8 ms·

If it's $12k and requires an operator this seems more of a band-aid than anything. Where are the operators going to come from? And for a lot of places the o

If it's $12k and requires an operator this seems more of a band-aid than anything. Where are the operators going to come from? And for a lot of places the operator + device probably pays for 3 lifeguards or swim instructors. Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. I used to be a lifeguard and swim instructor and it has mostly felt like things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years. Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability, and after a generation of this there is an undersupply of people who can teach others to swim. Now some municipalities in my area are trying to ban swimming in open water. They closed all the pools to save money, it gets hotter and hotter and more people who can't swim go in the oceans/rivers/ponds/lakes to try and cool off. A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat. The answer is not to fine them for going in the water. It's pretty frustrating to think about all this after watching the Olympic trials this past weekend.

sandworm101 2y ago
>> A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat. And a great many of those poor decisions are somewhat based on drugs/alcohol. The kid drowning because in a rip off a popular beach is rare. The grown man drowning stuck under his own dock, even in his own pool, on a friday night is not. We shouldn't deprive kids of water access because grownups make poor decisions while high.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Just another example of the US’s excessive liability culture that is gumming up the gears of society.
  - quasse 2y ago
    My alma matter (which is directly on a lake) has been gradually banning all unsupervised swimming for students because someone gets blackout drunk and drowns themself in the lake every year. I think it's a tragedy; I spent a lot of my formative time enjoying the lake and the outdoors (not to mention it being one of the few healthy ways to escape the stress of engineering school). The school is also gradually eroding all of the student run outdoor clubs (sailing, mountaineering) because they aren't directly controlled by the university bureaucratic system. Young adults today are having that taken away from them and replaced with nothing.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      There's a highly dubious serial killer theory that exists simply because so many young college men drown while drunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory
      - Projectiboga 2y ago
        I heard a stat once that most adult male drowning victims had their fly down. This points to someone very drunk trying to pee into a body of water at night. One should always pee away from open water. I recall the suggested distance 100 feet for pee and more for number two.
    - aeternum 2y ago
      What's interesting is that we may be causing much more loss of life with these bans than we are saving. We ban or severely restrict many physical activities then we wonder why childhood obesity is so high and why so many kids have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular issues. Since the link is indirect we ignore it and a heart-attack is just considered bad luck.
      - Apocryphon 2y ago
        Swimming is not the only form of cardiovascular exercise and open water is not the only place to swim.
rich_sasha 2y ago
I once went on an organized swim with wild marine mammals. What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels - I mean, guys, clue is in the activity title! To be clear, this wasn't some swimming with captive dolphins, we were a few hrs out of port, in the middle of nowhere, in deep water.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels I get the relationship between buoyancy aids and being unable to swim. But snorkels? If you can't swim, a snorkel doesn't do anything to help you. What a snorkel helps with is making it more convenient to see things that are underwater.
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    A buoyancy aids doesn't necessarily keep your head above water on its own. With a snorkel you can float head down.
whalesalad 2y ago
I think we just need to be ok with the fact that people will die. Trying to attain a zero incident or zero death policy is completly unrealistic.
- throwup238 2y ago
  Some of you may drown, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!
  - abfan1127 2y ago
    I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water in ways that require swim skills. Drownings are tragic, however, we can't 100% prevent things without severe negative consequences.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      People can swim in bodies of water without fierce currents.
      - jpollock 2y ago
        People drown in swimming pools all the time.
        Anon84 2y ago
        People drown in bathtubs all the time... There are only two obvious ways to minimize risk: teach people to swim or prevent people from swimming. Guess which one is more cost-effective?
        2y ago
burningChrome 2y ago
>> Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. Couldn't agree more. I remember growing up and my parents required myself and my brothers to take swim lessons all the way through junior lifesaving course which was the last course the city offered and you had to pass all the lower classes in order to get into the lifeguard class. These classes were always taught over the Summer and every class had 2-30 kids in it. The lifeguard class was slightly less around 10-15 kids, but still a large class. I remember wanting to teach my daughter how to swim. The local pool didn't have lessons and neither did the YMCA, so we had to do one of these "mall-type" lessons where some company had a pool in some strip mall and you had one instructor and like 3 kids in the class. In an hour, then had maybe seven or eight reps of learning different techniques. I was just stunned it had changed so drastically. I remember being in the pool for almost two hours every day, every morning for my Summers, getting ten to fifteen minutes on each technique day after day. I remember riding on some rickety old school bus at 7am with a bunch of other kids I didn't know. I don't know if its because there is no value for cities or the Y to take swimming lessons on any more, or the money and liability is too much. Either way, kids are not prepared to deal with being out in the open water, either in a pool or out in more dangerous areas like the ocean.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Goldfish has been doing this a lot in the Seattle area, but we only get 30 minutes and it is often 4 kids. Our YMCAs offer classes as well, but it is still 30 minutes with a few more kids, so not much different. The pandemic really pulled a number on delaying swim lessons, so there is a huge backlog along with a lot of kids who aren't catching up yet. My 7 year old is afraid to do water slides still, and he has been in class for about 9 months now. I know we got to that level more quickly when I was a kid.
vel0city 2y ago
