9 ms·

Shallow water is dangerous too

159 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

chrismatheson 1y ago
Sorry you had that experience surprisetalk. Glad for you that it was all ok. Theres a saying that comes to my mind, I think it used to be a lot more common. "it only takes 6 inches of water to drown" Fall funny, get nocked out and land in a puddle or whatever, or cant lift your head out of it for whatever reason etc etc. I am VERY conscious of water & my kids, being a scuba diver myself I have a fair respect for the sea as well, and still we have had experiences that left us a little shook.
- Sniffnoy 1y ago
  I feel like I should point out here that surprisetalk (who posted the link) isn't jefftk (who wrote the post).
  - chrismatheson 1y ago
    thanks for the clarification, I didn't notice that obviously ;)
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Scary. Glad it turned out okay. The rule should be any standing water feature below 3' (1m) above grade should be enclosed by a fence to a height of 4' (1.3m) above grade if kids are anticipated to occupy the space. And, for oceans, rivers, and flood water: remember that 1m³ of water weighs 1.1 ton/1 tonne. Also dangerous: low head dams. https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machine-the-dangers-of-low-head-dams https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machin... Finally, don't sleep in or build homes in flash flood areas: (US): https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home
- timr 1y ago
  > The rule should be any standing water feature below 3' (1m) above grade should be enclosed by a fence to a height of 4' (1.3m) above grade if kids are anticipated to occupy the space. Children drowning is tragic, but this is nanny-state stuff. Are we to wrap literally any pond, lake, stream, fountain, etc. with a four-foot tall fence, because children exist? Imagine Central Park, but with the ponds surrounded by chain-link fences -- now that I think about it, I'm sort of amazed that New York City (where every other building is perpetually surrounded by ugly and useless scaffolding because one person died from falling bricks once) hasn't actually done this. At some point, parents have to take personal responsibility for where their children run off to. Per TFA, the state the story took place in already had a law stricter than the one you're saying should exist [1]. It didn't prevent this incident. To the author's credit, this is not a plea for better laws, but rather, one for better parental supervision -- they knew there was a water feature, and still let the child run free. So, PSA: teach your children to swim, and keep a close leash on the ones who don't know how yet. [1] In many states (including PA, apparently, per TFA), it's already required that you wrap any standing water greater than 24" deep with a fence, even if you don't have children or ever intend them to be there.
  - cam_l 1y ago
    Australia has some pretty strict laws around fencing pools and water features, requiring them to be fenced when deeper than 300mm (and very strict and onerous rules about the nature of the fencing). This applies to private or public water features. However, public water features also require life guards present during operating hours. If you as an owner, a professional, or even the labourer circumvent these rules and a child dies in the pool, you will likely be criminally charged. These laws started to be introduced in the late eighties as pools started to be more common place. So I was curious about how these laws had effected drowning deaths since they were introduced. Turns out that drowning deaths in pools for kids under 4 have decreased 5% per year for the last 20 years [0]. That's about 500 kids lives saved in twenty years at the expense of every pool in the country being fenced - about 1.6 million pools. (Australia has the highest per capita private pools in the world.) At an average cost of about $5k for a pool fence, you could suggest saving each child cost about $16m. Drowning deaths in other age groups and other locations have not really changed in that time. Even then, I have never seen any natural waterway, river, creek, beach or whatever being fenced, not even man made natural ponds in public parks. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1326020025000391 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S132602002...
- dmje 1y ago
  > The rule should be… Er, no? Learning about dangerous things is a critical part of growing up. Fencing off dangerous things does nothing. Education and care and relevant, proportionate ideas about safety is what’s needed here, not nanny state over-reach. (Source: parent of 2 boys who grew up in North Cornwall, where the community reaction to the (insanely dangerous) local sea is to learn about it, get in it and be aware of your limitations)
jcalx 1y ago
Related PSA that drowning doesn't look like drowning [0] — people don't yell, splash, and wave like you might expect and is "almost always a deceptively quiet event". [0] https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-children-how-to-know-when-someone-is-in-trouble-in-the-water.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-child...
- fsniper 1y ago
  There was a website where you were looking for drowning people in different situations. It was very informative and eye opening.
  - jcalx 1y ago
