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Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

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Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#311

Post by beachstartup »

rbshadel wrote: post #183
TheGRS wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thankless job too, I remember hating life guards growing up because they would blow their whistle at all sorts of things. They aren't trying to be jerks of course, but that was my perception when I was very young and just loved swimming. Being older I see how tough that job would be.

I lifeguarded throughout high school and college, and it always surprised me that most of the difficulties I had were with parents/adults. For the most part, kids would give a sullen look and then listen. My only memorable troubles were the occasional adults who would just flat-out ignore or contradict rules, no matter how many times you told them (I always assumed because they thought they knew better than a ~15 yea…

hey, look at it this way. the girl was fine. by definition, you did your job well. that's the best desired outcome of all cases, whether or not you made the wrong call.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#312

Post by Afton »

gkya wrote: post #266
Afton wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually understand the downvotes you are getting, unless people think that this just isn't adding to the conversation, but in the interests of making lemonaide: We often use neuter (gender-neutral) pronouns in English, just not this one. I've heard native English speakers say things like "If a mother wants to use the nursing room, they can just key in the code in their pamphlet". There are definitely restric…

A language is defined in terms of how it is used, but a language is not supposed to be used in the way it was defined, if so, we'd still be speaking proto-indo-european, or maybe we'd never be able to speak, as there wouldn't exist any grammar before a language existed. So, being a grammar nazi is plain stupid.

Be charitable. If you haven't been exposed to actual linguistics (and know about things like PIE), you have the current, normal, common-sense view on language, which is that what you speak is normal, and what speakers of any other dialect or language do it wrong. I've heard intelligent, university educated people say things like "I don't want to learn $Language with an accent". The fact that no such 'accent-less' language exists is simply not a fact that they know. Such misconceptions about, and people who suffer under them are misguided, not stupid.

My two cents.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#313

Post by sandworm101 »

Nadya wrote: post #273
sandworm101 wrote: post #155

I'm about to go swimming, I do so every day. The truth is that lifeguards at pools rarely ever see "drowning" and almost never have to pull people from the water. It's a one-a-year thing. Heart attacks are more common. I know of one pool locally that in 40 years has only seen two deaths, one heart attack and one murder. Drowning isn't an issue. More people are hurt in the showers than in the pool. And far more on the…

So let's concede that pools as a whole are safe and drowning in a pool happens, at most, maybe once a year. Per public pool. Per city. Per state. So now we have thousands of people drowning each day - many rescued by lifeguards. In the USA, 10 people drown (and die) per day on average. What if more people could recognize when someone was drowning? What if we could bring 10 down to 8? 6? You'd save hundreds of lives e…

10 drownings per day, but take away all those involving alcohol, physical accidents (ie hit on head by boat then drown), drownings that happen at night ... and you have a very small number. Kids, or anyone else for that matter, drowning in supervised public pools is almost unheard of statistically. It's akin to being struck by lightning. You are much more likely to die on the drive to the pool than while in it. So greater safety can be gained though countless other measures. One popular in my area is to teach people how to swim through free lessons. That's reduced the number of river drownings significantly in recent years.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#314

Post by mightybyte »

Wave pools deserve extra care. I've been swimming for literally almost my entire life. My parents put me in swimming lessons when I was six months old and I started swimming competitively when I was 6. I don't remember any time in my life when I have not felt completely comfortable and at home in the water. But I distinctly remember an experience I had in a wave pool when I was probably 7 or 8. I got in the deep end because of course I was a swimmer and I would be fine...but when the waves came they seemed gigantic compared to me and my small size. I clearly remember feeling completely overpowered and it was all I could do to struggle to the side. For a bit I honestly thought that I might drown. Years later I became a lifeguard and did some guarding here and there, but after watching videos like these I can tell you that I definitely didn't take my job seriously enough. I never worked in any truly difficult environments, but I've got to hand it to those who do.

