I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water in ways that require swim skills.
Drownings are tragic, however, we can't 100% prevent things without severe negative consequences.
Luckily none of the narrative here is about zero drownings.
Or more precisely, people will express targeting zero drowning, but they're not making the logical jump you're pointing at. The device in the article is someone pragmatic, lifeguard situation in most places is pragmatic, there would need to be a crazy shift to get people to agree to a more absolute stance.
> Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability, and after a generation of this there is an undersupply of people who can teach others to swim. Now some municipalities in my area are trying to ban swimming in open water.
It comes down to economics. I share the commenter's assessment that there might be fewer places to swim than before, but I think it also comes from fewer people interested in swimming in the first place, which creates the vicious circle.
To draw a parralel, there's also fewer skate rinks in my region, ski resorts also closed in significant numbers. There's just not enough demand to justify the cost, and while lowering the requirements could partially help, I don't see it working even mid-term, and certainly not long term.
On liability, I'd suspect that's not the real issue (is the town actually liable if you drown on your own swimming (= with a swimsuit and clear intent) in an unmarked body of water ?) and it might be more on the image and keeping away some demographics. Basically the same level of care as forbidding RC toys in parks.
I can't read the first article, but judging from the second:
> The sidewalk is “perennially covered in water and algae,” according to the complaint. Other Queen Anne residents testified in court that they had also fallen at this location.
It reads to me like the sidewalk was a public danger, the building owners were under the hook to maintain it but never cared, until literally getting sued.
A summer camp run by the city government left a group of 9 teenagers "unsupervised" next to a lake. I feel safe in saying that a lake cannot constitute a public nuisance.
DJ McCutcheon, one of those teenagers, "was underwater for about six minutes before bystanders rescued him" [after which he subsequently died], strongly suggesting that he was unsupervised in only the most technical sense.
I would have to agree with WalterBright that Steilacoom didn't do anything unreasonable here. The idea that 13-year-olds can't be trusted not to kill themselves if left - not even alone, but away from an adult who is officially responsible for keeping them alive - for six minutes,† is completely absurd.
The legal trouble appears to have arisen mostly from the fact that leaving the group of teens "unsupervised" violated a formal written policy of the camp, not from the non-fact that it involved some kind of wrongdoing or recklessness.
† They were left for much longer than six minutes, but since 100% of the problem occurred within a six-minute window, a standard that aimed to solve the problem would require smaller periods of "unsupervision" than that.
Thanks, so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids, and it was a structural problem (if was alone peddling 12 kids)
> so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids
Only in the same sense that if one of them had slipped in the shower, hit his head, and died as a result, that would have been equally the fault of the town for not adequately supervising the showers?
If they were supposed to watch after the kids in the shower, well yes.
There was an incident a few months ago about a school van: one of the kids at the rear of the van slept or didn't step out for whatever reason, the driver didn't count the kids and shut the van and went away. The kid was too small and too weak to properly ask for help when it realized it couldn't get out, and died in the bus.
This would be a completely random incident, with no one at fault, if it wasn't for the explicit responsibility of the driver to get the kids out of the bus.
A family wouldn't have the same responsibility, a parent bringing their kids and friend to some game and making the same kind of mistake might also not be at fault. Being a professional with a written explicit responsibility to watch after the kids makes it a different matter.
PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.
> PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.
...that is definitely false, and a truly wild assumption. Why would you believe that?
13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time.
I get the feeling that people would react differently if it was related to cars.
For instance a plane of rolling rocks right in a corner that would screw with tire grip and have several cars fall into the valley because of it. Would you see it as an issue with drivers not being skilled enough to keep control under adverse conditions ? Or request the maintainer of the road to do its job and fix it ?
There was an incident where a driver drove through a barrier and onto a bridge that was out, and crashed. Google maps directed him across the bridge.
Who was at fault there?
A basic tenet of driving is you should be looking where you're going.
That said, streets should be made reasonably safe because there are always drivers who don't pay attention. But that doesn't mean we should pay those negligent drivers.
As for the sidewalk, the city should have forced a fix for it. That's a separate issue from paying the stepper.
My point is that limiting swimming in certain areas is hardly the same thing as banning all swimming, it just feels like there is an alarmism about alarmism and perhaps there can be nuance and self-reflection from all sides of the debate.
Literally yes! We have education, signage, warnings, red flags, etc... and yet people still do dumb shit and get themselves killed. Swim at your own risk, as they say.
In ALL of the great lakes, 45 people drowned last year. I have no idea what the drownings near shore was, but I mean, millions of people live on the borders of the Great lakes. 45 is pretty damn good and I think resources are better spent on other things.
Sure it will. Not immediately but gradually over time. If we decide it isn't worthwhile to prevent drowning deaths, educational and informational programs will go away. Novices won't fully understand the risks. Programs like my lakeside park has where free life jackets are available to borrow will disappear. People who might have considered swim lessons won't bother.
> For seven years now, the city of nearly 60,000 people has reported resounding success: Not a single automobile occupant, bicyclist or pedestrian has died in a traffic crash since January 2017, elevating Hoboken as a national model for roadway safety.
I like the idea of the curb bump-outs. Intersections where you cannot see the cross traffic are definitely higher risk.
> Mike McGinn, the mayor at the time, said he wanted to recalibrate the public’s expectation of road safety to make it more akin to their thoughts on airplane safety, where no fatality is considered acceptable.
No. The standard is zero. That's why the FAA investigates every crash or safety incident no matter how small. Realistically, the number will never be zero but if we don't put in the effort to improve constantly, safety will stagnate.