Using the term "robot", which gives the impression of some kind of automation here, is the disconnect here I think. In the end the operator is probably just using a remote from the beach side. Looking at the actual demonstration of it, it makes some sense to me. Maybe not not at $12k plus some kind of support contract with it, but it makes some sense. A couple of things to think about: One big part about trying to save someone in the water, especially water where you can't stand in, is "throw, don't go". That person out there will likely pull you under and drown you, even if they don't mean to. This makes it so the thing you "throw" has a hell of a lot more range. That thing ripped through the water pretty quick to get to the person drowning. A lifeguard wouldn't be that fast to get out there. Having them quickly ready to toss in and have a lifeguard in a tower with good visibility get out there to a swimmer that just needs a stable float and help coming back in. Getting to a person struggling in the water before they go under is very important especially in water that isn't very clear. With how fast it was going, I bet it would also do well to help pull someone in that's struggling to fight a current, something a lifeguard would also have a hard time (sometimes nearly impossible) doing.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Perhaps some kind of precision artillery/guided rocket would work as well. If you just need to get floatation device to swimmer, going through the air might work well (if the wind isn't strong, of course).
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    For 12k, just attach a flotation device to a big octa-drone and drop it from the air. Then you can stay on station and use the camera to guide rescuers to the person. You could probably even drag a line out to someone attached a flotation device and reel them in.
pomian 2y ago
Dartmouth college (USA), had a requirement that you must pass a swimming test to receive your degree. ( Obviously - if you didn't know how, there were free lessons.) They have recently dropped that requirement! ( After more than 200 years.) Why? At least with the old rules, you always knew that if a person was a Dartmouth grad, you could push them in the water. Or, at least, not worry about boating with them.
- Keyframe 2y ago
  In (ex) Yugoslavia as kids in kindergarten I attended, we were required to take swimming and skiing lessons and pass test. Later in the primary school same thing with orienteering. It was all masked as fun activities, and truth be told they were, but now I see the bigger picture. I'm still putting my kids through those as well; It's both fun and damn useful.
- luma 2y ago
  These days, you can't really push anyone into the water unless you're ready to pick up the bill for whatever non-waterproof electronics they current have on their person. It's hard to explain to young people exactly how or why it was, once upon a time, perfectly acceptable to toss people into the nearest body of water with no explanation needed or offered. I think we lost something along the way :D
- nkurz 2y ago
  Williams College (US school similar to Dartmouth in culture but smaller) had the same requirement for over 100 years. It was removed in 2022 largely out of concern that it had "disparate impact" on non-white students. Now those students are free to graduate without the embarrassment of being taught how to prevent themselves from drowning: https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scrap-swim-requirement/ https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scra....
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Most Chinese universities still have this requirement, but my wife was able to pass the test without knowing how to swim (the instructor didn't really pay attention during the test). We fixed that before we went snorkeling on our honeymoon to Bali.
robomartin 2y ago
> things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years My kids and I are trained and experienced in open water and lake swimming. Still, every time we go out, we use one of these: https://www.google.com/search?q=swim+buoy https://www.google.com/search?q=swim+buoy I've had the experience of being in a large lake with very high winds. It felt like being in an angry ocean. Having a swim buoy provided for a few opportunities to stop, chill, catch my breath and plan my route. You have to respect, not fear, water. Fear means you are not rational and likely have no ability to control outcomes or make sensible decisions. What you need if your SCUBA gear malfunctions 75 feet down is to be rational. Anything else can kill you. When I taught my kids (and a few other people) how to swim, the first skill they had to learn was to be able to float/bob in the middle of the deep end of the pool for one hour. Can't touch the bottom. The only way you are going to do that is to first learn to relax and, to some extent, be one with the water. Once someone realizes they can just stop and bob in place without moving much, their relationship with water changes dramatically. From there to swimming just means slowly adding speed and direction. Style doesn't matter. Once they can stay in the middle of the pool until they are bored silly, learning how to move through water efficiently is the next logical step. The entire experience, if taught well, is very organic. More importantly, it teaches people that they can survive in water and that they have the ability to pause and use their brains. > Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability True enough. We live near a lake. I am good friends with the lifeguards from years of my kids being in the Junior Lifeguard program. They also know me from kayaking in the lake during Santa Ana winds (full dry suit and PFD). A few years ago I was walking around the lake during a nice afternoon. I was walking in water up to my ankles. It felt good. One of the lifeguards I knew well, came up to me on his boat to let me know that was illegal. He could technically fine me and even have me arrested if I refused to abide by the rules. Like I said, he knew me, so it was more of a conversation than a threat to action. He didn't like the rule any more than I did. However, they (the lifeguards) always told me that people do stupid shit at the lake and several have drowned over the years. And nobody wants to see that happen. So, nobody can even touch the water except where the beach is open and you have half a dozen lifeguards on duty. Brilliant.
prosaic-hacker 2y ago
Your desire that everyone learns to swim is laudable but as with all useful skills it takes work. Our completely distracted society is loosing skills like map reading, making change, driving manual, tying knots(still learning) ... (Sounds like a reason for Scouting and 4H) I will even posit shoelace tying given all the Velcro shoes. 12K is a lot for ROV (other comments suggest the could be cheaper ones) but the good news is the operator has had 10,000 hours practice on a Xbox. The Engineer/PM/Accountant in me hopes the ROV is reusable and will be used over many years spreading the cost out over time saving many people. Hopefully the saved will come to Jesus (pronounced "heysous"), I mean the local teen working at the swimming pool who has a knack for teaching adults to swim.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
rldjbpin 2y ago
depending on the public funding present, it can be seen as a safer alternative. to replace having people responsible to risk their lives to save those who fall by accident or those risking their lives without taking precautions. this to me seems like how one should make it mandatory for everyone to learn how to drive a car if you want to sit in one, or drive a boat for being on one in the lake in the first place. swimming is cool but achieving this is much more unrealistic than attempting with this otherwise half-measure.

