Automated Pool System Saves Swimmer

An anonymous reader writes "An automated swimmer tracking system installed in a pool in Wales has saved a young girl who just collapsed and sank to the bottom, by paging lifeguards when it could not detect her moving." This is the first time a UK swimmer has been saved by the £65,000 Poseidon system since it was installed in March of 2003.

Comments

One step further

[fembots]

Paging lifeguards is good as long as one is available.

Maybe in the future, a secondary (upper) tiles can be installed on the pool floor, and the system is able to pinpoint the victim and automatically raise enough tiles to push the victim out of the water.

Re:One step further

[fgl]

Or the lifeguards can just pay attention? Isnt that what they are paid for?

Re:One step further

[imboboage0]

Paging lifeguards

I thought everyone had cell phones nowadays....

Re:One step further

[TedTschopp]

The article stated that the pool was busy and that she jumped in and never came up, she passed out as she was entering the water. No scream, no splashing or struggling, just girl jumps in and doesn't come up out of the water.

Re:One step further

[RUFFyamahaRYDER]

Tiles pulling a person up would be awesome, but I'm not sure it would be very practical.

I think a good next step would be to have alarms below and above water when something like this happens so even if a lifegaurd isn't available, someone else can go in and save the person drowning before it's too late.

Re:One step further

[Netscryer]

It's probably best to use a seperate device -- then there's less chance of it being ignored. Plus it can be easily handed to the next lifeguard. Yes, we do have 'mobile' phones. Even in Wales.

Re:One step further

[kfg]

If you pay a lifeguard twice as much that does not confer on them the ability to pay attention to twice as much for twice as long.

You will find, if you try it out, that it is actually quite difficult to pay attention to a single, nonmoving, object for any long period of time. Giving equal attention to merely two moving objects is impossible.

People in hazardous jobs routinely lose their own lives simply because they are not capable of applying enough attention to save themselves.

Electronic sensors have their limitations as well, but tireless watching is not one of them.

KFG

Re:One step further

[Valleye]

If you RTFA you would also have read that the water is too deep the glare makes it difficult to see the bottom. Couple that with a silent drowning and you can see why a life guard can miss this.

Instead of losing the diving boards and shallowing the pool which takes lots of fun out of pools. They invested in the system. It seems to work well in my estimation.

Re:One step further

[Back Slider 1969]

It might be more practical to require children under a certain age (and disabled people) to wear a special life preserver that lays flat but can be remotely inflated (CO2 cartridges) by the system. And possibly release bright colored dyes into the surrounding water to give the lifeguards the exact location of the child quickly.
I like this tech and am glad somebody thought of it.

Re:One step further

[Valiss]

Or the lifeguards can just pay attention? Isnt that what they are paid for?

I spent the first few years of college as a lifeguard for the city and county. Sure, a lifeguard pays attention, but when the city is short staffed due to the budget and there is 1 lifeguard for, say, every 45 kids at the pool, it's hard to watch them all at the same time.

Combine that with the fact that this is a job where you are paying just a couple bucks more an hour than min. wage to ensure you child does not die. And, like so many other services, parents just treat the city pool like a babysitter.

Honestly, I left because (despite what Baywatch will tell you) it's a reasonably high stress job, for such low pay.

I might look at one kid down in the pool among the 100+ other kids in my section to guard. Is that kid practicing floating? Is he playing dead with his friends? Should I blow my whistle and make a save? Maybe he's just trying new goggles underwater. Do I risk that? What if I'm wrong? Combine that with the fact that IF a child were to die, the parent would sue you and everyone above you all the way to the mayor.

These are the millions of things that go through your mind every few minutes when you are watching a pool. In the 2 years I was there, I only had to save 1 kid. And it was due to parent neglect: a mother let her infant walk into the shallow end of the pool. As soon as the kid tripped in the water, he was no longer able to regain his footing and was floating face down in the pool!) After the end of that season, I traded in my buoy for a keyboard.

