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Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

• PreetikaThakur 11y ago
  What a video!
• slr555 11y ago
  In general drowning is a poorly understood phenomenon among the general population. Portrayals in film and TV contribute much to many misconceptions. While there has been considerable attention paid to the fact that the act of drowning doesn't "look" like the film/TV stereotype, less focus has been placed on the sequalae of a drowning event. The alveoli, which are the functional units of our lungs where gas exchange occurs are quite delicate. Natural surfactants facilitate the work of the alveoli. Water and the contaminants it may hold disrupt these surfactants and can lead to short to intermediate term post "resuscitation" morbidity and mortality. Victims do not leap to their feet and return to saving the world as they do in the movies. Any drowning victim should be seen in the emergency department even if they are revived on scene.
  • lorenbaxter 11y ago
    This deserves more attention. tl;dr is that if someone almost drowned or inhaled some water, they need to go to the ER immediately even if they seem better afterwards.
• hluska 11y ago
  That is simply disturbing. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have seen that, but I honestly pray I never have to see that happen in front of me. This is a great use of the web. Good job!
• Mithaldu 11y ago
  Good idea. Looking at it first though i was a little confused. The video plays immediately, so i didn't realize it was interactive because i had no time to read the text and no introductory explanation. It would also help if the video automatically scaled to fill as much of the window as possible. On my screen it was a quarter of the entire screen and everything was really tiny.
  • omegaworks 11y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. I'm using a position: relative box as a part of the game mechanic for finding the drowner, so your browser's zoom functions should work fine. I'll look into a good cross-browser auto zoom.
    • Mithaldu 11y ago
      Only a workaround, but i can confirm browser zoom does work fine. :)
    • DEinspanjer 11y ago
      Thank you for this and I hate you. I actually teared up a couple of times as the life guards pulled the kids to safety. I also had some trouble getting the hang of what I was supposed to do. I'd recommend an interstitial to get people going before the video starts. Maybe something like this? You are about to watch a recorded video of typical activity at a pool. Help the life guard watch all the swimmers in your half of the pool. If you see someone who needs help from the life guard, click on them in the video and check the results at the bottom of the video. Since life guards can't do it (as much as they might wish they could!) don't rewind, pause or click the video while being tested unless you would be ready to blow the whistle, jump in, and swim to someone.
      • ipp 11y ago
        I agree. Clicking the video didn't seem to work for me the first time, so I just figured that wasn't how the site worked and wasn't entirely sure why this was a "Show HN" as I assumed it was probably interactive but seemed not. More helpful (and prominent) text than a single line in the bottom without an autoplay video would have helped, as the text there can be out of view/hard to notice.
  • ohitsdom 11y ago
    Wow, I didn't even know you could click to spot the kid! I just watched the video, read the text, then watched more videos on youtube.
• ef4 11y ago
  Brilliantly done.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• fredleblanc 11y ago
  Holy cow that was tense, and I cheated by clicking on kids everywhere, wondering if it was happening already without me knowing it.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• mizel 11y ago
  Thank you for sharing. Just watching the video and getting the explanation alone was enough to make me think. Will definitely be thinking about this next time I take my kid to the pool this summer.
• X-Istence 11y ago
  I clicked on the kid as soon as he kicked off from the wall, as he was already panicking while trying to hold on to the rope and it didn't give me points. The next one in the tidal wave pool I clicked and all it did was pause the video, and when I continued the video the kid was being rescued. I like this though, good training, for everyone.
  • jff 11y ago
    I actually spotted that kid as the first possible point of trouble... but you have to wait until the "moments later" card to see him start doing something risky, and then like you said, even when he's tangled in the rope it won't let you click him.
    • omegaworks 11y ago
      For that guy I waited until he started actually showing IDR signs - no lateral movement, dipping up and down. Even though he's struggling in the rope he's still managing to move around using a bad freestyle.
      • X-Istence 11y ago
        That thrashing around doesn't look like he's still managing. That's full on panic. As someone that has been on life guard duty, that would be enough for me to dive in and get him out.
        • omegaworks 11y ago
          Good point. http://spotthedrowningchild.com/creator.html#T5mDQeDkca0 http://spotthedrowningchild.com/creator.html#T5mDQeDkca0 How would you set this scenario up?
  • rtkwe 11y ago
    There are a number of videos. Mine was a kid that fell off their float out towards the middle of the top third of the screen and panicked. Refreshing and force refreshing hasn't gotten me a new one (or I'm just getting similar ones and don't notice) but there's ~30 on youtube.
• SBCRec 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. Something I have not thought about for a long time. I found the description of the Instinctive Drowning Response insightful.
• victorhn 11y ago
  I think the easy pattern here is to check for those using the float wheels, as they lose of it and then they can't get back to it.
  • irishcoffee 11y ago
    What about the strong swimmer who isn't using a float device, gets a cramp/gets hit on the head/has a seizure/${insert here} The guard(s) worry about every single person in the pool at all times. Well, the good guards anyways.
• slayed0 11y ago
  I always assumed my friends who spent their summers lifeguarding had a simple carefree job. I never gave much thought to just how attentive you have to be as a lifeguard. Thanks for putting this into perspective (literally) for the rest of us.
  • atourgates 11y ago
    I spent a few years of high school and college working at a summer camp, mostly as a counsellor. There were lots of great things about it, but being down by or in a lake with a group of 7-10 8-14 year olds was terrifying. I'd spend every minute counting the kids, making sure none of them were missing. At the camp I worked on, you not only had to worry about actual drownings, but also administrators who would try and "steal" a kid about once a week from unobservant counsellors, then call a waterfront drill where all the lifeguards on staff had to search the entire waterfront for a "missing" camper. Until the drill was over, no-one involved (including the counsellor who had lost their kid, lifeguards wearing masks searching under the docks etc.) knew if it was real, or a drill. In the 5-summers I worked there, I took it as a point of pride that none of my campers were ever stolen, and I never saw another counsellor have their kid successfully stolen more than once. The shame and terror of spending about 5-minutes thinking, "Oh shit, I might have just let a child die" was a pretty effective motivator.
    • GBond 11y ago
      The steal kids drill sounds quite stressful. Is the goal to train to be attentive always and spot the immediate stealing act or to keep you counting and have a proper reaction?
