4 ms·

>> 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

>> 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.
      - aeternum 2y ago
        Of course, there are still non-banned activities but it's not only swimming. Cheerleading, football, skateboarding, even lifting are risky activities and do have some chance of injury. It's easy to cite the injury stats for these and use that as a reason to avoid, but my point is we rarely look at the other side. Kids' interest differs and the more activities we ban, the more we curtail the set of potential interests that get kids off the couch and outside.
        Apocryphon 2y ago
        My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool. Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are not actually motivated by saving lives. I get that while modern society is often overprotective, but this sort of hysteria about hysteria seems to be un-nuanced and one-sided. I mean, you want to talk skateboarding, apparently they're letting kids compete these days and 9-year old Ema Kawakami became the very first person to land three 900s in a row, something that Tony Hawk spent years trying to accomplish. https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425 https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425?

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.
    - aeternum 2y ago
      Of course, there are still non-banned activities but it's not only swimming. Cheerleading, football, skateboarding, even lifting are risky activities and do have some chance of injury. It's easy to cite the injury stats for these and use that as a reason to avoid, but my point is we rarely look at the other side. Kids' interest differs and the more activities we ban, the more we curtail the set of potential interests that get kids off the couch and outside.
      - Apocryphon 2y ago
        My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool. Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are not actually motivated by saving lives. I get that while modern society is often overprotective, but this sort of hysteria about hysteria seems to be un-nuanced and one-sided. I mean, you want to talk skateboarding, apparently they're letting kids compete these days and 9-year old Ema Kawakami became the very first person to land three 900s in a row, something that Tony Hawk spent years trying to accomplish. https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425 https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425?