61–70 of 121 posts
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Some of you may drown, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!
In ALL of the great lakes, 45 people drowned last year. I have no idea what the drownings near shore was, but I mean, millions of people live on the borders of the Great lakes. 45 is pretty damn good and I think resources are better spent on other things.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/s0514-vs-drowning.ht...
If it's $12k and requires an operator this seems more of a band-aid than anything. Where are the operators going to come from? And for a lot of places the operator + device probably pays for 3 lifeguards or swim instructors. Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. I used to be a lifeguard and swim in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In ALL of the great lakes, 45 people drowned last year. I have no idea what the drownings near shore was, but I mean, millions of people live on the borders of the Great lakes. 45 is pretty damn good and I think resources are better spent on other things.
And how many of those are young kids ? 1 is already too many https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/s0514-vs-drowning.ht...
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What's interesting is that we may be causing much more loss of life with these bans than we are saving. We ban or severely restrict many physical activities then we wonder why childhood obesity is so high and why so many kids have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular issues. Since the link is indirect we ignore it and a heart-attack is just considered bad luck.
Swimming is not the only form of cardiovascular exercise and open water is not the only place to swim.
It's easy to cite the injury stats for these and use that as a reason to avoid, but my point is we rarely look at the other side. Kids' interest differs and the more activities we ban, the more we curtail the set of potential interests that get kids off the couch and outside.
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I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water…
Tool's Ænema is now playing in my head.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of you may drown, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!
I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water…
Or more precisely, people will express targeting zero drowning, but they're not making the logical jump you're pointing at. The device in the article is someone pragmatic, lifeguard situation in most places is pragmatic, there would need to be a crazy shift to get people to agree to a more absolute stance.
If it's $12k and requires an operator this seems more of a band-aid than anything. Where are the operators going to come from? And for a lot of places the operator + device probably pays for 3 lifeguards or swim instructors. Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. I used to be a lifeguard and swim in…
Dartmouth college (USA), had a requirement that you must pass a swimming test to receive your degree. ( Obviously - if you didn't know how, there were free lessons.) They have recently dropped that requirement! ( After more than 200 years.) Why? At least with the old rules, you always knew that if a person was a Dartmouth grad, you could push them in the water. Or, at least, not worry about boating with them.
An AI lifeguard seems like a tractable problem, making it possible for human guards to cover a lot more area.
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Caution to anyone who clicks this link: mute your speakers first, or else you'll have to deal with blaring obnoxious music via an auto-play video that isn't visible without scrolling.
What browser are you on that allows autoplaying video?