      • ntoronto 11y ago
        I'll bet it was both. I was a lifeguard, so I can speak with some authority. Both skills are necessary. Not only do you have to count and track swimmers, but you have to keep mental notes about their abilities, be aware of what they're doing, and imagine possible outcomes so you can identify and react quickly to the actual outcomes. If your attention wanders for too long, especially at a busy place, you can easily lose track of someone. If you lose track of the wrong person, well, buckle up. Fortunately, there are usually multiple lifeguards on duty with you, you're usually on a strict 10- or 15-minute rotation with them, and one of the stations is the break room. That helps a lot. Lifeguarding at a camp is at least 5 times more difficult than at a pool, and I suspect that's why they ran drills to keep the lifeguards on their toes. Underwater visibility is usually next to nothing. The lake is usually full of teenage boys. Access to the water is effectively unlimited. There are often a lot of occluders, such as boats and bushy shores.
• lucasnemeth 11y ago
  wow. Thank you for that. Learned an important lesson.
• Nadya 11y ago
  The biggest eye-opener to me was the "Instinctive Drowning Response" article shared a few days ago. So few people notice someone drowning, even when only feet away. I feel it's a bit more obvious when you're further away. Is this in any way related or inspired by that post? /Start edit >Inspired by this hackernews thread: can you notice who's drowning in the pool before the lifeguard does? Answered my own question by reading the About on the Github. :D /End edit This is a great thing to share on Facebook (for those who have it). It's one of the lessons that really sticks with someone, because of how terrifying the reality of drowning really is. So thank you for sharing/making it. Also for the timer "score", might I suggest clarifying it a bit with "faster/slower than the lifeguard"? I was a bit confused if my time was +0.82s past the lifeguard noticing" or "0.82s faster". I had to 'play' a second time and purposefully click late to figure it out. >Nicely done. +0.82s
  • bbcbasic 11y ago
    I am quite annoyed that I didn't know the signs of drowning, having very young children and having watched water safety videos and taking my children swimming, but no advice on how to spot this. More preventative stuff. I think it should be made a bigger deal of. Often holiday pools are not guarded and if everyone around knows the signs then someone can be saved.
    • Nadya 11y ago
      Knowing is half the battle. The other half is fighting. Spreading awareness would be the fighting part. ;) Things spread insanely fast on Facebook. If a few parents shared this website and their also-parent friends shared it with their friends it could easily get millions of views within several days. And parents would share this information. If you think it should be made a bigger deal of - why not make it a bigger deal? Message your school district representatives about swimming education, especially identifying when someone is drowning. Start a funding for a public pool for your town/city, if one doesn't exist, and support the school organizing "field trips" to the public pool to provide such an education. You'll likely get ignored. So start talking with other parents and make it a large enough issue that it can't be ignored. I don't think many parents would be against their child being taught how to swim, practice pool safety, and learn a life skill that could save someone's life. The main issue is getting them to think about it in the first place. The hardest part about getting anything done is finding a leader with the drive and ability to get things done. Few people want to step up and even fewer of those that are willing are capable.
• bsznjyewgd 11y ago
  I watched a few of the rescues, and they were all of kids falling out of their floaties and seemingly unable to swim at all. What does it look like when an able swimmer encounters trouble? Would it look the same as the drowning response kicks in? Also, how do you differentiate the drowning response from someone that's just bad at treading water and floats low in the water? They might both be bobbing just in and out of the water, but one of them can just transition to floating on their back and the other is trying to not drown. (I haven't swam in forever and don't know if I can even swim anymore, but I was reminded of childhood swimming lesson tests.)
  • omegaworks 11y ago
    If you can find a video of this scenario on youtube please let me know. I found this series of wavepool videos on the HN thread posted a few days ago (thanks oska!) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237
  • aidenn0 11y ago
    The one I saw was a kid who had some swimming ability that fell out of a tube. He swam a poor crawl, without putting his head in the water for about 4-5s before going under.
  • Garph 11y ago
    I spent three summers life guarding at a US state park and would like to give my personal experiences, even if it doesn't give a definitive answer to your question. Always trust yourself. Any suspicion on your part is more than enough reason to go help. These guards have excellent reactions and don't try to make a judgement call between distress and drowning. While new to the job, I hesitated trying to verify patrons needed a rescue instead of going in immediately. While this is anecdotal, I also found that poor treaders often made attempts to move to more secure depths. Struggling is no fun, and most people swim to have fun. The dangerous cases were people who did not know their swimming ability chasing family into the deep end. Lastly we didn't allow floaties in the water, and I think everyone who sees this video should notice the trend and think twice about them.
  • ntoronto 11y ago
• philip1209 11y ago
  Note that there are a few different videos, if you reload the page.
  • ohitsdom 11y ago
    If you watch the video on Youtube you can go through an entire series.
• rusbus 11y ago
  I was most impressed by the attentiveness of the life guards. While we know someone is going to start struggling in the next 20-30 seconds they've likely been staring at the pool for several hours. They were still able to spot the victims in a huge pool almost instantly.
  • monk_e_boy 11y ago
    I was a lifeguard at a beach. I didn't have any dramatic rescues like the video, but you soon get a feeling of which kids are a little too adventurous and need keeping an eye on. Your brain soon kicks into holding your breath while watching kids swim, if one is splashing around while you start to feel uncomfortable it's time to wade in and drag them to the surface. Often for us it was the uneven sea bottom, someone takes a step forward and plunges out of their depth. Run over and hoik them out. To this day, when the surf is up and I see toddlers paddling I get chills and can't stop watching them. Doesn't take more than an inch of water for them to fall and start rolling out with the backwash.
    • parfe 11y ago
      >hoik I learned a new word today. >2. To lift something up wildly.
      • redblacktree 11y ago
        Hah! Thanks for pointing it out. I thought it was made up.
      • thekingofspain 11y ago
        It appears to me like a portmanteau of hoist and yank.
      • rustynails 11y ago
        That's a it it. Hoist, buy yank quickly. It also has a different meaning that came back to me, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=golly&defid=6002104 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=golly&defid=6... To hoik a golly. I last heard that in the 70s. Not so charming...
• rdoherty 11y ago
  A few weeks ago I was sitting 6 feet from the edge of a community pool while many parents and their children were swimming. Out of nowhere one of the lifeguards on the opposite end blows her whistle, jumps in and swims frantically across the pool to rescue a drowning boy 3 feet away from his mother. She was literally looking at him and didn't recognize he was drowning. The mother and child were only about 10 feet from me and even I didn't recognize it, and I was a lifeguard 15 years ago! That experience frightened me more than most because it showed me how bad I and others are at recognizing drowning. Glad that this exists so more people understand what drowning really looks like.
  • smileysteve 11y ago
    Last time I was at a water park like this, a child was right next to his mom's tube and she didn't recognize that he was having trouble swimming. When his head went under with him struggling I rescued him, she was mostly unphazed.. :-/
  • trhway 11y ago
    can't we have something like those fitness bands to be worn by children while in the pool - once a person starts drowning the heartbeat and other lifesigns are changing very characteristically and that can just turn the red light on lifeguards console on.