    Spot The Drowning Child [0] if we're thinking of the same one — lifeguarding is a hard job! [0] http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/
    - fsniper 1y ago
      Thank you! That's the one. I can't spot any of them and feel really bad
- cogman10 1y ago
  1 more PSA, Drowning is the #1 cause of death for people with autism. It generally happens when the person is being supervised by someone not their parents. If you are taking care of someone with autism around water, be super aware of that. A child with autism is 160x more likely to die from drowning vs the general population [1] [1] https://nationalautismassociation.org/resources/autism-safety-facts/ https://nationalautismassociation.org/resources/autism-safet...
  - rcakebread 1y ago
    It's one of the leading causes of death, not the #1.
- 1y ago
RyanOD 1y ago
On a related note. Don't assume if your child slips/falls into a pool, you will hear it. I happened to see my daughter step off a ledge in a hot tub once and she just vanished. Not a sound. If I had been facing the other direction, I would have had no idea.
- chasd00 1y ago
  As a child before I could swim I slipped and fell into a pool at a party at my grandparents house full of adults. A teen, who was inside the house, is the only one who saw me. He ran outside, dove into the pool, and saved my life. I remember my mom being hysterical and the teen being treated like a hero. I don’t remember his name he was a neighborhood kid known by my grandparents. (Maybe he cut their yard idk)
  - RyanOD 1y ago
    I believe his name is Clark Kent.
ProAm 1y ago
Water will f*ck you up period. It's way stronger, in-compressible and most people don't have the strength to deal with it.
ncruces 1y ago
I was struck by the comment that teaching kids young kids how to swim is uncommon in the US. I got my kids into swimming lessons on their first spring (was advised to avoid it during the winter). And it's part of primary education in my municipality, with the express purpose of reducing drownings: it's not sport, the curriculum is 100% geared towards familiarity and safety. Everyone's holidays are at a beach, so water safety is a constant concern, and looking at Our World in Data, Portugal had far worse numbers for drownings than the US in the 80s, but are much better now. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-death-rates https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-death-rates
- doug_durham 1y ago
  I personally don't think it's uncommon. All of my kids and all of the kids of my peers were taught to swim from a very young age. I remember bringing my kids into the pool before they could walk. The US is a big place and I'm certain there are areas where it is less common.
- kulahan 1y ago
  The US is a vast, varied geographic landscape. On the coastlines, obviously learning to swim is going to be more common than in the Arizona desert. Most of the US isn’t near some enormous body of water, even if small lakes and streams are nearby. It just isn’t reasonable to teach when most people might go their whole lives not needing to swim.
  - jarebear6expepj 1y ago
    You might not know, but many, many houses in AZ do have dug pools in their back yards. Fly over in an airplane sometime. More water access than I had growing up in the PNW when it wasn’t raining.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      Arizona was a stand in for "any place that doesn't have direct access to a large body of water." Even if Arizona has large retirement communities rich enough to have pools in most homes, my point stands.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
plasma_beam 1y ago
As a pool owner (3 feet in the shallow end and eight feet in the deep end) and parent of a three year old plus older kids that grew up with the pool — I can not fathom allowing a four year old to explore the yard on their own when this was there. Even if just two feet deep. A body of water that goes down into the ground (which this fountain appears to be) is dangerous to young children, period. I respect other peoples’ parenting styles but I personally don’t understand.
- jefftk 1y ago
  [author] I let my four year old do this because I didn't realize how dangerous it was. I've since learned more about the risks, both through personal experience and from reading more after, and I most certainly wouldn't make the same choice now.
  - plasma_beam 1y ago
    Got it, thanks for replying. Sorry this happened and glad she’s ok.
grujicd 1y ago
I almost drowned as a kid - in shallow water, and with a swim ring around my waist. I'll explain situation here as a cautionary tale for parents. That swim ring was a bit loose. I was standing in the water, probably jumping up and down like kids do. Somehow, I lost balance and as my upper body fell to the side the swim ring moved from my waist toward feet. It stayed there and pulled my feet upward while my head went below the water. I was powerless to return to the surface as feet were stuck in that floating ring, forcing me upside down. Fortunately, a family friend noticed the situation and pulled me from the water. Near-death situation, and it looked perfectly safe.
- cogman10 1y ago
  A wave pool almost got me (those should be banned). A wave took me underwater and there were too many people in the pool for me to easily get back up. I don't fully remember how I got out of it, only that I was pushed underwater (I think I managed to get to the shallower end)