So it's not always as clear as to "just look at the water."

Re:One step further

[Detritus]

I was involved in a similar situation when I was a kid. A teenage girl, who was a poor swimmer, somehow swallowed some water and lost consciousness after diving in to the deep end of the pool. When I saw her, she was just suspended above the bottom, neutrally buoyant. The only reason I could see her was that I was swimming in the same area. She really wasn't visible from where the lifeguard was stationed, which was supposed to give the lifeguard a view of the entire pool. I ran and told the lifeguard, who immediately dove in and pulled her out. She quickly responded to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and was OK. I don't blame the lifeguard. Due to the way the pool was designed and where the elevated lifeguard chair was located, the girl was difficult to see.

Re:One step further

[sharkey]

The article stated that the pool was busy and that she jumped in and never came up, she passed out as she was entering the water.

4 people is busy?

Re:One step further

[Overzeetop]

We played games like this when I was a little kid. You know, jump in and pretend you're dead, sinking slowly to the bottom, then lying there until you have to come up for air. With this system, it would gie a false positive. Lifeguards are tuned to see progressive problems, and to filter out as much play as possible. This girl might have been pulled out by the guard anyway, or it could have taken an extra 30 seconds to a couple of minutes to register that she wasn't just playing.

4 people is pretty slow, so shes more likely to have been pulled out "in time" without the system. I think the marketing pimp was a bit sensational with his "one more minute" claim, but if it bought this girl 30 seconds, it was probably worth it.

I didn't see any mention of the "miss" rate on this system.

Re:One step further

[fgl]

How about a cheap "Bio-monitor" that everyone has to wear. Or accept the liability of not wearing should they decide life sign monitoring is too obtrusive.

My guess is that extreme heart rate changes, or breathing changes would be far simpler to monitor & trigger alarms with. Relying on computers to detect "drowning" states seems a bit halfassed still.

Maybe in 5-10 years.

One could even make them in floater devices for the kiddies. I'd say something about 2 birds, one stone if it weren't so grim for the topic.

Re:One step further

[vandoravp]

The article says the message from the system includes a diagram of the location of the swimmer, so I imagine they use a special pager system.

Re:One step further

[grammar fascist]

No scream, no splashing or struggling, just girl jumps in and doesn't come up out of the water.

Funny enough, that's usually what happens, since most people in distress either can't swim or have a medical problem that prevents them from doing so.

The non-swimmers are the most interesting. In lifeguard training, we watched a video of swimmers in distress taken at a water park. It turns out that something like 1/3 of the people who go there can't swim, and they still use the big slides that dump you into six feet of water! Lifeguards were making more than ten saves every day...so it was a perfect place to get video.

You'd be surprised how quiet they are. They're not bothered to scream or shout - they're mostly trying to breathe. They move very little, splash very little, kick straight down, do dumb, ineffective things with their arms.... The quiet, animalistic panic just before drowning is a little eerie to watch.

If someone is treading water and shouting "HELP!" he's probably fine, in other words. For the moment, anyway.

Any lifeguard worth his salt would be watching young people in the deep end, especially those underwater. The lifeguard on duty may have been doing that, in fact, and would have just waited longer than the Poseidon system did. The article doesn't say whether the lifeguard was tracking the girl already.

Re:One step further

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former lifeguard, I think this system is overrated.

I had a situation where I was guarding a crowded outdoor pool one summer. Kids were goofing around on a big floating island toy. A lot of them were swimming under it and coming up the other side, normal kid stuff.

I saw one kid slide off it and go under. I just kept watching but you sort of keep a mental count in your head. I know how long I can hold my breath, so I give a kid who's exerting himself a fraction of that time.

My first instinct is to jump in and yank him out. Then training kicks in and I remember this is a crowded pool (dangerous). So I grabbed a hook and reached him with it and pulled him up. He was coughing a bit, which told me he did need help, but it was also relieving knowing I was there in time.