    • duaneb 11y ago
      They would be expensive (compared to other swim equipment) and prone to error. I would much rather just train life guards professionally. :)
      • trhway 11y ago
        with regard to price i just googled randomly: http://www.amazon.com/Pulse-Oximeter-Blood-Oxygen-Monitor/dp/B00HXXO332 http://www.amazon.com/Pulse-Oximeter-Blood-Oxygen-Monitor/dp...
        • 11y ago
• jacquesm 11y ago
  This is one of the best ways in which you can illustrate how powerful the web is.
• AlphaGeekZulu 11y ago
  I witnessed a scene like this a while ago and it was such a pure horror, that I still get tears in my eyes when recalling the event. I was lying with my wife next to the pool, casually watching. A small boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old, stepped to the ladder and climbed down into the water, in a completely confident, unspectacular way. With the water up to his neck, he did not start to swim, though, but just continued downwards, slowly to the ground of the basin. I loved to enter the pool this way as a little boy as well. The boy made no movement underneath the water, at all. He just sank to the ground and that was it. There was nothing suspicious, and it took us some time to realize that he would not come back up. I would guess roughly two minutes. Then we and some people in the pool realized he was not moving for too long. The boy was quickly recovered, lifeguards rushed in and reanimated the boy. It was a remote location and it took the emergency doctors 15 minutes to arrive, in which the boy was puking, caughing and barking his soul out. His mother was just 10 meters away when it happened and had a complete nervous breakdown when they reanimated the child in front of her eyes. So there was a happy end, but we were shocked to the bones that a child almost drowned in plain sight, 4 meters away from us, WHILE WE WERE WATCHING THE CHILD DROWN. The disturbing point was, that this child showed absolutely no signs of panic - he did not wave the arms, tried not to grab something, made no swimming movements with the legs, just nothing! A few weeks later I was back in the same water park (which has a dozen of pools and slides) with a group of 7 boys in that age celebrating a birthday. I can tell you, I had no real fun that day, desperately trying to track the bunch and not loose them for a minute.
  • jsprogrammer 11y ago
    it? Did the boy do this intentionally? Did he go unconscious when entering the pool? Was he trying to stay under as long as he could? Why was he not moving at all on the way in? <- Down-mods for relevant questions.
    • kzhahou 11y ago
      Watching "it" happen. the drowning
      • 11y ago
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  How about having 10 or so webcam watchers help the guards watch for drowning people in real time? Edit: Ok it's a bad idea. I think I'd get PTSD if the guard didn't make the rescue.
• personlurking 11y ago
  I once worked at a water park, for an entire month, as a teen. They would send weighted 'bodies' down the river to see if we rescued them. One time, they said they sent one and I missed it (and, boy, I must have really missed it cause I saw no such thing). At the time, I thought they were being a-holes testing me when there's no real danger. Looking back, I'm glad they tested us and I'm equally glad I stopped working there. You don't want that type of thing on your conscience.
  • cbr 11y ago
    We should do more of this kind of testing.
• irishcoffee 11y ago
  I would like to point out that any flotation device in a pool besides a life jacket is just asking for problems. I life-guarded for almost 10 years, the only way I would ever let anything that supported a human floating __besides__ an approved life jacket was if the pool was almost empty (such that the one person got my undivided attention) and if I knew the child to already be a strong swimmer. I highly encourage everyone reading this to not swim at pools that allow floats of any kind besides a life jacket, even something as simple as water wings. [0] It encourages kids to go deeper than they should, and if they fall off they're in big trouble. It creates the possibility for a child to get trapped under someone else, and a life guard has almost no chance in that scenario. 95% of guarding is preventive. Neat site though. [0] Water wings can create the situation where a child has their head underwater and their arms up above water, but they can't pull themselves up.
  • tomjen3 11y ago
    That would make for a pretty fucking boring pool, honestly. No flotation devices would mean that all I could do as a kid would be to stand around on my tiptoes.
    • mahart 11y ago
      Well hopefully it would be an impetus to learn to swim instead of instigating dangerous situations that floatation devices put non-swimmers in.
    • irishcoffee 11y ago
      I was tempted to go on a diatribe about your comment, but I'll leave it at this: my job was to guard lives, not provide entertainment. Nobody died, which gave every person I guarded the opportunity to pursue an anti-boring life in whatever way they see fit.
      • corin_ 11y ago
        I'm not saying you drew the line in the wrong place, as I know nothing about the subject, but surely you could also close the pool so nobody can use it for the same reason of "saving lives, not providing entertainment"
• GBond 11y ago
  I noticed this is likely a video from a "security" camera. Would it be possible to apply Motion Detection Algorithms software to realtime video for the purpose of alerting lifeguard of a possible drowning based on the IDR gestures?
  • chillacy 11y ago
    From last week's thread on this: http://www.poseidonsaveslives.com/TECHNOLOGY.aspx http://www.poseidonsaveslives.com/TECHNOLOGY.aspx Haven't seen it in action live though, just thought it was a cool piece of tech.
• northben 11y ago
  Fellow HN readers: We're a smart bunch of hackers. Why don't we have a startup working on a technology that could recognize and alert lifeguards when swimmers are in danger? I bet a few cameras and some (admittedly advanced) machine learning could spot swimmers in need of assistance.
  • thrownaway2424 11y ago
    [citation needed]
  • AlphaGeekZulu 11y ago
    I was actually spending quite some thought about this. At least for water parks, I think this should be doable. My idea was to have a wide angled camera above the pool (distortion is not a problem here), with an algorithm that would recognize any structure that is not moving for a given time (lets say 30 seconds). This would create many false positives, probably, but the system could just activate a buzzer and zoom to the spot on a display that would be permanently monitored by some lifeguard. The number of false positives could probably be dramatically reduced, if there was some way to only react to non-moving-structures underneath the surface, maybe by some cameras from the side?
    • daschwa 11y ago
      Problem is, when I was doing my lifeguard training they showed us / told us how the surface of the water distorted swimmers and who / what is below the surface. A towel or swim toy can look like a person once fully submerged. (it is required to wear polarized sunglasses in chair) You would need cameras under the water, focused on the bottom of the pool to be of any use I imagine. As a lifeguard, our main objective is scanning for signs of struggle yes, but also to be checking for bodies below the surface. With unresponsive victims, every second counts.