  - Loughla 1y ago
    Wave pools fucking terrify me. How can the lifeguards even see if someone is struggling? There's always shit tons of people flailing around and yelling. They genuinely give me anxiety.
    - bglazer 1y ago
      http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ You should try this. I was a lifeguard for several years, and I think the key is that there are almost always signs a person can’t actually swim. They cling to a flotation device, they stand up to their tip toes in shallow water, they seem visibly uneasy in the deep. They’re the ones who are going to get in trouble, it’s comparatively quite rare for a strong swimmer to suddenly start drowning.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago
        I didn't know what a wave pool is (I've never been to a water park) but they do seem like an awful idea . Wikipedia says they can be hard to lifeguard: Safety Wave pools are more difficult to lifeguard than still pools as the moving water (sometimes combined with sun glare) make it difficult to watch all swimmers. Unlike passive pool safety camera systems, computer-automated drowning detection systems do not work in wave pools.[11] There are also safety concerns in regards to water quality, as wave pools are difficult to chlorinate. In the 1980s, three people died in the original 8-foot-deep (2.4 m) Tidal Wave pool at New Jersey's Action Park, which also kept the lifeguards busy rescuing patrons who overestimated their swimming ability. On the wave pool's opening day, it is said up to 100 people had to be rescued.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_pool#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_pool#Safety
susiecambria 1y ago
I was taught to swim as a kid and spent summer days in the water of Long Island Sound. As a maybe 10 or 11yo swimming at a Rhode Island beach, I was tossed into some rocks thanks to some pretty rough waves. I float, so I've never worried about heading in the right direction when under water. Even still, all that tossing and turning without a deep breath was damn scary. I sat out for a bit and then went back in. Not one adult I was with, or any others for that matter, came a runnin'. Years later, when I was taking the lifeguard class in high school, one of the first things we were taught is that you can drown on dry land with a tablespoon of water. I remember that to this day (that was back in 1980). These days, my head is on swivel at the pool. . . And I'm not the guard. Just paying attention to all the little people. And during water aerobics, I watch the adults in the pool who are not good swimmers. Water is scary. I have a healthy respect for it.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  > you can drown on dry land with a tablespoon of water I know you can down in very little water, but really a tablespoon? How does that work? Is this a literal claim, or more of a cautionary hyperbole?
  - michaelsshaw 1y ago
    I'd imagine it's hyperbole. A tbsp is likely enough to just snort and not have (too many) issues. People do drown in surprisingly shallow waters, however.
    - Filligree 1y ago
      It’s not hyperbole. It requires prior incapacitation, but if you’re unconscious then even a tiny amount of water can kill you. Similarly, intoxication vastly degrades the instincts that would otherwise keep you alive. I will never understand how people think getting drunk is _fun_.
      - michaelsshaw 1y ago
chmod775 1y ago
Kids can learn to swim (read: not panic and keep the important bits above water) pretty much the time they learn to walk. By 3-5 they can learn to properly swim without assistance from floats. You still shouldn't let them be around water unsupervised, but it can buy precious minutes when it matters and give parents some peace of mind.
- robocat 1y ago
  Being a strong swimmer isn't much help against overconfidence or panic. Learning how to be careful is really important, and weaker swimmers are often more cautious. The other big problem is that you might be safe but someone less skilled copies you. I was being very careful in knee high shallows near a well sign-posted rip in South America, and some teens got in and got taken out by it. Fortunately they made it back (nobody near could have helped them). Or even in the USA: "TikTok discovered scenic Eagle Falls; then 12 people drowned" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446535 I've definitely had some close calls from poor decisions in rivers and the sea (I can be reckless at times).
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    Yes, not panicking is a distinct skill from being capable and needs to be practiced explicitly. But the latter does tend to make the former easier.
xerox13ster 1y ago
Why is this back on the front page of the site? It was posted several days ago and has little to nothing to do with the content and context of the site. Why didn't the aunt think to just go get her instead of calling you over to say "Hey so I know you told her to stay away from the fountain, but what about her walking around the rim of it, is that dangerous or not?"
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]
- tomhow 1y ago
