Spot the Drowning Child (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#11

Post by HenryBemis » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

To all parents out there, it takes 10 seconds for a toddler to drown. Once in the water, if they go under, they tend to get disoriented and don't know where is up or down.

When you are with your kids near a swimming pool or the sea, keep your eyes glued on them.

My rule is "never break line of sight" (I borrowed the term from Assassin's Creed where if you break line of sights from the guards chasing you for a few seconds, their aggro switches off).

Line of sight. When near water opt in for a nice podcast/audio book and keep your eyes on your kids. A lifeguard is scanning the scene but on a 50 kids, you are most likely to spot something like this faster/sooner. Also while looking at your kids, you automatically scan/cover an area of 10-15sqm.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#12

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#13

Post by chrismeller » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

rendall wrote: post #6

Something in the embed code prevents the "allow full screen" from working properly, so the video is tiny and scrunched up into the upper left hand corner. When I watched this on YouTube, with full screen enabled, I spotted the poor little fellow within about 5 seconds. This is using the latest chrome (v80.0.3987.132) This worked, though:

In Safari on mobile you have the opposite problem - it’s too large for the display and there’s no way to make it smaller (or full screen).

I kind of assumed that was intentional, since the lifeguard can’t make it full screen or zoom in either. :)

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#14

Post by Insanity » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

I could spot a few - but was faster than the lifeguard only once. (Well, before they came into view, considering the time it took before they came into view I was probably slower).

It'd be a lot harder in real life, when you don't know if there's going to be a drowning kid.. being prepared is half the game.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#15

Post by mjlee » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning [1] has gone round the internet a number of times over the last decade. Well worth reading if you spend time around water, and a good read in any case.

[1] https://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#16

Post by w-m » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:37 PM UTC

The first one I got was #26 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuAfTA2wf7o) and I find it quite hard to detect. Just next to the drowning child, there are a few others splashing around, which looks nearly identical. Could a machine make the distinction reliably?

Also interesting to note that there are many people really close by who do not notice the drowning, but spring into action to help once the lifeguard jumped.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#17

Post by kentosi » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:37 PM UTC

Can we please update the title with "2015" ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9962185

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#18

Post by undineine » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:38 PM UTC

chrismeller wrote: post #7

cafebabbe wrote: post #4

So many of them don't have arm bands? It's borderline criminal to allow untrained kids in a pool without wearing those.

Admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve been to a public pool, and only ever in the US, but there was never any such requirement. I mean even if they did ask “can you swim?” that doesn’t really mean much, it’s not like there’s an official certification process... and either way, doesn’t mean they can’t still drown, so the lesson is relevant anyway.

European pools generally ask under children under 14 or so who go swimming unattended whether they have swimming diplomas. If you complete your swimming diplomas, you get stickers for your swim shorts to show you have completed them.

Generally certain rides in water parks, like fast slides or streams will require you to have higher levels of swimming training to go on if you're under 14.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#19

Post by missosoup » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:40 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #11

To all parents out there, it takes 10 seconds for a toddler to drown. Once in the water, if they go under, they tend to get disoriented and don't know where is up or down. When you are with your kids near a swimming pool or the sea, keep your eyes glued on them. My rule is "never break line of sight" (I borrowed the term from Assassin's Creed where if you break line of sights from the guards chasing you for a few sec…

> My rule is "never break line of sight"

That's an actual law with children in Australia, idk about the rest of the world. <5 years old within arms reach, <10 years old within line of sight.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#20

Post by wycy » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:41 PM UTC

It seems like spotting drowning children could be a good use case for computer vision, at least as a backup. The heuristics for a drowning child are pretty marked, but they're hard to spot for humans distracted by lots of other stimuli.