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Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

spotthedrowningchild.com

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Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#51

Post by jkoschei »

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

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#53

Post by jsprogrammer »

AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #25

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 dow…

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.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#54

Post by cbr »

personlurking wrote: post #28

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…

We should do more of this kind of testing.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#55

Post by ohitsdom »

Mithaldu wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#57

Post by daschwa »

AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #41
northben wrote: post #34

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#58

Post by 001spartan »

scarmig wrote: post #50

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 p…

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?

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#59

Post by anon4 »

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.

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