  It was put into the second chance pool by an editor (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). HN isn't just for tech, it's for anything that satisfies intellectual curiosity. It's not always obvious in advance what will turn out to satisfy intellectual curiosity, but if a good discussion develops, that ends up being the most important signal.
  - xerox13ster 1y ago
    I have more intellectual curiosity about base58 and base85 and Metas wrist based gesture control system than I do a neglectful father who nearly let his daughter drown because he was too thick to realize that if it was deep enough for water to get up to his toddler’s elbows that she could drown horizontally. It does not take a genius to figure this out. Would he have left his daughter in the bathtub unsupervised? Would he have let his daughter walk around the rim of the bathtub if it were up to her elbows? I can almost guarantee that he would not have let her go freely at a place with a 2 foot deep kiddie pool, so why let her run freely around the yard with the 2 foot deep mossy pit? To me, it’s a signal that this person should not ever be involved in any safety decisions in any product that interfaces with humans and the real world. They simply don’t have the proper risk assessment faculties.
- jefftk 1y ago
  [author] My aunt is in her 70s, and no longer very fast or loud. She was also much closer to me than to my daughter (but my view was blocked by vegetation). Even if she had seen my daughter fall in, getting me to respond would still have been much faster and more effective.
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
ghaff 1y ago
Doesn't help for young kids of course, but I went to a university that required you to pass a swimming test (or have equivalent credentials, PE swimming class, or exemption to graduate). Don't know how strictly enforced it was if push came to shove but it was there
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  Of all the things a university graduate should possess this seems pretty far down the list, when the most common causes of death in this demo could be addressed: car accidents, suicide, homicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related causes
  - PopAlongKid 1y ago
    I don't think the point was death prevention, just as most other things taught at university were not primarily about death prevention.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      I'm also not sure what a class about not killing people including yourself looks like. Universities do often have psychiatric programs. But swimming seems a fairly basic PE program as do other ones. Certainly swimming seems more fundamental than fencing or lots of other sports though those are of course often offered too.
- PopAlongKid 1y ago
  My university had the same policy. Despite having swim lessons as a child, I did not learn how to swim until university. I was finally able to swim the length of the pool using the side stroke, which along with the backstroke is the only thing I can barely manage. My problem with the crawl/freestyle (or whatever it's called) is breathing -- even when I was in good enough shape to run 5-minute miles on land, I would be totally out of breath before I even got to the end of the pool.
  - 1y ago
qchris 1y ago
I haven't heard anyone mention this rule, which I think is useful: Cars, dogs, and water. These are the big three common things that children interact with regularly that can, and will, cause irreparable harm or death with functionally no warning and virtually instantaneously. Kids also don't have the experience or the intuition to figure out if a situation is dangerous; cars move too fast, dogs are too hard to read, and water danger is hard to grasp even for adults (the number of people, including grown adults, I've seen panic and had to get pulled out after gleefully jumping into water where it turns out they can't reliably touch the bottom is fairly high). The first two require some strictness (i.e. being very clear about rules like never going near a road without an adult, and never hitting a dog or pulling it's ears), but water basically requires regular swimming lessons from qualified instructors. It's something I wish happened earlier, and that more families had easy access to.
- throw939339 1y ago
  [dead]
  - scott_w 1y ago
    He never said he hates dogs. He said they’re one of the things a child interacts with that can cause serious harm. Especially if the child hits the dog or pulls their ears (I assume trying to play).
- throw939339 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    > All dogs are completely safe Holding the phone wrong, surgery checklists, human factors, push the Do Everything Right button, etc
  - vakde 1y ago
    > all dogs are completely safe > mentions 10 rules to not be attacked Yeah doesn't add up
praptak 1y ago
Even a mop bucket holds enough water to cause deadly accidents. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2313873/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2313873/
littlestymaar 1y ago
This isn't shallow water by any means when kids are involved. There are routinely deadly accident where kids drawn in less than a foot of water (here[1] for example a 3yo in 23cm of water). [1]: https://www.midilibre.fr/2022/08/01/un-enfant-de-3-ans-se-noie-dans-23-centimetres-deau-dans-le-gers-10466909.php https://www.midilibre.fr/2022/08/01/un-enfant-de-3-ans-se-no...
eviks 1y ago
Is this only true if you don't teach kids how to swim?