  • acomjean 11y ago
    I like the idea, but the stakes are really high in downing. At some point you want it to be helpful, but not to be so good as to make the human lifegaurd not pay full attention. Machine learning might not be the way to go here.. It definitely in the realm of possibilities. They're starting to do the camera assist in the checkout product theft prevention. http://www.stoplift.com/how-it-works/ http://www.stoplift.com/how-it-works/
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• sixdimensional 11y ago
  When I was about 7 years old, I went to a birthday pool party at a friend's house. I did not know how to swim, and was just standing near the pool, when some other kids pushed me in. I fell in the deep end of the pool, and I had the exact experience described in terms of the drowning response on that site. The other kids didn't know I couldn't swim and assumed I was fine. I nearly died that day - I tried as hard as I could to put my arms above the water and wave and yell, but I couldn't do much, and I don't really know what happened much after that. Everything went black. For a moment I felt a person touch me underwater, and then it was all black. I woke up on the concrete next to the pool. I found out later that one of my other classmates had tried to rescue me by pulling me from the pool, but wasn't strong enough to pull me out. His sister, who was older and stronger, had been a lifeguard, dove in and pulled me out. My friend's father was a doctor, and had resuscitated me. They literally saved my life. To this day, I'm 33, I can swim fine, but I still remember that experience like it was yesterday. I guess those things tend to stick. Whenever I am around a pool, I can't help but try to keep an eye out for people & children, just in case. I saw this one in 0.78s. This site/video is a really good public safety announcement, especially since the weather just keeps getting hotter and more and more are bound for the pool. Thank goodness for the lifeguard in the video, and all our protectors out there.
  • rbshadel 11y ago
    as an aside - there's actually multiple videos (not sure how many), so you can play repeatedly
    • RaleyField 11y ago
      27. Videos are hosted on youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/LifeguardRescue11/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/LifeguardRescue11/videos), so you can easily watch them in sequence.
      • tajen 11y ago
        For me, the second video was different but it kept repeating, so after 6 tries I quit. Also, it's impossible to navigate back to a sequence of the video, so I couldn't train to see when the child started to go wrong. There's also no link to Youtube. And finally on the iPad the background is black and the video is black and doesn't start, so I really wondered what the website was about at the beginning. Typical example of how doing less design and not removing Youtube's default controls would have helped. The rest of the website is a great idea implemented with talent, despite the details I teport.
• Smushman 11y ago
  This is Hacker News right?! Who is going start the KickStarter for a bracelet that detects drowning and signals the lifeguard?!
• scarmig 11y ago
  Genuine question: is it about time that we start thinking about banning (most) swimming pools? Bear with me for a second. I continually hear tragic stories of them. A child drowning in front of their parents. Someone starting to drown, and accidentally drowning another person who tried to save them. Just the other day, I read a story of how at a bachelorette party the bride-to-be was jokingly pushed into a swimming pool, did the wrong fall reflex, and ended up a quadriplegic. Drowning is the single most dangerous form of activity for children. We're more than happy to ban guns, while they're not even close to as dangerous as swimming pools. Even traffic accidents come second as the cause for death for children, after swimming pools. (Note: I don't want this to be a debate about gun control, which FWIW is something I mildly support for safety reasons. And as soon as autonomous cars are on the road, I'm going to be first in line to want to ban the incredibly dangerous human-driven death machines.) I know, I know: swimming pools complete an idyllic image of summer, and in reality it will be a long while before it's even plausible we'd think about putting the most basic of restrictions on them. But cigarettes were once part of the image of the ideal gentleman, and now they're widely acknowledged as death sticks. And swimming pools might be nostalgic, but they're really death pits.
  • 001spartan 11y ago
    I don't accept this premise. Even if you ban swimming pools, that doesn't prevent children from drowning while swimming in the ocean, or lakes, or rivers, or even backyard swimming pools. All of those environments are just as much (or more) of a risk, and far more difficult to adequately cover even with the most well-trained lifeguards. Should we prevent children from learning to swim, or enjoying the water, even in a relatively controlled environment?
    • scarmig 11y ago
      It's about limiting risk: kids can die both while driving a car and being a passenger of a car, but that doesn't mean it's inconsistent to ban child driving. For young children especially, drowning in pools is the leading cause of drowning, much more than natural settings, which are relatively rare (for young kids, bathtub drownings are next after pool drownings.) I said most, because I see a place for swimming pools that are monitored closely by lifeguards and that offer swimming lessons. I'm thinking more of private, backyard swimming pools.
• jkoschei 11y ago
  Lifeguards and programmers have something in common – though it looks like both spend their day sitting and staring at a rectangle, there's a lot going on mentally, and the risk of cognitive and visual fatigue is high. I was a lifeguard for five summers, Water Safety Instructor, and American Red Cross lifeguard instructor for several years. The training to be a lifeguard is surprisingly intensive -- it includes sections on attentiveness and observation strategy in addition to the actual rescue stuff. Many pools have their guards rotate positions on a regular basis to combat fatigue and zoning out. At the pool where I worked, we'd have numerous lifeguards on duty at a time, rotating between the lifeguard chairs at fifteen-minute intervals. After a full rotation (usually about 45 minutes or a hour, depending on how crowded the pool was) we'd have some significant downtime to recharge. We didn't have this at my pool, but there are some computer-aided monitoring systems on the market: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_safety_camera https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_safety_camera
  • dingaling 11y ago
    > rotating between the lifeguard chairs at fifteen-minute intervals My local pool removed the high chairs because of injuries sustained when the guards were scrambling down to perform a rescue; a chair six feet above a wet deck is quite dangerous. Now the lifeguards stand on poolside and can dive-in immediately.
• mladenkovacevic 11y ago
  It's not so much that I couldn't spot the kid, it's just that the lifeguard reacted so quickly he already jumped and was swimming towards him by the time I identified kid in trouble.
• anon4 11y ago
  OH GOD THE VOLUME. I usually keep firefox turned pretty low and this insisted on turning it all the way up. No big deal, I thought and turned it down again. But then it turned itself up again when I clicked the right child. Legitimately thought I was in for a jump scare for a second. Other than that, pretty well done.
• JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I hope this stays at the top of HN for a while today.
• dluan 11y ago
  The level creator was fun!
  • mdonahoe 11y ago
    I thought this was a joke at first, but here is the link. http://spotthedrowningchild.com/creator.html http://spotthedrowningchild.com/creator.html Very cool.
• thekevan 11y ago
  I didn't realize that if you click on the video, it will tell you if there is a child drowning there or not.
• aylons 11y ago
  I may sound arrogant, but I'm being honest and trying to avoid my biases. What am I missing here? These drownings looked exactly what I expected from a drowning: someone going up and down the water, splashing in a disordered manner, unable to swim or to keep the head out of the water. What do people usually expect drowning to look like? Am I missing some detail that should make drowning more evident to me?
