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…
Genuine answer: no.
> We're more than happy to ban guns
Define "we".
> And as soon as autonomous cars are on the road, I'm going to be first in line to want to ban the incredibly dangerous human-driven death machines.
After we just had a WiReD article on here last week about how hilariously insecure current-generation cars are? I'm sticking to my '99 Chevy Blazer, thank you very much; if my car's outlawed, then I'd much rather be an outlaw than trapped in an incredibly dangerous computer-driven death machine (especially if you're advocating for a ban on human-driven vehicles, which implies that it would be illegal for me to take manual control of such a vehile - thus further implying a lack of physical controls and therefore an outright inability to override the computer when safety requires it).
> But cigarettes
Swimming pools, unlike cigarettes, are actually good for your body. There are numerous health benefits to swimming in general in terms of the cardiovascular activity involved without the joint damage associated with other cardio workouts like running, biking, etc.
> in reality it will be a long while before it's even plausible we'd think about putting the most basic of restrictions on them.
Define "most basic". Quite a few public pools that I've been to require children to pass swimming tests, for example (usually an ability to tread water for a given amount of time, usually a few minutes), will impose height restrictions on children, etc.
> And swimming pools might be nostalgic, but they're really death pits.
Oh please. You want to ban bicycles, too? Lots of people crash those things at sufficiently-high speeds to cause serious injury. And why stop there? Let's ban everything that might cause death. Trees can fall down and kill you, so let's ban those. Kitchen knives can result in you being cut or stabbed (either by yourself or someone else), so we should all cut our food with spoons instead. Kids jumping on trampolines might miss the trampoline on their way down, so we should ban those death machines, too, while we're at it. Planes crash and disappear all the time, so we should shut down the airlines and turn all of Earth into a no-fly zone. You might trip and fall while walking, so let's get everyone those electric wheelchair/scooter thingamajigs while mandating that everyone shall wear helmets and protective padding at all times. Children sometimes suffocate in their sleep over simple things like their blankets and beds, so we should require all babies to sleep on hard, sterile surfaces. Dogs maul children sometimes, so let's exterminate the canine species en masse.
How far down the slippery slope do you want to slide? Personally, I'd rather there be a pool at the end of the slippery slope than your proposal of hard ground.