And, for oceans, rivers, and flood water: remember that 1m³ of water weighs 1.1 ton/1 tonne.
Also dangerous: low head dams. https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machin...
Finally, don't sleep in or build homes in flash flood areas: (US): https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home
Children drowning is tragic, but this is nanny-state stuff. Are we to wrap literally any pond, lake, stream, fountain, etc. with a four-foot tall fence, because children exist? Imagine Central Park, but with the ponds surrounded by chain-link fences -- now that I think about it, I'm sort of amazed that New York City (where every other building is perpetually surrounded by ugly and useless scaffolding because one person died from falling bricks once) hasn't actually done this.
At some point, parents have to take personal responsibility for where their children run off to. Per TFA, the state the story took place in already had a law stricter than the one you're saying should exist [1]. It didn't prevent this incident. To the author's credit, this is not a plea for better laws, but rather, one for better parental supervision -- they knew there was a water feature, and still let the child run free.
So, PSA: teach your children to swim, and keep a close leash on the ones who don't know how yet.
[1] In many states (including PA, apparently, per TFA), it's already required that you wrap any standing water greater than 24" deep with a fence, even if you don't have children or ever intend them to be there.
If you as an owner, a professional, or even the labourer circumvent these rules and a child dies in the pool, you will likely be criminally charged.
These laws started to be introduced in the late eighties as pools started to be more common place. So I was curious about how these laws had effected drowning deaths since they were introduced. Turns out that drowning deaths in pools for kids under 4 have decreased 5% per year for the last 20 years [0]. That's about 500 kids lives saved in twenty years at the expense of every pool in the country being fenced - about 1.6 million pools. (Australia has the highest per capita private pools in the world.)
At an average cost of about $5k for a pool fence, you could suggest saving each child cost about $16m.
Drowning deaths in other age groups and other locations have not really changed in that time.
Even then, I have never seen any natural waterway, river, creek, beach or whatever being fenced, not even man made natural ponds in public parks.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S132602002...
[0] https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-child...
If you are taking care of someone with autism around water, be super aware of that.
A child with autism is 160x more likely to die from drowning vs the general population [1]
[1] https://nationalautismassociation.org/resources/autism-safet...
I got my kids into swimming lessons on their first spring (was advised to avoid it during the winter).
And it's part of primary education in my municipality, with the express purpose of reducing drownings: it's not sport, the curriculum is 100% geared towards familiarity and safety.
Everyone's holidays are at a beach, so water safety is a constant concern, and looking at Our World in Data, Portugal had far worse numbers for drownings than the US in the 80s, but are much better now.
Also, the post isn’t about swimmable water—it’s a cautionary tale about how little it takes to drown. I can confirm that as one winter my neighbor drown in a shallow mud puddle off his back porch. He had a non-fatal heart attack and fell into it unconscious.
Setting those aside, the canals for irrigation are more dangerous than rivers. The southern half is also filled with dry riverbeds that turn into raging rivers in storms. Finally, Phoenix itself has something like 4 lakes within an hour drive and the salt river that people float.
The heat of Arizona makes water recreation a huge part of life.
Summer camps are expensive, like common.
Better swimming ed in school makes the gap narrower. I don't know any recent statistics, but I have seen statistics from the 90s and back then the US was amazingly apalling in that regard.
Edit: this is not comprehensive, but Jesus h Christ in a chicken basket: https://www.poolsafely.gov/2017/07/05/new-reports-fatal-drow...
I let my four year old do this because I didn't realize how dangerous it was. I've since learned more about the risks, both through personal experience and from reading more after, and I most certainly wouldn't make the same choice now.
That swim ring was a bit loose. I was standing in the water, probably jumping up and down like kids do. Somehow, I lost balance and as my upper body fell to the side the swim ring moved from my waist toward feet. It stayed there and pulled my feet upward while my head went below the water. I was powerless to return to the surface as feet were stuck in that floating ring, forcing me upside down. Fortunately, a family friend noticed the situation and pulled me from the water. Near-death situation, and it looked perfectly safe.
A wave took me underwater and there were too many people in the pool for me to easily get back up. I don't fully remember how I got out of it, only that I was pushed underwater (I think I managed to get to the shallower end)
You should try this. I was a lifeguard for several years, and I think the key is that there are almost always signs a person can’t actually swim. They cling to a flotation device, they stand up to their tip toes in shallow water, they seem visibly uneasy in the deep. They’re the ones who are going to get in trouble, it’s comparatively quite rare for a strong swimmer to suddenly start drowning.
Years later, when I was taking the lifeguard class in high school, one of the first things we were taught is that you can drown on dry land with a tablespoon of water. I remember that to this day (that was back in 1980).
These days, my head is on swivel at the pool. . . And I'm not the guard. Just paying attention to all the little people. And during water aerobics, I watch the adults in the pool who are not good swimmers.
Water is scary. I have a healthy respect for it.
I know you can down in very little water, but really a tablespoon? How does that work? Is this a literal claim, or more of a cautionary hyperbole?
Similarly, intoxication vastly degrades the instincts that would otherwise keep you alive. I will never understand how people think getting drunk is _fun_.
You still shouldn't let them be around water unsupervised, but it can buy precious minutes when it matters and give parents some peace of mind.
Learning how to be careful is really important, and weaker swimmers are often more cautious.
The other big problem is that you might be safe but someone less skilled copies you. I was being very careful in knee high shallows near a well sign-posted rip in South America, and some teens got in and got taken out by it. Fortunately they made it back (nobody near could have helped them).
Or even in the USA: "TikTok discovered scenic Eagle Falls; then 12 people drowned" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446535
I've definitely had some close calls from poor decisions in rivers and the sea (I can be reckless at times).
Why didn't the aunt think to just go get her instead of calling you over to say "Hey so I know you told her to stay away from the fountain, but what about her walking around the rim of it, is that dangerous or not?"
HN isn't just for tech, it's for anything that satisfies intellectual curiosity. It's not always obvious in advance what will turn out to satisfy intellectual curiosity, but if a good discussion develops, that ends up being the most important signal.
Cars, dogs, and water.
These are the big three common things that children interact with regularly that can, and will, cause irreparable harm or death with functionally no warning and virtually instantaneously. Kids also don't have the experience or the intuition to figure out if a situation is dangerous; cars move too fast, dogs are too hard to read, and water danger is hard to grasp even for adults (the number of people, including grown adults, I've seen panic and had to get pulled out after gleefully jumping into water where it turns out they can't reliably touch the bottom is fairly high).
The first two require some strictness (i.e. being very clear about rules like never going near a road without an adult, and never hitting a dog or pulling it's ears), but water basically requires regular swimming lessons from qualified instructors. It's something I wish happened earlier, and that more families had easy access to.
chrismatheson•2d ago
Theres a saying that comes to my mind, I think it used to be a lot more common.
"it only takes 6 inches of water to drown"
Fall funny, get nocked out and land in a puddle or whatever, or cant lift your head out of it for whatever reason etc etc.
I am VERY conscious of water & my kids, being a scuba diver myself I have a fair respect for the sea as well, and still we have had experiences that left us a little shook.
Sniffnoy•7h ago