  • ntoronto 11y ago
    > What do people usually expect drowning to look like? Head erect, more splashing, perhaps a cry for help, and above all, someone who thinks and acts like a human being. You can't tell from the site, but a drowning swimmer is a wild animal. If you have to approach at all, approach with extreme caution and with something to extend your reach. It may be you aren't surprised because the premise of the site is to identify people who are drowning. You know it'll be happening within a minute or so. In real life, it'll happen with small probability in the next few hours. It's a lot harder to spot under those circumstances.
    • aylons 11y ago
      > It may be you aren't surprised because the premise of the site is to identify people who are drowning. You know it'll be happening within a minute or so. In real life, it'll happen with small probability in the next few hours. It's a lot harder to spot under those circumstances. Oh, I don't claim that spotting a real drowning in real life will be easy, or even in the video: lots of attention and searching is needed and the lifeguard there does an impressive job. I was only wondering about the drowning behaviour itself.
  • ntoronto 11y ago
    Meta-comment: Not sure what's up with the downvotes on the parent comment. During lifeguard training years ago, like everyone else in my class, I was very surprised to learn what drowning looks like. But it's not far-fetched to think there's a small percentage of people who aren't surprised, and only need a few blanks filled in.
  • reagency 11y ago
• LoSboccacc 11y ago
  got it but only because I got a video training yesterday on this very topic. this is an awesome use of technology to teach, didn't know you could do that with youtube
• Kenji 11y ago
  To be honest, a kid who gets into deep water with a floatation device and then falls off and notices it cannot swim shouldn't be rescued. Such stupidity should be given no opportunity to procreate.
• stcredzero 11y ago
  To me, this site addresses one area of our common knowledge where generally the media has really let down the collective good. More and more, we live in a reality which is finely crafted to hold our interest and to live up to and satisfy all of our preconceptions. More and more, I meet young people whose fundamental outlook on the world is distorted by such forces. True reality is much subtler than we are, and has a habit of breaking with our preconceptions. Most of the training we receive accidentally online caries the underlying message that we should just go along with the majority or be quiet and not speak up.
• anaolykarpov 11y ago
  When I was a kid (about 14 years old) we were playing with a few friends in a lake nearby. After a few hours of fun, I saw one of our friends popping up and down in the water and splashing the water with the hands. He was at no more than 3 meters from the shore and if he stayed on his toes he would've had his mouth above the water. I firstly thought he was messing with us, but I jumped in the lake for him after about 10 seconds. There was no joke - he didn't knew how to swim and he was in real big troubles. Now, I don't think he would've really drowned in that shallow water, but I'm glad I jumped and I hadn't find out if he would have been able to make it by himself.
• Balgair 11y ago
  My brother was a lifeguard for a few summers too. He was up in the Sierras in a BSA stream 'pool' and the training was much the same. He remembers a time when a little kid, as part of the initial swim eval everyone has to take, jumped off the end of the makeshift dock. He said the kid just sank like a stone. No bubbles, no struggle, nada. The very cold water just shocked the boy so bad he went right to the bottom. Mind you that about 30 or so people are now trying to do the same swim test and the water can be chaotic. Luckily my brother was trained for this. He saw that the kid didn't bubble, 'ok, fine, he's gonna push off the bottom'. He then saw that the kid didn't bend his legs when he got to the bottom, 'ok, sometimes they like the real cold water and just like to lounge at the bottom for a sec. He's got 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, 3, annnnnnnnnnd now we have a problem'. My brother jumped into the stream and just yanked the kid. This boy was still very awake but petrified and shocked by the water's cold. He gasped for air, and was not cleared then for swim eval that week. My brother also had some stories about the stream aspect of the pool, and that sometimes fishing hooks would wash downstream and the boys would step on them. He told me he never heard so bad a scream and fight as when a 11 year old stepped on one and had to have 3 grown men hold him down to take the barb out. If you don't know, for barbed hooks, you have continue to push the barb through the wound, a very unpleasant experience. The boy tried to run from the fear, and his scoutmasters had to endure punches and yells from the boy for his own good. Sends chills down my spine and I wasn't there like my brother was having to hold the kid.
• jacalata 11y ago
  This didn't seem to do anything for me. I clicked on the kid I thought was in trouble and the video just paused. When I continued the video, I saw that I had in fact chosen the right kid, but I didn't see any way to interact with it at all, or acknowledgement if I had the right kid, etc. Windows 8, Chrome, ???
  • robertfw 11y ago
    There's actually a bit of text below the video. I didn't see it at first either. Great intention but the tool could use a little polish.
  • myth_buster 11y ago
    The tool is not interactive. It's purpose is to see whether you can spot the kid. If not, then you can re-run the video and look at the symptoms and familiarize with it. You can play other videos and try at spotting. The primary takeaway is that it's incredibly difficult to know when someone is drowning and this helps you understand that and be attentive next time you are near a water body.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • reagency 11y ago
      If the site is working on your browser, you can click on an invisible div over the video, and get text feedback about the location of the drowned.
      • myth_buster 11y ago
        Thanks for pointing me to that. I didn't see that feature before.
• danfitch 11y ago
  My wife and I have 4 children, she has insisted that they start lessons at a young age, and now my 9 and 7 year olds are excellent swimmers, with a 2 year old that can make it to the side if he falls in. It is absolutely terrifying to see these videos, but it helps knowing that we are doing everything we can to keep them safe.
  • stevewilhelm 11y ago
    I'm a big fan of very early swim lessons. For Silicon Valley based parents, recommend AVAC. http://www.avac.us/ http://www.avac.us/
  • gamegoblin 11y ago
    This is the right thing to do. My mom got me and my sister swimming at an extremely young age (I don't ever remember learning, as far back as my memory goes, I have always been able to swim). And then got us doing competitive swim team in the summers as early as possible (I think age 5). I'm quite grateful for this, as not once in my life have I ever felt in danger in the water. Also, in a world of overconsumption (and abundant sugar), swimming is a great way to keep your kids in shape.
• debacle 11y ago
  The amount of people in this thread that think a consumer device could ever be better at recognizing a drowning person than a human being is staggering.
  • Peaker 11y ago
    Sounds like a completely reasonable belief!
• jgrowl 11y ago
  Can we get opencv to detect when this happens?
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• smackfu 11y ago
  I found this a bit confusing. I thought it was one of those things where the drowning kid doesn't look like he was drowning. But instead, no one is generally drowning in the first 10-15 seconds. Then a kid flips over a floatie or such, and they are pretty clearly the one in trouble. Then the lifeguard jumps in. So you really only have 2-3 seconds to spot the child.