sandworm101 2y ago

>> A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat. And a great many of those poor decisions are somewhat based on drugs/alcohol. The kid drowning because in a rip off a popular beach is rare. The grown man drowning stuck under his own dock, even in his own pool, on a friday night is not. We shouldn't deprive kids of water access because grownups make poor decisions while high.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Just another example of the US’s excessive liability culture that is gumming up the gears of society.
- quasse 2y ago
  My alma matter (which is directly on a lake) has been gradually banning all unsupervised swimming for students because someone gets blackout drunk and drowns themself in the lake every year. I think it's a tragedy; I spent a lot of my formative time enjoying the lake and the outdoors (not to mention it being one of the few healthy ways to escape the stress of engineering school). The school is also gradually eroding all of the student run outdoor clubs (sailing, mountaineering) because they aren't directly controlled by the university bureaucratic system. Young adults today are having that taken away from them and replaced with nothing.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    There's a highly dubious serial killer theory that exists simply because so many young college men drown while drunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory
    - Projectiboga 2y ago
      I heard a stat once that most adult male drowning victims had their fly down. This points to someone very drunk trying to pee into a body of water at night. One should always pee away from open water. I recall the suggested distance 100 feet for pee and more for number two.
  - aeternum 2y ago
    What's interesting is that we may be causing much more loss of life with these bans than we are saving. We ban or severely restrict many physical activities then we wonder why childhood obesity is so high and why so many kids have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular issues. Since the link is indirect we ignore it and a heart-attack is just considered bad luck.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      Swimming is not the only form of cardiovascular exercise and open water is not the only place to swim.

