9 ms·

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

• 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...
      • janekm 11y ago
        Unfortunately that type would not work in a pool... they barely work with significant movement, never mind when there's water sloshing in and out between the LEDs / light sensors.
        • trhway 11y ago
          of course the googled above device wouldn't work as it is. It was only a random google just to gauge the scale of money such tech costs.
          • janekm 11y ago
            Costwise, I think that would be in the ball-park, if we can figure out what to monitor, and how, it could most likely be manufactured for <$10. I do work in this field (wireless vital signs monitoring) and unfortunately I don't know of any current technology that I would trust to monitor heart rate on a swimmer other than perhaps a chest strap (but not as a safety device either). For a point of reference, the Apple watch fails to accurately record heart rate when very sweaty or experiencing periodic movement (such as the periodic arm waving). There was a kickstarter project for a swim safety device (mentioned by others in this thread) but I believe that was based around picking up the arm movement characteristic of this response, which may be a sensible approach (I don't know enough about the characteristic motions of the drowning response vs regular splashing).
            • trhway 11y ago
              just googled more :) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry - an adapted for waterpool conditions earlobe oximeter is probably what is needed here (with probably a transmitter/amplifier with battery in the wristband). But currently it is in the $100+ territory.
              • amalcon 11y ago
                That might be too expensive to hand out to everyone at the pool, but if it were workable for this application it would definitely be in range for something to sell directly to parents. It wouldn't be able to interface with a device the lifeguard has in this case, but it could surely start making noise and/or flashing in an emergency.
  • m3rc 11y ago
    How easy is it to tell the difference between an elevated heartbeat due to imminent drowning, and an elevated heartbeat due to having fun?
    • trhway 11y ago
      just hold your breath for couple minutes (or even better - ask somebody physically stronger to "help" you to keep the plastic bag over you head to make sure that you make the time :) and i think you'll learn the difference. There is an extremely huge biological difference between "panic" and "fun/excitement". Specifically to drowning there is also oxygen blood content difference - harder to detect from outside, yet an unmistakable indicator.
      • jacquesm 11y ago
        > just hold your breath for couple minutes (or even better - ask somebody physically stronger to "help" you to keep the plastic bag over you head to make sure that you make the time :) and i think you'll learn the difference. That could easily kill someone, this is totally crazy advice.
        • trhway 11y ago
          man, I've put a smile there for a reason... The "help" is brought up as a device to illustrate the difference between at-will fun excitement and against-will panic. No sane person would be forcing another to not breath ( until of course it is a part of the job, ie. like police - chockholding into submission - or military investigators - waterboarding and the like) Edit: to "mdup" below - i've specifically mentioned "until of course it is a part of the job" above - the major aspect of Milgram experiment was to present to the experiment subjects the shock delivery as a "duty".
          • mdup 11y ago
            Would you say no sane person would inflict 450-volt electric shocks to someone else? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
  • kneisley 11y ago
    That's a fantastic question. This is probably the right place to ask if there is pattern that can be detected from the wrist. It also makes sense to line the pool edge with lights that can change color, so the bracelet distinctively lights up the grid square of the pool where the drowning is happening, alerting the lifeguard or a strong swimmer nearby.
  • ZirconCode 11y ago
    Looks like this guy tried, although there really isn't much interesting detail there: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-seal-wearable-swim-monitoring-and-drowning-detection-system#/story https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-seal-wearable-swim-mo...
  • run4yourlives2 11y ago
    That would probably cause a good deal of false alarms though.. people that aren't comfortable in water will have elevated heart rates every so often over normal stuff. Maybe that's not such a bad thing overall though.
    • hamiltonkibbe 11y ago
      My first thought was "Hey this is HN, and that's exactly what PCA is for!" Followed shortly thereafter by "I wonder where you get/how you generate a dataset of the vital signs of drowning children..."
      • trhway 11y ago
        >"I wonder where you get/how you generate a dataset of the vital signs of drowning children..." panic attack data set will get you halfway there and panic attacks happen naturally and sufficiently frequently. Add the dataset from something like asthma attacks (unfortunately it is easy to obtain too).