  • totalrobe 11y ago
    Same
  • djm_ 11y ago
    There are 27 videos, try again.
• tinco 11y ago
  How often does it happen that a lifeguard has to intervene in a swimming pool? I've been in pools a lot throughout my life and have never witnessed it. Those kids also don't seem to be able to swim. In The Netherlands its obligatory for children to have their swim diploma before being allowed in the deep end. Also since swim school is part of primary education not many children exist above the age of thirteen that can't swim that I'm aware of. Is it different in the states?
  • Nadya 11y ago
    No required training in the States that I'm aware of and there are a surprising number of people who can't swim. Most people who can't are in landlocked states and whose family either does not go to public pools or none of the family has a private pool. No pool, no beach, no "real reason" to learn to swim.
• ender7 11y ago
  Friendly reminder: rescuing a drowning person (even a child) is incredibly dangerous if you have not been trained in how to do it. They will try to climb on top of you if they get a hold of you and unless you are an exceptionally strong swimmer they will then proceed to drown you. The drowning reflex overrides most people's abilities to process other thoughts, with the result that a loved one is just as likely to drown you as a stranger. Many people are embarrassed by their inability to swim and so won't mention it in circumstances that you would expect them to -- visits to water parks, beaches, lakes, or even acting jobs that involve being pushed off a dock into a lake (oy). Don't assume that a person can swim, even if they tell you otherwise.
  • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    The Boy Scout lifesaving training says, when that happens (the victim climbs on top of you) then simply dive. They will let go. Then surface and try again. And always approach from behind them, get an 'arm bar' across their chest and tow them to safety with your other arm.
    • smileysteve 11y ago
      If you can rescue a cinder block from a 10 ft lake, you can rescue a child. :-) You dip them and punch them if you have to. Incredibly dangerous when they grab on to you.
    • gohrt 11y ago
      > Boy Scout lifesaving training > simply To be clear, that's what Boy Scout lifesaving training taught you, not what HN taught me. It's dangerous to attempt a rescue technique based on a vague memory of a forum comment. Get trained, like Joe did.
      • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Right. Going in is actually the last resort, for trained youth anyway. We were taught "Reach, throw, row, go" in order of preference. First, lay flat on the dock and stick out an arm or leg (reach). If its too far, then throw a line with a floatation device (throw past the victim, not at them, and reel the line in until they grab it). Third, take a boat out if available. Lastly, go out yourself if absolutely necessary.
• mradmin 11y ago
  This website made me totally lose the plot, while attempting to spot the drowning child from the beginning of the video after refreshing the page.
• killertypo 11y ago
  Scary video, reminds me of camping as a child. My mom was a life guard growing up and she taught us all to swim and was pretty good at spotting other kids in the pool. Had a friend of mines little brother responding just like the kid in the video. His parents? Watching and laughing because they thought he was swimming funny. Thankfully my mom dove in and pulled him out of the lake, she knew exactly what was happening and made sure everyone knew what to look for after that. edit: Rules of the pool: 1) Don't run around a pool 2) NEVER push someone into a pool 3) Don't dive into a pool unless it's meant for diving (I recently dove into a pool and ate the plaster on the other side, if it hadn't been for her voice parroting in my head to stay calm I may have freaked out and drowned...in the shallow end, in front of my family 4) Absolutely no flotation devices in the pool that were big and round, especially innertubes (tell me how fun they are until you jump onto one and have it flip back and whack your head against the concrete side of the pool).
• sandworm101 11y ago
  I'm about to go swimming, I do so every day. The truth is that lifeguards at pools rarely ever see "drowning" and almost never have to pull people from the water. It's a one-a-year thing. Heart attacks are more common. I know of one pool locally that in 40 years has only seen two deaths, one heart attack and one murder. Drowning isn't an issue. More people are hurt in the showers than in the pool. And far more on the deck. It's a matter of energy. A fall in a shower hurts, whereas there is no real falling while swimming. And barefoot elderly people on slick tiles are far more likely to injure themselves than the worst swimmers once in the actual water. Poor swimmers rarely get into trouble in modern pools. Instinct protects. But the article is correct. THIS is what a drowning child really looks like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/NirvanaNevermindalbumcover.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/NirvanaNeverm...
  • RaleyField 11y ago
    > Drowning isn't an issue. Unless the website isn't showing drownings happening in the same pool 27 times, but hundreds of identically constructed pools then the website is a counterexample showing that drownings happen relatively regularly. Obviously there are numerous factors, but the primary factor that we don't see more deaths is that lifeguards exist.
  • Nadya 11y ago
    So let's concede that pools as a whole are safe and drowning in a pool happens, at most, maybe once a year. Per public pool. Per city. Per state. So now we have thousands of people drowning each day - many rescued by lifeguards. In the USA, 10 people drown (and die) per day on average. What if more people could recognize when someone was drowning? What if we could bring 10 down to 8? 6? You'd save hundreds of lives each year. All it takes is educating people. Going a bit further, what about the ocean? What about a family swimming in a lake? The issue that is being pointed out is that people drown within feet of another person who could help because drowning doesn't look like drowning. If you pay attention to the videos - a lifeguard saves a child who was drowning while they were surrounded by about 5-6 other kids swimming right next to them who didn't even notice. That's the problem.
• slantedview 11y ago
  These videos are pretty shocking to watch. It's seeing the contrast between a bunch of children having fun and someone close to death right next to them.
• totalrobe 11y ago
  Just me, or is this vid not a great example?...the kid is pretty clearly struggling.
  • reagency 11y ago
    There are 27 similar videos. Play again.
• curiousjorge 11y ago
  I'm just shocked at how I could've overlooked this. This was probably the first thing we were told to look out for but it was in a simulated environment when I took my life guarding course 12 years ago. It's surprising how indifferent people are around the drowning person.
• corndoge 11y ago
  I clicked on the drowning boy about 6 seconds after he slipped out from his tube, and the site's response was "Just splashing around, keep looking." Then I tried it a few more times. There seems to be a 2-3 second window just before the lifeguard jumps in. Kind of lame since it was obvious sooner than that.
  • omegaworks 11y ago
    Hm.. I'll recheck the bounding boxes. I try to keep them pretty tight around the swimmer. If you can remember specific details about the scenario that would help.
• ZitchDog 11y ago
  Any computer vision / machine learning experts want to weigh in on the difficulty involved in writing an algorithm to visually detect drowning?