rich_sasha 2y ago

I once went on an organized swim with wild marine mammals. What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels - I mean, guys, clue is in the activity title! To be clear, this wasn't some swimming with captive dolphins, we were a few hrs out of port, in the middle of nowhere, in deep water.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
> What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels I get the relationship between buoyancy aids and being unable to swim. But snorkels? If you can't swim, a snorkel doesn't do anything to help you. What a snorkel helps with is making it more convenient to see things that are underwater.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  A buoyancy aids doesn't necessarily keep your head above water on its own. With a snorkel you can float head down.

whalesalad 2y ago

I think we just need to be ok with the fact that people will die. Trying to attain a zero incident or zero death policy is completly unrealistic.

throwup238 2y ago
Some of you may drown, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!
- abfan1127 2y ago
  I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water in ways that require swim skills. Drownings are tragic, however, we can't 100% prevent things without severe negative consequences.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    People can swim in bodies of water without fierce currents.
    - jpollock 2y ago
      People drown in swimming pools all the time.
      - Anon84 2y ago
        People drown in bathtubs all the time... There are only two obvious ways to minimize risk: teach people to swim or prevent people from swimming. Guess which one is more cost-effective?
        2y ago

burningChrome 2y ago

>> Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. Couldn't agree more. I remember growing up and my parents required myself and my brothers to take swim lessons all the way through junior lifesaving course which was the last course the city offered and you had to pass all the lower classes in order to get into the lifeguard class. These classes were always taught over the Summer and every class had 2-30 kids in it. The lifeguard class was slightly less around 10-15 kids, but still a large class. I remember wanting to teach my daughter how to swim. The local pool didn't have lessons and neither did the YMCA, so we had to do one of these "mall-type" lessons where some company had a pool in some strip mall and you had one instructor and like 3 kids in the class. In an hour, then had maybe seven or eight reps of learning different techniques. I was just stunned it had changed so drastically. I remember being in the pool for almost two hours every day, every morning for my Summers, getting ten to fifteen minutes on each technique day after day. I remember riding on some rickety old school bus at 7am with a bunch of other kids I didn't know. I don't know if its because there is no value for cities or the Y to take swimming lessons on any more, or the money and liability is too much. Either way, kids are not prepared to deal with being out in the open water, either in a pool or out in more dangerous areas like the ocean.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Goldfish has been doing this a lot in the Seattle area, but we only get 30 minutes and it is often 4 kids. Our YMCAs offer classes as well, but it is still 30 minutes with a few more kids, so not much different. The pandemic really pulled a number on delaying swim lessons, so there is a huge backlog along with a lot of kids who aren't catching up yet. My 7 year old is afraid to do water slides still, and he has been in class for about 9 months now. I know we got to that level more quickly when I was a kid.

vel0city 2y ago

Using the term "robot", which gives the impression of some kind of automation here, is the disconnect here I think. In the end the operator is probably just using a remote from the beach side. Looking at the actual demonstration of it, it makes some sense to me. Maybe not not at $12k plus some kind of support contract with it, but it makes some sense. A couple of things to think about: One big part about trying to save someone in the water, especially water where you can't stand in, is "throw, don't go". That person out there will likely pull you under and drown you, even if they don't mean to. This makes it so the thing you "throw" has a hell of a lot more range. That thing ripped through the water pretty quick to get to the person drowning. A lifeguard wouldn't be that fast to get out there. Having them quickly ready to toss in and have a lifeguard in a tower with good visibility get out there to a swimmer that just needs a stable float and help coming back in. Getting to a person struggling in the water before they go under is very important especially in water that isn't very clear. With how fast it was going, I bet it would also do well to help pull someone in that's struggling to fight a current, something a lifeguard would also have a hard time (sometimes nearly impossible) doing.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Perhaps some kind of precision artillery/guided rocket would work as well. If you just need to get floatation device to swimmer, going through the air might work well (if the wind isn't strong, of course).
- ok_dad 2y ago
  For 12k, just attach a flotation device to a big octa-drone and drop it from the air. Then you can stay on station and use the camera to guide rescuers to the person. You could probably even drag a line out to someone attached a flotation device and reel them in.

pomian 2y ago

Dartmouth college (USA), had a requirement that you must pass a swimming test to receive your degree. ( Obviously - if you didn't know how, there were free lessons.) They have recently dropped that requirement! ( After more than 200 years.) Why? At least with the old rules, you always knew that if a person was a Dartmouth grad, you could push them in the water. Or, at least, not worry about boating with them.