159 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

Sorry you had that experience surprisetalk. Glad for you that it was all ok. Theres a saying that comes to my mind, I think it used to be a lot more common. "it only takes 6 inches of water to drown" Fall funny, get nocked out and land in a puddle or whatever, or cant lift your head out of it for whatever reason etc etc. I am VERY conscious of water & my kids, being a scuba diver myself I have a fair respect for the sea as well, and still we have had experiences that left us a little shook.

Sniffnoy 1y ago
I feel like I should point out here that surprisetalk (who posted the link) isn't jefftk (who wrote the post).
- chrismatheson 1y ago
  thanks for the clarification, I didn't notice that obviously ;)

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Scary. Glad it turned out okay. The rule should be any standing water feature below 3' (1m) above grade should be enclosed by a fence to a height of 4' (1.3m) above grade if kids are anticipated to occupy the space. And, for oceans, rivers, and flood water: remember that 1m³ of water weighs 1.1 ton/1 tonne. Also dangerous: low head dams. https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machine-the-dangers-of-low-head-dams https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machin... Finally, don't sleep in or build homes in flash flood areas: (US): https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home

timr 1y ago
> The rule should be any standing water feature below 3' (1m) above grade should be enclosed by a fence to a height of 4' (1.3m) above grade if kids are anticipated to occupy the space. Children drowning is tragic, but this is nanny-state stuff. Are we to wrap literally any pond, lake, stream, fountain, etc. with a four-foot tall fence, because children exist? Imagine Central Park, but with the ponds surrounded by chain-link fences -- now that I think about it, I'm sort of amazed that New York City (where every other building is perpetually surrounded by ugly and useless scaffolding because one person died from falling bricks once) hasn't actually done this. At some point, parents have to take personal responsibility for where their children run off to. Per TFA, the state the story took place in already had a law stricter than the one you're saying should exist [1]. It didn't prevent this incident. To the author's credit, this is not a plea for better laws, but rather, one for better parental supervision -- they knew there was a water feature, and still let the child run free. So, PSA: teach your children to swim, and keep a close leash on the ones who don't know how yet. [1] In many states (including PA, apparently, per TFA), it's already required that you wrap any standing water greater than 24" deep with a fence, even if you don't have children or ever intend them to be there.
- cam_l 1y ago
  Australia has some pretty strict laws around fencing pools and water features, requiring them to be fenced when deeper than 300mm (and very strict and onerous rules about the nature of the fencing). This applies to private or public water features. However, public water features also require life guards present during operating hours. If you as an owner, a professional, or even the labourer circumvent these rules and a child dies in the pool, you will likely be criminally charged. These laws started to be introduced in the late eighties as pools started to be more common place. So I was curious about how these laws had effected drowning deaths since they were introduced. Turns out that drowning deaths in pools for kids under 4 have decreased 5% per year for the last 20 years [0]. That's about 500 kids lives saved in twenty years at the expense of every pool in the country being fenced - about 1.6 million pools. (Australia has the highest per capita private pools in the world.) At an average cost of about $5k for a pool fence, you could suggest saving each child cost about $16m. Drowning deaths in other age groups and other locations have not really changed in that time. Even then, I have never seen any natural waterway, river, creek, beach or whatever being fenced, not even man made natural ponds in public parks. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1326020025000391 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S132602002...
dmje 1y ago
> The rule should be… Er, no? Learning about dangerous things is a critical part of growing up. Fencing off dangerous things does nothing. Education and care and relevant, proportionate ideas about safety is what’s needed here, not nanny state over-reach. (Source: parent of 2 boys who grew up in North Cornwall, where the community reaction to the (insanely dangerous) local sea is to learn about it, get in it and be aware of your limitations)

jcalx 1y ago

Related PSA that drowning doesn't look like drowning [0] — people don't yell, splash, and wave like you might expect and is "almost always a deceptively quiet event". [0] https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-children-how-to-know-when-someone-is-in-trouble-in-the-water.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-child...

