he's asking me to put on goggles so he can stick his face in the water. He'll get there. Our oldest is 5. His first swim classes were at a different place entirely, but we moved out of there and had to find a new place (the place I hate). So I think he got a better foundation of familiarity with the water to then be able to get something out of the classes at the later school. He swims like a fish now. He recently attended a pool party for a friend's birthday and swam non-stop for pretty much 2 hours. The "large kiddie pool" or "small above ground pool" was a good balance of cost (I probably put $300 total into the pool, setting it up, and care equipment/chemicals) and capacity for what they need, which is really just "figuring out how their bodies work in water." The school that I hate is called Goldfish. They're a national chain. Avoid them, if at all possible.

okareaman 5y ago

After watching the videos around the time this article came out, I spotted a man drowning in the ocean. I was on a cliff looking down at some tourists not familiar with the ocean. I couldn't get down to him or make myself heard to shout a warning. Fortunately, he pulled out of it and got to shore. It was the most helpless I ever felt.

krumpet 5y ago

Something else that is important to mention is that young kids can easily slip into a pool or jacuzzi and not make a sound. We might think we would hear a "splash!", but that isn't necessarily true. I watched my daughter step of the ledge in a jacuzzi once and it was completely silent. One second she was walking and the next she was under water. Keep your eyes on young children near water at all times. If they are really young and can't yet swim, either be with them or have them wear an approved flotation device. Going under can happen in a split second when your back is turned.

lazyant 5y ago

Also: stay away from low head dams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYgODmmiAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYgODmmiAM

andrewem 5y ago

The author of this has some videos related to swimming (0). See for example the one called "1-10-1 Final" where he jumps into cold water that is about 40 degrees F (4 degrees C) and stays in for a number of minutes, showing what to do. [0] https://vimeo.com/mariovittone https://vimeo.com/mariovittone

seriousquestion 5y ago

What an odd title. Drowning does look like drowning. How could it be any other way, given that it's involuntary?

ineedasername 5y ago
It's pretty clear from the article that it means drowning IRL doesn't look like how drowning is portrayed in most media.

minitoar 5y ago

This is great, just shared it with my partner. Definitely eye opening to the danger. I wonder if there'd be some value in an automated throwable PFD launcher as an early response -- launch a pfd out over the top of the probable victim, and slowly tow it in to a shallow ramp.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Humans should do what humans are good at and come up with technological solutions to this. Maybe a small waistband flotation device that inflates via a CO2 cartridge once your fitbit recognizes that you're not breathing normally, giving you enough buoyancy to stop panicking and get to shore?

volume 5y ago

I wonder if the same applies to companies, departments or marriages?

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anonymousiam 5y ago

As a pre-teen who frequently went to the beach alone to bodysurf, I was once rescued from a riptide by an alert lifeguard. I was in a group of strangers who were all taller than me. The waves were pounding me relentlessly and I was in distress, but the group was oblivious. Fortunately the lifeguard was paying attention and came to my aid.

kergonath 5y ago

> And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why. That’s some really sound advice.

topkai22 5y ago

I lifeguarded throughout my teens. Definitely a good first job. However, almost 20 years on, I have difficulty turning off my sense of vigilance at pools/bodies of water. It’s not that I can’t enjoy pools or swimming, but you’ll see me scanning and silently counting heads, secretly sorting other swimmers by swim level, and quietly scooting over closer to where the kids are maybe getting a little too deep for their own good.

mlang23 5y ago

Wow. This is the kind of information that really should be spread more. The article, and the spotting game! In fact, if there were a fundraiser to promote the game, I would be willing to donate $20. It feels like this could make a difference if more people knew about it.

CalChris 5y ago

Drowning is the worst way to die. Think of it as waterboarding.

TheRealNGenius 5y ago

Drowning does look like drowning. Drowning might not look like what you think drowning looks like.

snet0 5y ago
I imagine you're kidding, but that's literally the point of the title. Of course X looks like X, but there are different contextual implications for what "drowning" refers to here. The fact the title takes the form "X doesn't look like X" obviously implies it's discussion two different contextual X's.
- TheRealNGenius 5y ago
  ok

hujun 5y ago

I was snorkeling Sunday, it was a beautiful morning with clear sky, I come back to beach after around 20 minutes in water to a shocking scene that a few life guards are doing CPR on a unresponsive man(or maybe an teenager); That water is packed with people, and it is not deep, only around waist of an adult at where people snorkeling; but this still happened, and I didn't even notice it while I was in the water ...

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Similar to how life-threatening depression often doesn't look like life-threatening depression

saint_olms 5y ago

I almost drowned this way when I was a child. Parents were less than a meter away, thought I was 'playing', since I was right next to the stairs. It's chilling that this response is still fairly specialist knowledge. I would be dead if it wasn't for a random woman walking by who happened to know about it at the right second.