The situation in this pool was probably similar. I doubt the paging system added much time to the guard's reaction unless the guards were truly goofing around or not doing their jobs. It is also possible a guard was already moving to get a tool or other aid to make a save without entering the pool himself, when the page occurred.

Re:One step further

[kfg]

You haven't done a lot of heart reate monitoring, have you? A person behaving normally around pool might have a heart rate of 50 bpm for an hour at a stretch, or go from 70 to 200 and back to 70 in a matter of minutes, or . . .

Heart rate varies radically. The only heart rate of interest that a safty monitor if this sort can convey is an arhythmia or no heart rate at all. Ideally you want to know about potential trouble long before that.

Relying on computers to detect "drowning" states seems a bit halfassed still.

This is why the system still relies on human observation and judgement.It does not replace the lifeguard. It is a tool of the lifeguard.

KFG

Re:One step further

[uncqual]

If you pay a lifeguard twice as much that does not confer on them the ability to pay attention to twice as much for twice as long.

No, for that, you have to pay 4 times as much.

Re:One step further

[w98]

One could even make them in floater devices for the kiddies

They've had these out for like a decade ... usually a wristwatch - the instant it gets wet it sets off an alarm somewhere else near the pool to alert someone else that the watch (and therefore, likely the child) has fallen into the pool.

Re:One step further

[E8086]

"1 lifeguard for, say, every 45 kids at the pool, it's hard to watch them all at the same time."

At least 50:1 of kids to lifeguards. I had the privlage of working at the city pool during a few highschool summers, as the cook in the refreshments stand, so I didn't have to be anywhere the water area. I never cared much for swimming and once you work there and see what ends up in the pool, you don't want to have to touch the water with a 10' pole. "Somebody made a floaty"
It was/is an olympic size pool or very close with 6 lifeguard stands around the pool with 2 on "safety patrol" walking around the pool grounds and the other 2 at the first aid station. Three times as week was day camp day, all the summer day camps in the city showed up, close to 2500 kids. The camp counselors were suposed to watch their groups when they weren't in the pool, but they never did. There were other non-lifeguard staff there so it ended up being about 200:1 of kids running around to staff. And while in the pool they like to play the who can hold their breath the longest making it even more difficult for keep an eye on everyone. The only advantage was the deeper water was blocked off and only had the 3' diving board and slide and only one person was allowed to use each at a time and there was a lifeguard at each 1:1 in the "deep end" so it would not have been possible for there to be an unsupervised kid in 12'6" of water.
Even for pools of mostly 4' water underwater cameras would improve underwater visability, try looking into a pool with mid-day summer sun glare in your face, even with sunglasses. But you'd have to have to hire someone to stare at the monitors all day, once there's a budget to buy the system.

Re:One step further

[uncqual]

I thought everyone had cell phones nowadays....

True, but I think I'd want something a bit more water resistant, a bit more shock resistant, a bit less dependent on the whims of Verizon cell sites, and with a bit less marketable value for this application.

Re:One step further

[fgl]

Nope, nothing in my history related to anything technical.

Just worked at a youth centre for a few years & during the trips to the beach all I was doing was counting heads.

I would just run through about 15 - 30 kids & count them. I had one situation where I had to go in & tow 3 kids to shore. Would have made my life alot easier if the blighters had tracking devices.

Re:One step further

[jacksonj04]

Look at the photo. You see the deep end, the longest wall visible is the deep end wall. The slope visible on the left is the beginning of the slope to the shallow end, meaning there is most of the pool out of shot.

Re:One step further

[ColaMan]

They invested in the system. It seems to work well in my estimation.

As long as it isn't paging the lifeguards 15 times a day with false alarms, that is. Wait, there's no mention of *that* in the article.

Re:One step further

[kfg]

They already have collars for that and they work quite well, even having the capability of monitoring certain vital signs.

They solve a different problem than that faced by a pool lifeguard though.