fsniper 1y ago
There was a website where you were looking for drowning people in different situations. It was very informative and eye opening.
- jcalx 1y ago
  Spot The Drowning Child [0] if we're thinking of the same one — lifeguarding is a hard job! [0] http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/
  - fsniper 1y ago
    Thank you! That's the one. I can't spot any of them and feel really bad
cogman10 1y ago
1 more PSA, Drowning is the #1 cause of death for people with autism. It generally happens when the person is being supervised by someone not their parents. If you are taking care of someone with autism around water, be super aware of that. A child with autism is 160x more likely to die from drowning vs the general population [1] [1] https://nationalautismassociation.org/resources/autism-safety-facts/ https://nationalautismassociation.org/resources/autism-safet...
- rcakebread 1y ago
  It's one of the leading causes of death, not the #1.
1y ago

RyanOD 1y ago

On a related note. Don't assume if your child slips/falls into a pool, you will hear it. I happened to see my daughter step off a ledge in a hot tub once and she just vanished. Not a sound. If I had been facing the other direction, I would have had no idea.

chasd00 1y ago
As a child before I could swim I slipped and fell into a pool at a party at my grandparents house full of adults. A teen, who was inside the house, is the only one who saw me. He ran outside, dove into the pool, and saved my life. I remember my mom being hysterical and the teen being treated like a hero. I don’t remember his name he was a neighborhood kid known by my grandparents. (Maybe he cut their yard idk)
- RyanOD 1y ago
  I believe his name is Clark Kent.

ProAm 1y ago

Water will f*ck you up period. It's way stronger, in-compressible and most people don't have the strength to deal with it.

ncruces 1y ago

I was struck by the comment that teaching kids young kids how to swim is uncommon in the US. I got my kids into swimming lessons on their first spring (was advised to avoid it during the winter). And it's part of primary education in my municipality, with the express purpose of reducing drownings: it's not sport, the curriculum is 100% geared towards familiarity and safety. Everyone's holidays are at a beach, so water safety is a constant concern, and looking at Our World in Data, Portugal had far worse numbers for drownings than the US in the 80s, but are much better now. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-death-rates https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-death-rates

doug_durham 1y ago
I personally don't think it's uncommon. All of my kids and all of the kids of my peers were taught to swim from a very young age. I remember bringing my kids into the pool before they could walk. The US is a big place and I'm certain there are areas where it is less common.
kulahan 1y ago
The US is a vast, varied geographic landscape. On the coastlines, obviously learning to swim is going to be more common than in the Arizona desert. Most of the US isn’t near some enormous body of water, even if small lakes and streams are nearby. It just isn’t reasonable to teach when most people might go their whole lives not needing to swim.
- jarebear6expepj 1y ago
  You might not know, but many, many houses in AZ do have dug pools in their back yards. Fly over in an airplane sometime. More water access than I had growing up in the PNW when it wasn’t raining.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Arizona was a stand in for "any place that doesn't have direct access to a large body of water." Even if Arizona has large retirement communities rich enough to have pools in most homes, my point stands.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

plasma_beam 1y ago

As a pool owner (3 feet in the shallow end and eight feet in the deep end) and parent of a three year old plus older kids that grew up with the pool — I can not fathom allowing a four year old to explore the yard on their own when this was there. Even if just two feet deep. A body of water that goes down into the ground (which this fountain appears to be) is dangerous to young children, period. I respect other peoples’ parenting styles but I personally don’t understand.

jefftk 1y ago
[author] I let my four year old do this because I didn't realize how dangerous it was. I've since learned more about the risks, both through personal experience and from reading more after, and I most certainly wouldn't make the same choice now.
- plasma_beam 1y ago
  Got it, thanks for replying. Sorry this happened and glad she’s ok.

grujicd 1y ago

I almost drowned as a kid - in shallow water, and with a swim ring around my waist. I'll explain situation here as a cautionary tale for parents. That swim ring was a bit loose. I was standing in the water, probably jumping up and down like kids do. Somehow, I lost balance and as my upper body fell to the side the swim ring moved from my waist toward feet. It stayed there and pulled my feet upward while my head went below the water. I was powerless to return to the surface as feet were stuck in that floating ring, forcing me upside down. Fortunately, a family friend noticed the situation and pulled me from the water. Near-death situation, and it looked perfectly safe.

