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Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

spotthedrowningchild.com

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Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#381

Post by X-Istence »

omegaworks wrote: post #354
jff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually spotted that kid as the first possible point of trouble... but you have to wait until the "moments later" card to see him start doing something risky, and then like you said, even when he's tangled in the rope it won't let you click him.

For that guy I waited until he started actually showing IDR signs - no lateral movement, dipping up and down. Even though he's struggling in the rope he's still managing to move around using a bad freestyle.

That thrashing around doesn't look like he's still managing. That's full on panic. As someone that has been on life guard duty, that would be enough for me to dive in and get him out.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#382

Post by atourgates »

skj wrote: post #327
dimino wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know why a drill happens. I also know why they don't actually burn down buildings during fire drills.

I assume that's because you don't get the building back? I think they get the kid back in these particular drills. If not, then yeah this is a terrible idea.

Ha! Yeah, we got the kid back. They'd spend the drill hidden in the admin office, eating ice cream.

Really the most worrying part of the whole thing was teaching the stolen kids that if an adult walks up to them and tells them to quietly sneak away, they get ice cream.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#383

Post by omegaworks »

X-Istence wrote: post #381
omegaworks wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that guy I waited until he started actually showing IDR signs - no lateral movement, dipping up and down. Even though he's struggling in the rope he's still managing to move around using a bad freestyle.

That thrashing around doesn't look like he's still managing. That's full on panic. As someone that has been on life guard duty, that would be enough for me to dive in and get him out.

Good point.

http://spotthedrowningchild.com/creator.html#T5mDQeDkca0

How would you set this scenario up?

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#384

Post by dimino »

skj wrote: post #327
dimino wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know why a drill happens. I also know why they don't actually burn down buildings during fire drills.

I assume that's because you don't get the building back? I think they get the kid back in these particular drills. If not, then yeah this is a terrible idea.

Yeah, also the trauma and panic it incites.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#385

Post by swores »

irishcoffee wrote: post #377
corin_ wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you drew the line in the wrong place, as I know nothing about the subject, but surely you could also close the pool so nobody can use it for the same reason of "saving lives, not providing entertainment"

Well no, I couldn't. I was paid to run the pool, not close it. There are a lot of ways to have fun at a pool without flotation devices that endanger lives. I can provide a list if you'd like.

You could run the pool by saying any child under 16 needs to be accompanied into the pool by an adult and can never be more than 2m away from that adult, one adult per child. Hell why only children, everyone in the pool needs one designated person they won't go more than 2m away from so they can watch each other.

You could introduce a rule that nobody can speak or make any noises that aren't a direct result of swimming, so that when someone is in trouble it's easier to hear them and/or someone else alerting to the problem.

Both of those would still be running the pool, both of them would make it easier to keep people from drowning, and it wouldn't be impossible to have fun. It would be much less fun, but not impossible.

But you've drawn a line that those rules would be going too far, whereas banning flotation devices isn't too far. You've balanced in your mind safety vs. entertainment to see what's worth doing and what isn't. I'm not arguing with your decisions, I know nothing about keeping swimmers safe, I'm just saying in response to "my job was to guard lives, not provide entertainment" that if you really didn't care about anything other than saving their lives you could be much stricter and make the pool much less fun, but a tiny bit more safe.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#386

Post by Rossimac »

irishcoffee wrote: post #30

I would like to point out that any flotation device in a pool besides a life jacket is just asking for problems. I life-guarded for almost 10 years, the only way I would ever let anything that supported a human floating __besides__ an approved life jacket was if the pool was almost empty (such that the one person got my undivided attention) and if I knew the child to already be a strong swimmer. I highly encourage ev…

When I was younger (say, 7 or 8 years old), I considered myself a good swimmer and as part of my swimming lessons we were told to do length-ways with the aid of a swimming board [0] at arms' length.

Approaching the 3/4 mark of the length, I felt it slipping out of my hands and in my panic, I went down. I woke up after being resuscitated after a lifeguard noticed I was in trouble under the water. He had jumped from the top step of his high chair straight in apparently and literally threw me out of the water to a waiting colleague.

Not sure if I'd trust my own children with that type of flotation aid again, but as you said, it encouraged me to swim outside of my comfort zone and I panicked so perhaps more control is needed of when and where it is used.

[0] http://runforthethrills.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/kick-...

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#387

Post by Nadya »

sandworm101 wrote: post #313
Nadya wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gr…

How many do you take away because a lifeguard was there to save the person from drowning?

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#388

Post by tonyarkles »

milspec wrote: post #348
tonyarkles wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most challenging bits with that is going to be transmitting RF underwater. And an interesting thing to think about is whether or not such a device would end up causing even more accidents, when people start just assuming that "it's ok if I go past my limits, someone will save me"

Underwater RF is no trouble in this case. You have the signal backwards. As long as there is no problem, regularly transmit an identity beacon. Loss of signal is the alert.

How does the regular beacon transmit if it's underwater? Someone standing in the shallow end of the pool or treading water in the deep end may pretty easily keep their wrist underwater for minutes at a time.

There's two things that such a device would need to have: quite low false positives (so that the lifeguard isn't distracted by false alarms - leading to a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario), and vanishingly small false negatives (the first time a kid dies because the device didn't work, it'll be a bad day). In-water RF would be very hard to do to make those two conditions true.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fabulous idea. Wearing my EE hat though, I haven't thought of a good way to do it that would work reliably enough for a life-saving device.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#389

Post by gkya »

Afton wrote: post #312
gkya wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' lan…

Misconceptions do not matter here. One may have misconceptions, but this does not justify correcting people for their grammatical errors on a thread that has nothing to do with grammar or whatsoever and thus hijacking it. It should be obvious that a serious lot of people here are not native-speakers.

Re: Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child

#390

Post by lukaslalinsky »

frogpelt wrote: post #370
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I see it, there are two use cases for a pool, swimming and fun. I'd agree with you if you were talking about a pool with swimming lanes. The point of the pool in the video on the website is to have fun. If you make it safe, you kill the fun.

> If you make it safe, you kill the fun. It puts a damper on things when someone drowns too.

You are right, of course, but that's why things shouldn't be black and white. There is a difference between banning everything except "approved" life jackets and banning large inflatable pads which children could get stuck under. If you look at the website, the majority of people in the pool are hanging on the blue inflatable tubes. They would not be in the pool at all if they had to actually swim.
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