  • historian1066 11y ago
    I think this product is trying to solve this by measuring immersion: https://www.iswimband.com/ https://www.iswimband.com/
  • TheGRS 11y ago
    A summer camp I went to when I was younger was very heavily focused on swimming and water craft. We had 3 different colored bands to indicate your swimming ability. Red if you couldn't swim well, yellow if you were OK, but not enough for the deep end and green for the deep end. The counselors tested and trained the kids to go up the color bands, which was pretty neat, but I realize now that it was also a way to keep an eye on weaker swimmers. I think red bands had to have a life jacket on even while in the pool on the shallow end. There was also the coveted blue band, which you could only get by doing a very rigorous set of tests and passing junior lifeguard training. I had to swim who knows how many laps and tread water for like an hour, plus lift bricks up off the pool floor and various other lifeguard-related things. The blue bands were super "rare" and I realize now it was just an inventive way to encourage the kids to swim better and harder. Not exactly the same bands you were talking about, but a cheaper alternative and a good way to keep control and prevent drownings before they happen.
    • TheAnimus 11y ago
      I would have been a blue band in your system. My parents moved to Cornwall when I was child, surrounded on 3 sides by water, I gained my surf lifesaving certificate, I was a good swimmer. Almost two decades passes. I'm in Bali, on a deserted beach with my ex because we "don't want the average experience" or whatever. A small argument and I decide I want a swim. I walk out through the surf, my mind overcome with thoughts of the pathetic argument. I don't think about the undulating sand beneath my feet, but I should. Not even 2 minutes into my swim and I'm out a good 200m. I've swam 10km before in the sea, I'm fit enough, but I had been in a bicycle accident and fractured my dominant arm just 8 weeks prior. My natural confidence, my training, my accolades had resulted in my taking an unknown sea for granted. I looked to the sure, my girlfriend had vanished, no doubt going to lick her wounds from our previous verbal exchange. I can honestly say the human mind is a strange thing under pressure. I thought back to being 12 and outright laughing at the tourists (emits, slang for ants in Cornish) who died every year often through a mix of alcohol and poor planning. The realisation of such past hubris was overwhelming. I also realised that the people I knew from there would be laughing at my death. I was now well over 1km from shore. My mind kicked in properly, I started swimming hard normal to the rip tide. After 5 minutes of treading water and thinking hard some rocks where looking achievable, so I decided to give it all in the hope of getting there, a fast sprint was my plan and thankfully this worked. If ever I thought I'd given 100% to a physical activity before I was mistaken. My legs bore the brunt of this assault, my upper-body was uncoordinated due to the cycling injury. My watch was telling me I had been hard going for barely 10 minutes. I was not even half the way, my fear I think allowed for adrenaline to kick in, I was at this point making peace with death of drowning, as an asthmatic a death that has always scared me. I made it to the rocks and to my joy I didn't need to climb along them, the rip tide was no more. I made it to shore. A half hour swim that had been like no other I've ever had and I hope will ever have. I was so upset with my ex for leaving me. Not watching nor caring as I had asked and she agreed. Going into the unknown water without someone aware is folly and I thought she would be observing me. Anger and most likely just bordem resulted in her not doing so. TLDR: I was a good swimmer, I still so very nearly killed myself. Knowing when someone is in trouble requires education.
  • tonyarkles 11y ago
    One of the most challenging bits with that is going to be transmitting RF underwater. And an interesting thing to think about is whether or not such a device would end up causing even more accidents, when people start just assuming that "it's ok if I go past my limits, someone will save me"
    • milspec 11y ago
      Underwater RF is no trouble in this case. You have the signal backwards. As long as there is no problem, regularly transmit an identity beacon. Loss of signal is the alert.
      • tonyarkles 11y ago
        How does the regular beacon transmit if it's underwater? Someone standing in the shallow end of the pool or treading water in the deep end may pretty easily keep their wrist underwater for minutes at a time. There's two things that such a device would need to have: quite low false positives (so that the lifeguard isn't distracted by false alarms - leading to a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario), and vanishingly small false negatives (the first time a kid dies because the device didn't work, it'll be a bad day). In-water RF would be very hard to do to make those two conditions true. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fabulous idea. Wearing my EE hat though, I haven't thought of a good way to do it that would work reliably enough for a life-saving device.
  • lazyant 11y ago
    perhaps a band with a panic button that flashes and makes sound? although I'm very skeptical of any device due to false positives etc
• Gustomaximus 11y ago
  This makes me cringe. I had similar with my child. Was chatting in a pool and they were only under water right behind my back. I fortunately turned round right after they were going under. It would have been so easy to be talking/distracted for a minute and have a more tragic event. There was no noise, you had to actually see it. Everyone should teach their kids to swim as early as possible.