KFG

Re:One step further

[Overzeetop]

The miss rate matters. It matters because you'll never get a duplicated hit rate - one where both the system and the lifeguard recognized the problem in-time/simultaneously (i.e. - the system wan't needed). The false hit rate also matters, as lifeguards are human, and will fall prey to the cry wolf syndrome over time if the false positive rate is too high.

I do think the system is worth it. I also think it's been overrated by its marketers, and will continue to believe so until I see more complete data.

Yes, I was a lifeguard, and a lifeguard instructor, back when I was younger. I would have liked to have this system. Now that I'm older and, presumably, wiser I would like it twice as much. Why? Two sets of eyes are better than one, even if one set is digital. I would never fogive myself if I lost a child at a pool simply because I didn't happen to notice one of them slip under the surface and get lost in the commotion of a really busy summer pool day.

Re:One step further

[imboboage0]

Okay. so the sense of humor dropped to 0 today. oh well. try again tomorrow..... lol.

Re:One step further

[fgl]

YOu got me there :-)

Re:One step further

[fgl]

wow, every single line, including your sig, has some sort of insult attached. Do you want to come to a house party???? I bet you're soooo much fun and get invited out all the time!

And who precisely are you referring to?

Re:One step further

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of something from high school wresting. Whenever anyone yelled out "Help, I can't breathe!", my coach yelled back "If you can talk, you can breathe!"

Re:One step further

[sanosuke76]

Simple solution: start a rumor that womens' swimsuits frequently fall off on-camera. Problem solved, plenty of volunteers to watch the monitors tirelessly!

Re:One step further

[Skye16]

Considering what a bastard I was (am), I would have consistently gotten the watch wet just to irritate my parents who made me wear the stupid thing. I'm relatively sure that, barring any other source of water, I would have pissed on it (but only because I'm the sort of person who will piss on their arm just to not have to do something ELSE they wouldn't want to do).

As an offtopic aside - I spent a lot of time grounded as a child. : )

Re:One step further

[Dhalphir]

I'd try reading at a lower threshold for a bit before you make a post like this...

Re:One step further

[Elminst]

Spoken by someone who obviously never lifeguarded.
Lifeguards are underpaid, undervalued, and generally overworked.

WE are treated like cheap babysitters. When I guarded we had parents drop their kids off at 9 am at the pool.. and leave them there until 9 PM. Didn't matter that public swim was only 1-5 and 630-9. And they would do this everyday.

And as other people have already posted; baywatch is full of shit. The vast majority of drownings occur just as this one did- SILENT.
There is no splashing, no screaming, no struggling. Because the person drowning has one sole purposel; get air.
Ever get the wind knocked out of you? do you run around the yard yelling for oxygen? NO.
You curl up in a ball. maybe one or two small arm movements, as you concentrate on one thing; BREATHING.

In 10 years of lifeguarding, I was LUCKY enough to have to only pull one little girl out of a lake when she caught a wave in the face. No screams, no splashing. Just silence and eyes like saucers.

Anything that that can shave even 30 secs off an emergency situation is a good thing.

Re:One step further

[rossifer]

I truly enjoy reading a well-written argument. Reading your post this evening was a rare pleasure here on Slashdot.

Bravo!

Re:One step further

[xmpcray]

...easier still, the system should just flush the water.

Re:One step further

[eyeoftheidol]

There is more detail about the rescue on my icNorthWales site here

Re:One step further

[Back Slider 1969]

Bright colored, not opaque.

Re:One step further

[DrRhinehart]

Yeh, also I hope they aren't relying on the paging system alone as you can't always guarantee the system is operational. For instance, someone might break into the 'secure' data center and nick some vital pieces of equipment... Vodafone I'm looking in your direction!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/03/vodafone_p ager/

Oh and don't think SMS/texting is any more reliable:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/4152682 .stm

I would recommend a good old fashioned alarm bell and flashing red lights with the paging as a secondary system.