Keyframe 2y ago
In (ex) Yugoslavia as kids in kindergarten I attended, we were required to take swimming and skiing lessons and pass test. Later in the primary school same thing with orienteering. It was all masked as fun activities, and truth be told they were, but now I see the bigger picture. I'm still putting my kids through those as well; It's both fun and damn useful.
luma 2y ago
These days, you can't really push anyone into the water unless you're ready to pick up the bill for whatever non-waterproof electronics they current have on their person. It's hard to explain to young people exactly how or why it was, once upon a time, perfectly acceptable to toss people into the nearest body of water with no explanation needed or offered. I think we lost something along the way :D
nkurz 2y ago
Williams College (US school similar to Dartmouth in culture but smaller) had the same requirement for over 100 years. It was removed in 2022 largely out of concern that it had "disparate impact" on non-white students. Now those students are free to graduate without the embarrassment of being taught how to prevent themselves from drowning: https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scrap-swim-requirement/ https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scra....
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Most Chinese universities still have this requirement, but my wife was able to pass the test without knowing how to swim (the instructor didn't really pay attention during the test). We fixed that before we went snorkeling on our honeymoon to Bali.

robomartin 2y ago

> things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years My kids and I are trained and experienced in open water and lake swimming. Still, every time we go out, we use one of these: https://www.google.com/search?q=swim+buoy https://www.google.com/search?q=swim+buoy I've had the experience of being in a large lake with very high winds. It felt like being in an angry ocean. Having a swim buoy provided for a few opportunities to stop, chill, catch my breath and plan my route. You have to respect, not fear, water. Fear means you are not rational and likely have no ability to control outcomes or make sensible decisions. What you need if your SCUBA gear malfunctions 75 feet down is to be rational. Anything else can kill you. When I taught my kids (and a few other people) how to swim, the first skill they had to learn was to be able to float/bob in the middle of the deep end of the pool for one hour. Can't touch the bottom. The only way you are going to do that is to first learn to relax and, to some extent, be one with the water. Once someone realizes they can just stop and bob in place without moving much, their relationship with water changes dramatically. From there to swimming just means slowly adding speed and direction. Style doesn't matter. Once they can stay in the middle of the pool until they are bored silly, learning how to move through water efficiently is the next logical step. The entire experience, if taught well, is very organic. More importantly, it teaches people that they can survive in water and that they have the ability to pause and use their brains. > Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability True enough. We live near a lake. I am good friends with the lifeguards from years of my kids being in the Junior Lifeguard program. They also know me from kayaking in the lake during Santa Ana winds (full dry suit and PFD). A few years ago I was walking around the lake during a nice afternoon. I was walking in water up to my ankles. It felt good. One of the lifeguards I knew well, came up to me on his boat to let me know that was illegal. He could technically fine me and even have me arrested if I refused to abide by the rules. Like I said, he knew me, so it was more of a conversation than a threat to action. He didn't like the rule any more than I did. However, they (the lifeguards) always told me that people do stupid shit at the lake and several have drowned over the years. And nobody wants to see that happen. So, nobody can even touch the water except where the beach is open and you have half a dozen lifeguards on duty. Brilliant.

prosaic-hacker 2y ago

Your desire that everyone learns to swim is laudable but as with all useful skills it takes work. Our completely distracted society is loosing skills like map reading, making change, driving manual, tying knots(still learning) ... (Sounds like a reason for Scouting and 4H) I will even posit shoelace tying given all the Velcro shoes. 12K is a lot for ROV (other comments suggest the could be cheaper ones) but the good news is the operator has had 10,000 hours practice on a Xbox. The Engineer/PM/Accountant in me hopes the ROV is reusable and will be used over many years spreading the cost out over time saving many people. Hopefully the saved will come to Jesus (pronounced "heysous"), I mean the local teen working at the swimming pool who has a knack for teaching adults to swim.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

rldjbpin 2y ago

depending on the public funding present, it can be seen as a safer alternative. to replace having people responsible to risk their lives to save those who fall by accident or those risking their lives without taking precautions. this to me seems like how one should make it mandatory for everyone to learn how to drive a car if you want to sit in one, or drive a boat for being on one in the lake in the first place. swimming is cool but achieving this is much more unrealistic than attempting with this otherwise half-measure.