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Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

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Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#111

Post by thaumasiotes »

makeitdouble wrote: post #110
thaumasiotes wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read the first article. https://archive.is/txCN0 A summer camp run by the city government left a group of 9 teenagers "unsupervised" next to a lake. I feel safe in saying that a lake cannot constitute a public nuisance. DJ McCutcheon, one of those teenagers, "was underwater for about six minutes before bystanders rescued him" [after which he subsequently died], strongly suggesting that he was unsupervised in…

Thanks, so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids, and it was a structural problem (if was alone peddling 12 kids)

> so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids

Only in the same sense that if one of them had slipped in the shower, hit his head, and died as a result, that would have been equally the fault of the town for not adequately supervising the showers?

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#112

Post by makeitdouble »

WalterBright wrote: post #106
makeitdouble wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't read the first article, but judging from the second: > The sidewalk is “perennially covered in water and algae,” according to the complaint. Other Queen Anne residents testified in court that they had also fallen at this location. It reads to me like the sidewalk was a public danger, the building owners were under the hook to maintain it but never cared, until literally getting sued. What am I missing ?

Maybe watching one's step?

I get the feeling that people would react differently if it was related to cars.

For instance a plane of rolling rocks right in a corner that would screw with tire grip and have several cars fall into the valley because of it. Would you see it as an issue with drivers not being skilled enough to keep control under adverse conditions ? Or request the maintainer of the road to do its job and fix it ?

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#113

Post by makeitdouble »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #111
makeitdouble wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids, and it was a structural problem (if was alone peddling 12 kids)

> so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids Only in the same sense that if one of them had slipped in the shower, hit his head, and died as a result, that would have been equally the fault of the town for not adequately supervising the showers?

If they were supposed to watch after the kids in the shower, well yes.

There was an incident a few months ago about a school van: one of the kids at the rear of the van slept or didn't step out for whatever reason, the driver didn't count the kids and shut the van and went away. The kid was too small and too weak to properly ask for help when it realized it couldn't get out, and died in the bus.

This would be a completely random incident, with no one at fault, if it wasn't for the explicit responsibility of the driver to get the kids out of the bus.

A family wouldn't have the same responsibility, a parent bringing their kids and friend to some game and making the same kind of mistake might also not be at fault. Being a professional with a written explicit responsibility to watch after the kids makes it a different matter.

PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#114

Post by thaumasiotes »

makeitdouble wrote: post #113
thaumasiotes wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids Only in the same sense that if one of them had slipped in the shower, hit his head, and died as a result, that would have been equally the fault of the town for not adequately supervising the showers?

If they were supposed to watch after the kids in the shower, well yes. There was an incident a few months ago about a school van: one of the kids at the rear of the van slept or didn't step out for whatever reason, the driver didn't count the kids and shut the van and went away. The kid was too small and too weak to properly ask for help when it realized it couldn't get out, and died in the bus. This would be a compl…

> PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.

...that is definitely false, and a truly wild assumption. Why would you believe that?

13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#115

Post by WalterBright »

makeitdouble wrote: post #112
WalterBright wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe watching one's step?

I get the feeling that people would react differently if it was related to cars. For instance a plane of rolling rocks right in a corner that would screw with tire grip and have several cars fall into the valley because of it. Would you see it as an issue with drivers not being skilled enough to keep control under adverse conditions ? Or request the maintainer of the road to do its job and fix it ?

There was an incident where a driver drove through a barrier and onto a bridge that was out, and crashed. Google maps directed him across the bridge.

Who was at fault there?

A basic tenet of driving is you should be looking where you're going.

That said, streets should be made reasonably safe because there are always drivers who don't pay attention. But that doesn't mean we should pay those negligent drivers.

As for the sidewalk, the city should have forced a fix for it. That's a separate issue from paying the stepper.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#116

Post by makeitdouble »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #114
makeitdouble wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were supposed to watch after the kids in the shower, well yes. There was an incident a few months ago about a school van: one of the kids at the rear of the van slept or didn't step out for whatever reason, the driver didn't count the kids and shut the van and went away. The kid was too small and too weak to properly ask for help when it realized it couldn't get out, and died in the bus. This would be a compl…

> PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not. ...that is definitely false, and a truly wild assumption. Why would you believe that? 13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time .

Adult to child ratio is a thing. e.g., for the ratio in an institution for up to 16yo kids:

https://www.careinspectorate.com/images/documents/4334/Guida...

> 13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time.

That's in their private time, which is not the case in the article.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#117

Post by rldjbpin »

ben7799 wrote: post #24

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…

depending on the public funding present, it can be seen as a safer alternative. to replace having people responsible to risk their lives to save those who fall by accident or those risking their lives without taking precautions.

this to me seems like how one should make it mandatory for everyone to learn how to drive a car if you want to sit in one, or drive a boat for being on one in the lake in the first place. swimming is cool but achieving this is much more unrealistic than attempting with this otherwise half-measure.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#118

Post by tnel77 »

chankstein38 wrote: post #38
marcellus23 wrote: post #4

This isn't really a robot, more of just a remote-controlled boat. Still cool and a great idea for helping people who are drowning, of course. But seems misleading to call it a "robot", which (to me at least) implies some level of autonomy and more tech than you'd find in toy RC cars from 30 years ago.

The price tag also seems like the people want it to be marketed as a robot. You could strap a motor and RC controller to a floatation device and waterproof it for less than a couple hundred dollars. Why do things that are meant for safety always have to be insanely priced?

While greed is surely some of the answer, I’d imagine liability also plays a part. If your device fails to save someone, you could be a target for litigation.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#119

Post by aeternum »

Apocryphon wrote: post #104
aeternum wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, there are still non-banned activities but it's not only swimming. Cheerleading, football, skateboarding, even lifting are risky activities and do have some chance of injury. 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…

My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool. Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are no…

The problem is the university never considers the other side. What is the cost of banning unsupervised swimming? Has Phelps really never swam/trained unsupervised?

The issue is the visibility is very one-sided. Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming. No one reads about the hundreds of thousands of kids that do it with no issues.

Let people take risk if they understand it and accept the risk. The university should not be held liable but the kid should not be prevented. Risk is often the price of freedom.

Re: Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

#120

Post by Apocryphon »

aeternum wrote: post #119
Apocryphon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool. Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are no…

The problem is the university never considers the other side. What is the cost of banning unsupervised swimming? Has Phelps really never swam/trained unsupervised? The issue is the visibility is very one-sided. Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming. No one reads about the hundreds of thousands of kids that do it with no issues. Let people take risk if they understand it and…

Michael Phelps swam in pools and not in lakes. The university is likely banning unsupervised swimming only in the latter.

> Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming.

It doesn't seem to be all that infrequent when it's happening on an annual basis.

Anyway, ultimately the danger isn't even necessarily a swimming issue, so much as college men getting drunk and going near bodies of water (to swim or otherwise).

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