Water is a powerful thing. No matter how strong a swimmer you are, somewhere in the world there is water that can overpower you. It is not always easy to tell when that is the case.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#315

Post by PhasmaFelis »

astrobe_ wrote: post #161
duaneb wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever enjoy experimenting with babies, this is how they will act when lowered into a pool. They will stand (or sit) on the bottom, holding their breath. Having a tea party is much easier before you realize the danger consciously.

There's something I don't understand in this statement and in GP's story: when you stay static in the water, provided you don't carry extra weight, you just naturally go up and float to the surface. If you want to stay down, you have to actively move in order to counter Archimedes' force. The reaction of babies is therefore perfectly adapted: stay calm, hold breath, wait until your lower density brings you back to th…

> There's something I don't understand in this statement and in GP's story: when you stay static in the water, provided you don't carry extra weight, you just naturally go up and float to the surface. If you want to stay down, you have to actively move in order to counter Archimedes' force.

If you've got a lungful of air. Exhale first, and most people will sink like a stone.

My Dad had a trick, which I've done a few times myself as an adult, where he'd hyperventilate for a bit to get his blood heavily oxygenated, then exhale fully and just lie quietly on the bottom of the pool for a minute or so. (In the shallow end, so he only needed to stand up to breathe.) It's surprisingly soothing; after reading this thread, though, I'm not sure I'd do it at a public pool to avoid freaking out the lifeguard, and I certainly wouldn't teach any kids to do it.

(Floatation also depends a lot on your body fat percentage. Babies are very chubby, so they float, but I can imagine that a real lean kid in the middle of a growth spurt wouldn't be so buoyant.)

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#316

Post by ngoede »

Retra wrote: post #308
eridius wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a teenager I was in Boy Scouts. Every year we went to a summer camp that was on the edge of a large pond [1]. And one of the strictest rules there was that you were not allowed in the water until you'd passed the swimming competency test (and you had to pass it again every single year), and the main swimming test was that you had to swim laps in their roped-off section of the lake without pausing until you…

Ah, I got to do some military training involving jumping into a pool with weapons, armor, and helmet. Swimming in boots is hard.

Yeah I bet. Jeans are pretty fun. They get amazingly heavy and restrictive.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#317

Post by yellowapple »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #310
yellowapple wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have some pretty good machine learning tech out there, but I'd reckon we're quite a ways off from the proposed startup focusing on replacing lifeguards with computers even at spotting functionality, let alone the other functions necessary (retrieval, resuscitation iff actually necessary, etc.). Sure, someday we'll have robots do everything for us. We're not quite there yet.

A rectangular pool with a flat bottom (probably accounts for the majority of pool volume world-wide) would be pretty easy to have full camera coverage over with minimal image distortion. Each object could be easily tracked for time underwater, depth, etc. (and expanded to track fine motion as well) Objects that stay near the bottom are suspect. The system could alert lifeguards to the exact location of a victim. You…

Right, but my point is that we're not quite at the point where a computer can reasonably process that much visual input, determine whether or not something is exhibiting the signs of drowning, and alert a lifeguard with a minimum of errors. False positives will lead to personnel confusion, and false negatives will lead to dead swimmers.

This isn't to mention that automation does encourage complacency. One of the primary reasons for the recent Malaysia Air jet disappearances according to investigations is an excessive reliance upon automated systems to fly planes, and insufficient knowledge of flying without such tools. I reckon a similar situation could be a real danger here as well (if not amplified considerably; most lifeguards (at least where I've lived) were usually highschool students doing it as an extracurricular/volunteer activity, summer job, etc., and teenagers aren't exactly known for having an above-average attention span).

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#319

Post by musgrove »

Where the camera is isn't the best lookout spot. I lifeguarded one summer in college at the NCO club at Ft. Jackson in Columbia, SC, with 300 kids at one time in the pool every day. It was a nightmare. I made many saves.
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