Re:One step further

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

As soon as the kid tripped in the water, he was no longer able to regain his footing and was floating face down in the pool!)

Yeah I have seen things like that as a lifeguard too, kids, even older kids, can drown in only a couple of feet of water; they fall over or put their heads under water, and (this mostly applied to girls with long hair) they apparently lacked the strength to pull their heads up again. The system here is great, but there is a lot that it can't catch.

Re:One step further

[bluGill]

Those vests are for experts swimmers, not novices. A novice will panic and never pull the cord. An expert will know it is getting beyond his abilities before he losses the ability to think (part of this is the expert is used to water).

Re:One step further

[Back Slider 1969]

remotely inflated

Re:One step further

[Darth_Burrito]

Guards don't always pay attention all the time and not always to the right thing. Their often highschool kids who are more interested in preening themselves or watching the hotties than maintaining a constant level of alertness for distressed swimmers (which is pretty hard to do).

They are often only paid $6-7/hr and the ones I've worked with aren't usually the most responsible group in the world. At my pool, a large percentage of the guards had decided the rules did not apply to them so we'd perpetually have problems with guards doing backflips (not allowed) off the boards and then members of the public wanting to do the same thing.

Even if they were super trained responsible professionals, it is impossible to maintain the level of alertness required to prevent the occassional lethal screwup. But their not even that....

I guess what I'm saying is it's not really feasible to expect guards to be able to catch everything especially considering the guards pools normally hire and the nature of the job.

Excellent.

[Trusty Penfold]

That's wonderful news.

But ... "It then compares images to a database of thousands of examples of swimmers in trouble. " ... seems like an inefficient and error prone way to solve this problem.

Obviously it worked in this case, but I would have thought the opposite approach would be safer - ie. compare images to picures of swimmers not in trouble and alert if there is no match.

With this existing system, if you drown in a way the system doesn't know about then you drown.
With the opposite system, if you swim in a way the system doesn't know about then the lifeguard gets a page, he has a quick check and presses the 'swimmer is okay' override button.

And why is image comparision even needed in this case? If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.

Re:Excellent.

[chriss]

People drowning usually have something in common: once they lost their consciousness, they don't move that much. In contrast, people will stay afloat by making the weirdest movements, and it is not trivial to determine whether someone is making strange movements because a) they cannot swim or b) they try to splash water on everybody around.

So identifying somebody who does not move and is sinking to the bottom of the pool seems much easier and will only require several thousand images of other peoples in trouble. Correctly identifying swimmers doing just fine would be much more complicated due to the infinite ways to swim without drowning.

Re:Excellent.

[DerekLyons]

And why is image comparision even needed in this case? If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.

And what exactly is a person size object? The last time I took a dip in a pool my fellow swimmers ranged from a 4 year old to myself. (42 yrs old and 250lbs.) And from what angle are you viewing that person sized object? From near 'straight above' (like the young girl in the clip), many humans appear pretty small - but look at the same person on the level and their apperant size is *quite* different.

It's not that simple.

Re:Excellent.

[subreality]

And why is image comparision even needed in this case? If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.

RTFA. That's what it does.

Re:Excellent.

[temojen]

If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.

Or a kid is practicing holding his breath under water.

Re:Excellent.

[Syrae]

But ... "It then compares images to a database of thousands of examples of swimmers in trouble. " ... seems like an inefficient and error prone way to solve this problem.

This is actually pretty common. It's really one of the easiest ways to train a system. Get a bunch of data where you know what is and is not an "okay" state. Pass all the data into the system and train it that way. For systems that use sensors, there is no black or white scenario. There is always "noise" in the data, so you have to try and figure out is this really an alert scenario or am I overreacting? I can guarentee you that if you go and look at those logs, the system will not be 100% sure that something's wrong. This is just its best guess based on the data.