  • 317070 11y ago
    You'll need loads of (labeled) training data. And I'm afraid there is no good way to create such a labeled dataset. Unless we'd put some people who can't swim in a pool.
  • duskwuff 11y ago
    It's been done. http://www.poseidonsaveslives.com/ http://www.poseidonsaveslives.com/
• LordKano 11y ago
  I was about 14 and one of my younger cousins asked if I could lift him up onto my shoulders the way his father did. I told him no. Despite the fact that he was younger than me, he was a big kid. He was nearly as big as I was. When I was swimming across the deep end, he decided to jump onto my shoulders as I surfaced. As I said, he was nearly as big as I was and since I was in the deep end, I couldn't use my feet to gain the leverage I needed to throw him off. After about ten seconds of struggling to get him off of me, I felt that the only recourse I had was to bite him and send the message non-verbally. I grabbed his calf and ankle and pulled them toward my mouth. As soon as my teeth touched his skin, he got the message and got off of me. I ended up not having to bite him but at that point I really wanted to. All of this transpired in about 15 seconds and the lifeguard never noticed (To be honest, this was a long time ago and I don't even remember if there was a lifeguard on duty at the time) but I never took my safety for granted ever again. Just because I can swim well enough to get myself out of trouble doesn't mean that someone else acting like an idiot can't endanger me.
• afandian 11y ago
  This is great idea but confusing. I missed the drowning event and tried to replay, but the controls are hidden. Clicking on the logo I got to an identical looking, but different video in which a different incident takes place (there's lots of them [0]). To be educational, this should have a 'watch again' feature, or show the video controls, so I can actually re-watch the scene and watch for the features of drowning. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnERyC7dwJwTvEyzYz6uxHw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnERyC7dwJwTvEyzYz6uxHw
  • sirmarksalot 11y ago
    If you wait, it replays it with the action zoomed in. If you click "play again," it makes you watch a different video, which I think is good, because you don't want to be too keyed in on a single instance.
    • afandian 11y ago
      You're right. I hadn't noticed that because the text popped up and I scrolled down to read it. That happens early in the video, and there's more video of people not drowning. So I scrolled up to try and replay the video, tried to seek back to the start, failed, then clicked on the YouTube logo. I'm sure I could have noticed it, but somehow I didn't. Mostly, but perhaps not entirely, my fault.
• bronson 11y ago
  Some of these videos are pretty easy... One has a kid thrashing around right in the foreground. I worry that this will have the opposite of the intended effect: "I spotted that kid 5 seconds before the lifeguard, this is easy!" close tab
• gohrt 11y ago
  My favorite one was where the lifeguard asks a kid several times if he is OK, and the kid is fine, and then a few seconds later, the kid drowns, and the guard dives in. But.... > There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. I saw lots of splashing in the rescued kids. Obviously no waving, though. How could someone wave? People wave and yell when they are trapped (as in a current), but not drowning yet.
• gohrt 11y ago
  Popular 2013 article, was discussed on HN in the past: > Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning > In 10 percent of drownings, adults are nearby but have no idea the victim is dying. > Here’s what to look for http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/family/2013/06/rescuing_drowning_children_how_to_know_when_someone_is_in_trouble_in_the.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/family/2013...
• rbshadel 11y ago
  I don't remember how old I was, but I distinctly remember an occurrence at one of my first swim lessons. It was a group class, and we were all hanging on a rope taking turns swimming to the instructor a few feet away. I thought I heard my name called, so I tried to push off the rope to swim to them. Since it was a floating rope, I didn't get the momentum I was expecting, so before I knew it I was frantically trying to get to the rope, or the wall, or the instructor, or ANYthing I could grab onto. After what seemed like hours (but I'm sure was a few seconds) the lifeguard hopped in and grabbed me. It's been at least 20 years, and I'll never ever forget the panic - and to think it happened in the middle of a swim class with an instructor not 10 feet away. My dad always told me when we went on vacation to the beach to "respect the ocean", and if I ever have kids I will for sure expand that message to "respect the water" and pass it along - whether it's the atlantic or a kiddie pool.
• Bill_Dimm 11y ago
  Sidenote: I tried sending the link to my brother's work email and it was blocked by Symantec.cloud email filtering. I don't know if that means that Symantec is blocking links to spotthedrowningchild.com due to detecting malware there or whether Symantec email filtering is just garbage.
• atmosx 11y ago
  I could write a play or a book about lifeguards just by putting together stories from this thread. Awesome stuff.
• transfire 11y ago
  All they had to do was stand up.
• dvirsky 11y ago
  Oh great, my son who's 7 years old and can barely swim, is going to a water park tomorrow as part of his summer camp, and I won't be there to watch over him. Just what I needed to see right now :) Of course there are lifeguards out there and there's the camp staff watching over the kids, but it's my child, I can't help being a little stressed about it. It's time for proper swimming lessons I guess.
  • tyho 11y ago
    I am from the UK, and here everybody learns to swim at school around 6, it is simply part of the curriculum. It is treated like reading or writing, if you can't do it you get put in special classes till you can. I would guess more people can swim here than can ride a bike. Lots of people in these videos look like they can't swim at all! Is this the norm in the USA? Edit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1521238/Children-unable-to-swim-at-11-will-be-given-top-up-lessons.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1521238/Children-unab... EDIT2: Looks like I was wrong about swimming vs cycling, it is fairly close though: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/77398/Y6_Q4_Figures_Cycling_and_swimming_proficiency.xls https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
    • jessaustin 11y ago
      Unfortunately both biking and swimming seem to be "privileged" activities in USA. Unless one lives in the inner city or a desert, it doesn't actually take much money to bring your children to a stream or lake (or, for not much more money, a public pool), but many parents are uncomfortable around the water themselves. Those of us whose relatives got us into the water as toddlers are fortunate indeed. It would be nice to imagine that the average USA public school could bring children to a pool and teach them to swim. It seems unlikely, however.
    • dvirsky 11y ago
      I'm not from the US, I'm from Israel. When I was a child swimming was part of our school curriculum, and I learned to swim at around 7 I guess (I already knew basic breast stroke my mom taught me at 4). But that was in a small community that had its own swimming pool, I'm not sure what's the norm in big cities that don't have many public pools. Also, the public education system here as been degraded quite substantially in the past 30 years.
