WTF Stories of the Week

[JWBear]

Why should the owners of these pools be forced to either fork over thousands of dollars or be forced to close? Where are the parents? Who in their right mind allows a child that young to swim in a pool unsupervised? Why should the rest of the public pay the price for parents who don't adequately supervise their children?

It’s nanny government any time laws or regulations are enacted that take away personal responsibility – in this case, the responsibility of the parents to keep their children from harm.

[Betty]

At the least there should be a warning about staying away from the drain - don't you think?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by JWBear

It’s nanny government any time laws or regulations are enacted that take away personal responsibility – in this case, the responsibility of the parents to keep their children from harm.

There will always be a debate about where the line is draw, but to give an extreme example, if the pool had a set of spikes at the bottom of the deep end, would it be the parents' responsibility to just supervise their kid?

Perhaps drain suction may or may not be an uber-deadly hazard, but it is a hazard and one with a solution, so it's not unheard of to insist on public facilities to have a certain level of safety precautions in place.

[Morrigoon]

Originally Posted by Betty

You know how when you were a kid the other kids told you to stay away from the drain in the bottom of the pool because it would suck you down and you would drown. Turns out - they were right.

Alan Korn, public policy director of the Washington-based nonprofit group Safe Kids Worldwide, said the vast majority of American swimmers do not realize that the bottoms of pools, spas and wading pools are hidden hazards, especially to children.

He said one person dies because of pool or spa drain suction in a typical year. His agency cited 33 deaths of children under age 14 between 1985 and 2004.

Okay, ONE person, in AMERICA, dies PER YEAR... and because of that, every public pool owner has to spend up to $15,000 to change their drains? 33 *gasp!* children over a span of 20 years, and this is considered the major threat to safety in this nation? I can think of hundreds of things that probably kill/maim/injure more children per year than this, and this is what they focus on?





(I'm not saying it isn't nice to protect the children, but let's start with the stuff more likely to kill more kids, shall we?)

[Strangler Lewis]

Originally Posted by JWBear

Why should the owners of these pools be forced to either fork over thousands of dollars or be forced to close? Where are the parents? Who in their right mind allows a child that young to swim in a pool unsupervised? Why should the rest of the public pay the price for parents who don't adequately supervise their children?

It’s nanny government any time laws or regulations are enacted that take away personal responsibility – in this case, the responsibility of the parents to keep their children from harm.

I find your indignation bizarre (but then I find the pervasive anti-child attitude on this board rather puzzling). Maybe I missed something, but doesn't your job depend on servicing adults who, it might be said, can't manage their own sh*t?

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

Okay, ONE person, in AMERICA, dies PER YEAR... and because of that, every public pool owner has to spend up to $15,000 to change their drains? 33 *gasp!* children over a span of 20 years, and this is considered the major threat to safety in this nation? I can think of hundreds of things that probably kill/maim/injure more children per year than this, and this is what they focus on?

(I'm not saying it isn't nice to protect the children, but let's start with the stuff more likely to kill more kids, shall we?)

I think the difference is 1) these stories are truly horrible and 2) it's not a speed limit situation where you're dealing with more theoretical risks and countervailing lifestyle choices. It's a clear risk, with a fatal outcome, and an obvious fix.

[Morrigoon]

I think a reasonable start would have been requiring it of all NEW pools, or requiring changes when reasonably possible, such as the next time the pool is drained, etc.

Also, I think someone could've come up with a domed fixture that could be installed over existing drains, rather than requiring a complete change to the drain system, which would make changes cheaper and more reasonable.

And again, there are many much more deadly and avoidable things they could've focused on.

[Alex]

Playing with the drain was the best part of going to the public school when I was a kid. That moment of fear when you poked a toe in and it took some work to pull it out was the reason for going.

Why must they destroy my childhood!

Plus, if you went down there and peed you could convince yourself it left the pool almost immediately and therefore wasn't so wrong.

I have no real opinion on whether the government should be doing it, but I wonder if it would be doing it if one of the 33 people in 20 years wasn't related to a former secretary of state.

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

I find your indignation bizarre (but then I find the pervasive anti-child attitude on this board rather puzzling). Maybe I missed something, but doesn't your job depend on servicing adults who, it might be said, can't manage their own sh*t?

Ditto all of the above. Especially the anti-child part.

From the article's description, it sounds like it isn't about whether a parent is watching or not. It cited an example of a child getting pulled under, and people trying to free her from the drain and her drowning anyways. It's not like no one noticed she was under water. So, yeah, I think pool companies should make products that don't kill people.

[Alex]

I know it is cold and heartless, but on a cost benefit basis, is spending $1.2 billion* justified to save 1 life per year? It would be way more effective to allow that one kid to die and require pool owners to send $5,000 to Africa for water purification tablets (I know, that's not particularly fair, pretty much any home grown safety measure is not cost effective compared to purification tablets for African water).



*Article says 240,000 are not yet compliant and that change costs $1,000 to $15,000. So using a picked as a guess number of $5,000 per retrofit that is $1.2 billion still needing to be spent.

ETA: When the EPA does impact assessments for proposed regulations they value a human life at $6.9 million. If we assume that the new drains will last 20 years, work 100% perfectly and therefore save 33 lives, that is a value of $36.4 million.

[Morrigoon]

Oftentimes laws to "protect the children" are pushed through by people/companies who stand to make money on the regulation (remember the uterine cancer vaccine?). Now, obviously this one has something to do with a lawmaker's personal grief, but I do question such expensive regulation, because it does seem obvious to me that someone stands to make a lot of money on this.

Again, I wouldn't mind so much if the reaction were less extreme (eg: applying it only to new or remodeled pools, coming up with a less expensive alternative such as fitting a dome over an existing flat grate, etc.) Safety and reasonability must be kept in balance. Else we'd have extremes like banning cars because they kill so many people.