This is actually one of the more accurate ways of determining an alert condition. There's a lot more complicated stuff that goes into it, but that's the basics.

Obviously it worked in this case, but I would have thought the opposite approach would be safer - ie. compare images to picures of swimmers not in trouble and alert if there is no match.

Erm, I think the system actually uses both "good" and "bad" situation images to train. You have to define both sides of the context otherwise this won't work well.

With this existing system, if you drown in a way the system doesn't know about then you drown. With the opposite system, if you swim in a way the system doesn't know about then the lifeguard gets a page, he has a quick check and presses the 'swimmer is okay' override button.

This system tends to be less error prone because this is a complex enviroment, and a programmer cannot come up with all the variables on his own. For example:

And why is image comparision even needed in this case? If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.

Well, distance can change the size of the person, and the bathing suit can also distort the outline. If someone is right infront of one camera, and out of view of another, then you have all sorts of it's here, it's not here, it's huge so it must be a separate object from camera #3, etc. There is no reliable way to define personsize. There can be a minimum, but what if an infant somehow gets in the pool? Or a toddler? Or an overweight person near the camera?

As for not moving, as the victim falls, they tend to tumble and move as they fall and settle. Detecting "non-movement" is really hard, but this system seems to do that.

Note, this isn't my field of specialization, but I've more than a passing knowledge of the subject as well.

Re:Excellent.

[kfg]

Why is it harder to park a car than unpark one?

Because there is only one state in the entire universe that counts as being parked. To park a car you must achieve the restricted state.

To unpark a car you need only achieve any other state.

The number of states a person not in trouble can be in is large. The number of states a person in trouble can be in is far smaller.

KFG

Re:Excellent.

[Carthag]

But how many other objects are there in the pool? Balls float. I can't really think of anything that could be in the pool that would set off a non-motion detector but is still supposed to be there.

Re:Excellent.

[SteveAyre]

Indeed. To clarify, the computer systems are relatively dumb, they cannot understand what everything in an image is.

What they can do is spot shapes (eg human) in an image and compare two images to see if the shape has moved at all.

The system will presumably take photos, spot the human shapes, take more photos and compare each human shape to check each one has moved slightly.

Re:Excellent.

[pornking]

Here's an alternate suggestion. When you're in a hospital, you wear a blood oxygen saturation sensor on your finger. How about making a waterproof, bluetooth enabled device that each swimmer must wear. There's no confusion. Swimmers either have enough oxygen in their blood or they don't. If they do, then they're ok even if they decide to play dead on the bottom. If they don't, they're in trouble.

Re:Excellent.

[myslashdotusername]

the system has been in place for 2 years, and this is the first time it's 'saved' a life. i don't know if the thing gives of many false positives, but i'd wager that it doesn't that it's primarily looking for people who it is sure are drowning.

also a 'few' seconds could quite possibly ring guite a few false positives.. with a simple diving belt i can sit at the bottom of a pool for 2 minutes*, almost motionless holding my breath. if i were 'trying' to set off a false positive i could easily remain completely motionless for a more than enough seconds to trigger the system.

then again this is a public pool, it's pretty unlikely that anyone is going to bring a diving belt into one ;) once you swollow water you will not float, period. people 'floating at the top' who are potentially drowning are generally 'children' with floatation devices, anyone else who is drowning will swollow water, and promptly sink to the bottom.

if you're floating at the top of a pool you almost by definition have died of something other than drowning...

*= 2 minutes is easy to train your lungs to hold, especially motionless. olympic swimmers can 'take a deep breath' and remain motionless for much, much longer.

Re:Excellent.