cogman10 1y ago
A wave pool almost got me (those should be banned). A wave took me underwater and there were too many people in the pool for me to easily get back up. I don't fully remember how I got out of it, only that I was pushed underwater (I think I managed to get to the shallower end)
- Loughla 1y ago
  Wave pools fucking terrify me. How can the lifeguards even see if someone is struggling? There's always shit tons of people flailing around and yelling. They genuinely give me anxiety.
  - bglazer 1y ago
    http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ You should try this. I was a lifeguard for several years, and I think the key is that there are almost always signs a person can’t actually swim. They cling to a flotation device, they stand up to their tip toes in shallow water, they seem visibly uneasy in the deep. They’re the ones who are going to get in trouble, it’s comparatively quite rare for a strong swimmer to suddenly start drowning.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago
      I didn't know what a wave pool is (I've never been to a water park) but they do seem like an awful idea . Wikipedia says they can be hard to lifeguard: Safety Wave pools are more difficult to lifeguard than still pools as the moving water (sometimes combined with sun glare) make it difficult to watch all swimmers. Unlike passive pool safety camera systems, computer-automated drowning detection systems do not work in wave pools.[11] There are also safety concerns in regards to water quality, as wave pools are difficult to chlorinate. In the 1980s, three people died in the original 8-foot-deep (2.4 m) Tidal Wave pool at New Jersey's Action Park, which also kept the lifeguards busy rescuing patrons who overestimated their swimming ability. On the wave pool's opening day, it is said up to 100 people had to be rescued.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_pool#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_pool#Safety

susiecambria 1y ago

I was taught to swim as a kid and spent summer days in the water of Long Island Sound. As a maybe 10 or 11yo swimming at a Rhode Island beach, I was tossed into some rocks thanks to some pretty rough waves. I float, so I've never worried about heading in the right direction when under water. Even still, all that tossing and turning without a deep breath was damn scary. I sat out for a bit and then went back in. Not one adult I was with, or any others for that matter, came a runnin'. Years later, when I was taking the lifeguard class in high school, one of the first things we were taught is that you can drown on dry land with a tablespoon of water. I remember that to this day (that was back in 1980). These days, my head is on swivel at the pool. . . And I'm not the guard. Just paying attention to all the little people. And during water aerobics, I watch the adults in the pool who are not good swimmers. Water is scary. I have a healthy respect for it.

pinkmuffinere 1y ago
> you can drown on dry land with a tablespoon of water I know you can down in very little water, but really a tablespoon? How does that work? Is this a literal claim, or more of a cautionary hyperbole?
- michaelsshaw 1y ago
  I'd imagine it's hyperbole. A tbsp is likely enough to just snort and not have (too many) issues. People do drown in surprisingly shallow waters, however.
  - Filligree 1y ago
    It’s not hyperbole. It requires prior incapacitation, but if you’re unconscious then even a tiny amount of water can kill you. Similarly, intoxication vastly degrades the instincts that would otherwise keep you alive. I will never understand how people think getting drunk is _fun_.
    - michaelsshaw 1y ago

chmod775 1y ago

Kids can learn to swim (read: not panic and keep the important bits above water) pretty much the time they learn to walk. By 3-5 they can learn to properly swim without assistance from floats. You still shouldn't let them be around water unsupervised, but it can buy precious minutes when it matters and give parents some peace of mind.

robocat 1y ago
Being a strong swimmer isn't much help against overconfidence or panic. Learning how to be careful is really important, and weaker swimmers are often more cautious. The other big problem is that you might be safe but someone less skilled copies you. I was being very careful in knee high shallows near a well sign-posted rip in South America, and some teens got in and got taken out by it. Fortunately they made it back (nobody near could have helped them). Or even in the USA: "TikTok discovered scenic Eagle Falls; then 12 people drowned" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446535 I've definitely had some close calls from poor decisions in rivers and the sea (I can be reckless at times).
- tbrownaw 1y ago
  Yes, not panicking is a distinct skill from being capable and needs to be practiced explicitly. But the latter does tend to make the former easier.

xerox13ster 1y ago

Why is this back on the front page of the site? It was posted several days ago and has little to nothing to do with the content and context of the site. Why didn't the aunt think to just go get her instead of calling you over to say "Hey so I know you told her to stay away from the fountain, but what about her walking around the rim of it, is that dangerous or not?"