• nso 11y ago
  Three months ago I was at the beach with some friends. They were lounging at a beachside restaurant (the plastic chair type, if you've ever been here in Mexico you know the type) and I went for a swim. Having been a competitive swimmer in my younger days I have generally been confident in my swimming abilities. This time however, I suddenly found myself in a current pulling me outwards. I didnt realize what was happening before I was really tired and noticed that the shore was not getting closer no matter how hard I swam. I was literally 15 feet from the shoreline, and I was about to drown. I was too tired to do anything but focus on keeping myself afloat. I had eye contact with my friends 25 feet away. They smiled and waved. I was panicing and was just about to give up when reruns of Bondi Rescue popped up in my head and reminded me to swim sideways instead of forward. 5 seconds later I have sand under my feet. I crawled on to the shore and laid there panting for a few minutes. I wobbled my way to my friends who greeted me with smiles and asked how I enjoyed my swim. That's the story of how I nearly drowned in frobt of my friends, who would have been none the wiser until it was too late. Be carefull around water, people!
  • viggity 11y ago
    Sounds like you got caught in a rip current, it's why you should always swim back to shore at a 45 degree angle, you'll eventually make enough horizontal progress to escape the current. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current
• abfan1127 11y ago
  this is why we put our kids through ISR (http://infantswim.com http://infantswim.com). Our kids are excellent swimmers (ages 3 and 7). We also spoke to the instructor about drowning and "what it looks like". FWIW, I saw the kid drowning before the life guard reacted.
• abfan1127 11y ago
  this is why we put our kids through ISR (http://infantswim.com http://infantswim.com). Our kids are excellent swimmers (ages 3 and 7). We also spoke to the instructor about drowning and "what it looks like". FWIW, I saw the kid drowning before the life guard reacted.
• teekert 11y ago
  I live in a very water rich country (kids get swimming classes at 4-5 years old or at 6 in school) and I don't understand how a parent can let a child that can't swim in or near water without giving it 100% attention and being within arms reach of them constantly. Even in 20 cm of water they can slip and knock them selves out and drown. How could this kid ever be in a pool deeper than he is long? Someone really, really messed up. Very good to see this movie by the way, among parents we always say: Drowning happens silently. I didn't expect it to look like this though!
• blobbers 11y ago
  Is this just to drive a point home that you need to have someone watching out for you in a pool? I wonder if image pro could help out in this situation by sounding an alarm if someone has gone underwater for too long. Then again, that might just breed complacency in those responsible for a child.
• BanMeWithRage 11y ago
  How to spot a drowning child: Is there a child under your hand struggling to leave the water? Congratulations, you found the drowning child. Looking forward to the AI/IoT NSA startup that opts to monitor all motions of your child from birth to determine if it is drowning at some random point in the future.
• wesleyfsmith 11y ago
  I remember my lifeguard training. I used to play water polo so I pretty comfortable with picking the bricks up off the bottom, but some of the other guards that got certified scared the hell out me.
• andrewchambers 11y ago
  I once helped a little boy who was struggling by pushing him to safety as I walked by, felt great the rest of the week.
• fhinson 11y ago
  I imagine computer vision is surely the most logical solution to this problem.
• mightybyte 11y ago
  Wave pools deserve extra care. I've been swimming for literally almost my entire life. My parents put me in swimming lessons when I was six months old and I started swimming competitively when I was 6. I don't remember any time in my life when I have not felt completely comfortable and at home in the water. But I distinctly remember an experience I had in a wave pool when I was probably 7 or 8. I got in the deep end because of course I was a swimmer and I would be fine...but when the waves came they seemed gigantic compared to me and my small size. I clearly remember feeling completely overpowered and it was all I could do to struggle to the side. For a bit I honestly thought that I might drown. Years later I became a lifeguard and did some guarding here and there, but after watching videos like these I can tell you that I definitely didn't take my job seriously enough. I never worked in any truly difficult environments, but I've got to hand it to those who do. Water is a powerful thing. No matter how strong a swimmer you are, somewhere in the world there is water that can overpower you. It is not always easy to tell when that is the case.
• dankohn1 11y ago
  Thankfully, my 6yo is about to join his brother on the swim team, and so this is one less thing to worry about. But if I had an infant, I would strongly consider these infant swim lessons: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/24/8836639/infant-swimming-self-rescue http://www.vox.com/2015/6/24/8836639/infant-swimming-self-re...
• musgrove 11y ago
  Where the camera is isn't the best lookout spot. I lifeguarded one summer in college at the NCO club at Ft. Jackson in Columbia, SC, with 300 kids at one time in the pool every day. It was a nightmare. I made many saves.
• bluishgreen 11y ago
  Based on the two kids shown in the video being black, I did a quick google search. Seem's to be true in general.. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/15/in-pools-young-blacks-drown-at-far-higher-rates/9146213/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/15/in-pool...
  • reagency 11y ago
    There are 27 videos in the series.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• shurcooL 11y ago
  I feel like I must've experienced near drowning or something, because I find the experience of drowning very easy to imagine and relate to. I don't really recall anything specific.
• nemo44x 11y ago
  If you're ever in a situation where you've lost control and especially if you're in sea water (salty) I recommend learning to back float. It uses little energy, allows you to breath and honestly you shouldn't enter the ocean at any reasonably deep depth without knowing how to do this. It works because you are on your back which is broad, you fill your lungs with air which give you buoyancy and it buys you a lot of time to regain energy to swim towards safety. Even in multi-foot wave conditions you can position yourself perpendicular to the shore, head towards the sea and you raise up and down with the currents, much like a surf board does in that position. I've used this many times while snorkeling and short on breath in water far over my head, for instance. This does not protect you from sharks.
• McElroy 11y ago
  The first video was sort of easy -- I saw the person who fell off their floatation device and I kept looking just at that person until the lifeguard blew their whistle and jumped in and saved them. The real question, though, is not did I spot them. As the text mentioned, half of children drown while someone is watching. I do not have children but if I were responsible for that child (either as a parent or otherwise), would I have jumped in and saved them? Maybe not, maybe I would have just been standing there wondering "do they need my help or not". I haven't thought much about this before but after being confronted with the facts by this site, I have decided that it is better to act immediately when there's a possibility that a person is drowning and save them even when they don't need saving than it is to hesitate and wonder whether they need help.
• joshaidan 11y ago
  Informative site. Is it possible to add some Open Graph tags to it to make it easier to share on social media?
• Fraztastic 11y ago
  "Just splashing around. Keep looking" "Seems ok. Keep looking" Lifeguard grabs him 1 second later...
• SZJX 11y ago
  I actually had a similar experience when I was a child. Fortunately the water wasn't that deep and although I was also having the same "response" I managed to get out of there in time by treading the bottom of the pool. It was indeed quite traumatic in the sense that nobody nearby seemed to be noticing it occuring, including my parents. Maybe communication in my family had always been a difficult matter so I didn't even really mention that to my parents afterwards I guess. Safety measures should definitely be paid more rigorous attention to.