[Pollardito]

The number of states a person not in trouble can be in is large. The number of states a person in trouble can be in is far smaller.

as someone who lifeguarded and taught swimming lessons at a public pool for three summers, i can assure you that the number of ways that people can find themselves in trouble is mind-bogglingly large. as a starting point, just think of all the sorts of things that shouldn't be brought into a pool (glass, metal, food, etc), and you've got a whole host of things that need to be prevented. also consider that the natural spot in a pool for a person to be in is not "floating" and that breathing requires action, and it adds difficulty to your argument that safety is a default.

of course since we were a public, municipal pool and therefore backed by an entity with large pockets and frequented by people whose lives would be greatly enriched by being a plaintiff in a lawsuit, we had a list of things to watch out for that was longer than you could really consciously remember. i learned to spot behavior that was breaking a rule faster than i could recall the particular rule that was being broken (hopefully you remember it by the time you have to explain to the person why you're blowing your whistle at them).

Re:Excellent.

[Hawke666]

Sounds just like Bayesian spam filtering to me.

Re:Excellent.

[typical]

The number of states a person not in trouble can be in is large. The number of states a person in trouble can be in is far smaller.

I disagree. I think that maintaining your life places very harsh constraints on your environment, forces that can be affecting you, and the state of your body. I suspect that there are many more situations that are not conducive to continued life than situations that are conducive to life.

Re:Excellent.

[typical]

But ... "It then compares images to a database of thousands of examples of swimmers in trouble. " ... seems like an inefficient and error prone way to solve this problem.

Ah hah! Your database doesn't have a single image of an octopus attacking a motorcycle rider after he accidentally drove his motorcycle into a pool, *does* it!

Re:Excellent.

[dorsey]

could quite possibly ring [q]uite a few false positives..

Um, so what? A false positive in this case is nothing more than a page to a lifeguard who assesses the situation. Unless it's producing so many false positives that the guards are ignoring the pages, I'd say a few false positives are a good thing. After all, a false positive situation could quickly escalate into a real positive.

Re:Excellent.

[rtb61]

With sufficient false postives any system can appear to work due to statistics (if it keeps going off eventually there will be some one who just happens by chance to be drowning).

Re:Excellent.

[Syrae]

Same essential algorithm, yeah. More complicated system, same idea.

Re:Blydu Tydu!

[fatgav]

Off Topic? Gogs are the welsh name for people from North Wales. Blydu Tydu is faux Welsh spelling for Bloody Tidy, a welsh saying!

£65,000?

[toofast]

Worth every cent.

Re: £65,000?

[Homology]

Worth every cent.

Erh, I guess that should be pennies :-)

Re: £65,000?

[hedley]

pence even.

Re: £65,000?

[RFC959]

I don't want to sound like an ogre - I'm glad she was saved - but can we really say this so uncritically? As the article points out, this is the first time anyone has been saved in the UK, and there are eight UK pools with the system; that makes the cost not £65,000 but 8 * 65000, or £520,000, plus whatever maintenance costs the system has. Let's not forget the difference between what is seen (girl saved by Poseidon system) versus what is not seen (whatever else could have been done with £520,000). It's possible that there might have been some better use for over half a million pounds. It's hard to argue against someone's life being saved, but that's because we can't see every alternative (two people's lives being saved by operations? many people's lives being improved?)

I also find it easy to imagine a day when there is a law that all pools, or at least all public pools, must have a system like this. But these systems are expensive, so some people might decide to build something else, not a pool. And if a child doesn't learn to swim because there isn't a local pool and ends up drowning somewhere else, would the connection ever be drawn? If a thousand children get less exercise because a pool isn't built, how do we account for that?

I'm not saying the system is a bad thing - I'm just saying we always need to think critically about possible tradeoffs.

Re: £65,000?

[six_zero_four]

From the article: "M Marmion said the system had already helped save the lives of three swimmers in France and a man in Germany who suffered a heart attack. The company hopes the incident in Bangor will encourage more councils to install the system." It has saved more then one life, just only one in the U.K., the article states.

Re: £65,000?

[Xaria]

What do you value a human life at? Seriously, when people are lost at sea the cost of a search is about the same as this, but we still do it.

This girl has been given a second chance. That's worth the money IMHO.

Re: £65,000?