aaron695 1y ago
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tomhow 1y ago
It was put into the second chance pool by an editor (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). HN isn't just for tech, it's for anything that satisfies intellectual curiosity. It's not always obvious in advance what will turn out to satisfy intellectual curiosity, but if a good discussion develops, that ends up being the most important signal.
- xerox13ster 1y ago
  I have more intellectual curiosity about base58 and base85 and Metas wrist based gesture control system than I do a neglectful father who nearly let his daughter drown because he was too thick to realize that if it was deep enough for water to get up to his toddler’s elbows that she could drown horizontally. It does not take a genius to figure this out. Would he have left his daughter in the bathtub unsupervised? Would he have let his daughter walk around the rim of the bathtub if it were up to her elbows? I can almost guarantee that he would not have let her go freely at a place with a 2 foot deep kiddie pool, so why let her run freely around the yard with the 2 foot deep mossy pit? To me, it’s a signal that this person should not ever be involved in any safety decisions in any product that interfaces with humans and the real world. They simply don’t have the proper risk assessment faculties.
jefftk 1y ago
[author] My aunt is in her 70s, and no longer very fast or loud. She was also much closer to me than to my daughter (but my view was blocked by vegetation). Even if she had seen my daughter fall in, getting me to respond would still have been much faster and more effective.

aaron695 1y ago

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ghaff 1y ago

Doesn't help for young kids of course, but I went to a university that required you to pass a swimming test (or have equivalent credentials, PE swimming class, or exemption to graduate). Don't know how strictly enforced it was if push came to shove but it was there

skeeter2020 1y ago
Of all the things a university graduate should possess this seems pretty far down the list, when the most common causes of death in this demo could be addressed: car accidents, suicide, homicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related causes
- PopAlongKid 1y ago
  I don't think the point was death prevention, just as most other things taught at university were not primarily about death prevention.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    I'm also not sure what a class about not killing people including yourself looks like. Universities do often have psychiatric programs. But swimming seems a fairly basic PE program as do other ones. Certainly swimming seems more fundamental than fencing or lots of other sports though those are of course often offered too.
PopAlongKid 1y ago
My university had the same policy. Despite having swim lessons as a child, I did not learn how to swim until university. I was finally able to swim the length of the pool using the side stroke, which along with the backstroke is the only thing I can barely manage. My problem with the crawl/freestyle (or whatever it's called) is breathing -- even when I was in good enough shape to run 5-minute miles on land, I would be totally out of breath before I even got to the end of the pool.
- 1y ago

qchris 1y ago

I haven't heard anyone mention this rule, which I think is useful: Cars, dogs, and water. These are the big three common things that children interact with regularly that can, and will, cause irreparable harm or death with functionally no warning and virtually instantaneously. Kids also don't have the experience or the intuition to figure out if a situation is dangerous; cars move too fast, dogs are too hard to read, and water danger is hard to grasp even for adults (the number of people, including grown adults, I've seen panic and had to get pulled out after gleefully jumping into water where it turns out they can't reliably touch the bottom is fairly high). The first two require some strictness (i.e. being very clear about rules like never going near a road without an adult, and never hitting a dog or pulling it's ears), but water basically requires regular swimming lessons from qualified instructors. It's something I wish happened earlier, and that more families had easy access to.

throw939339 1y ago
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- scott_w 1y ago
  He never said he hates dogs. He said they’re one of the things a child interacts with that can cause serious harm. Especially if the child hits the dog or pulls their ears (I assume trying to play).
throw939339 1y ago
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- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  > All dogs are completely safe Holding the phone wrong, surgery checklists, human factors, push the Do Everything Right button, etc
- vakde 1y ago
  > all dogs are completely safe > mentions 10 rules to not be attacked Yeah doesn't add up

praptak 1y ago

Even a mop bucket holds enough water to cause deadly accidents. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2313873/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2313873/

littlestymaar 1y ago

This isn't shallow water by any means when kids are involved. There are routinely deadly accident where kids drawn in less than a foot of water (here[1] for example a 3yo in 23cm of water). [1]: https://www.midilibre.fr/2022/08/01/un-enfant-de-3-ans-se-noie-dans-23-centimetres-deau-dans-le-gers-10466909.php https://www.midilibre.fr/2022/08/01/un-enfant-de-3-ans-se-no...

eviks 1y ago

Is this only true if you don't teach kids how to swim?