[samjam]

The saying is: "worth every penny"

Sam

Re: £65,000?

[mollymoo]

People dying in situations like this is extemely expensive. Ambulance, A&E, autopsy, inquest, council report... Even without factoring the girl's future contribution to GDP I think the system has proved itself pretty cost effective.

Mastercard

[LittleGuernica]

Mastercard will love this one. Poseidon: 65k. Saving a young life: priceless. For everything else...you get the drill

Re:Mastercard

[MrScience]

Sounds painful (WMV). :)

Another link with video...

[It doesn't come easy]

Another link with video and more details. As the father of a two-year-old daughter, watching the girl sink to the bottom of the pool, completely motionless for a minute or so, and then be rescued invoked more emotion in me than I would have believed possible. I would say this one incident more than justified the $118,000 price tag.

Re:Another link with video...

[temojen]

The Price is about to go up...

As every public pool administrator in Europe and North America realize they could get sued if they don't have the system and someone drowns.

Re:Another link with video...

[Overzeetop]

The video is a bit surreal. After the fact (having a three year old daughter myself), $118k is a small fraction of what it would be worth. Every penny I've ever made, and every penny I'll make for the rest of my life is a bit closer, but probably still on the low side.

For pool management, though, you have to decide what your risk tolerance is. It's a dollars game for them. Kind of sick, really. But practical. No neighborhood pool, or one with only human lifeguards.

Personally, it would be nice to see the price come down a bit (maybe 75% or so). I was a lifeguard for several years in my teens/early 20s.
Even as a teen I would have had a hard time dealing with having someone drown on my watch. I would have like this system. It's a good backup for times when you can't see everything, or your attention is drawn away by running/horseplay/other problem bathers (no, I don't mean the girls who haven't learned that white bathing suits look cool, but are see through when they get into the water).

I have pulled a kid out of the water, once. I watched him tread water for 20-30 seconds in the diving well, lower and lower, until his body jerked a bit (gasp of air) and his head went under water. He was a decent swimmer for a 5-6 year old, but was too tired. I jumped in and pulled him out - he was fine after he coughed out a mouthful of water. Know what his parents did? Yelled at me for pulling him out. They said he was doing fine and was just swimming to the side. Yeah, right. Another guard who was walking the deck saw me go in and agreed that he wasn't about to swim anywhere. The parents didn't bother me - I knew I was lucky that I happend to be watching him. He'd been there all day, and you learn to keep an eye on certain bathers more carefully.

Re:Another link with video...

[Adammil2000]

This dramatic video should drive up the demand, which later should make the systems more common and make it more likely that people will be able to afford these systems. This is awesome!

Re:Another link with video...

[Pentagram]

Shouldn't that make the price go down (economies of scale)?

Re:Another link with video...

[dillon_rinker]

Nope. Supply and demand. Demand goes up, the price goes up. Supply goes down, the price goes up.

The cost of producing the system may go down, but, in the absence of competition, there's no reason for the manufacturer to pass those savings on to customers, and millions of reasons (aka British Pounds) not to.

Re:Another link with video...

[patricksevenlee]

The video is a bit surreal. After the fact (having a three year old daughter myself), $118k is a small fraction of what it would be worth. Every penny I've ever made, and every penny I'll make for the rest of my life is a bit closer, but probably still on the low side.

Just to play Devil's Advocate, if every parent felt that way, they why don't they put their money where their mouth is and hire a personal lifeguard every time their kid goes to swim? It won't cost their entire lifetimes' salaries.

Re:Another link with video...

[glass_window]

Either that or they'll just be more careful about their lifeguard staffing so they don't have to spend that money. How long could you staff lifeguard(s) compared to installing that system and maintaining it?

Re:Another link with video...

[CProgrammer98]

Watch the vid on the BBC site, they inteview the girl that saved her. She makes 2 points
1) You can't SEE the bottom of the pool
2) The pool was crowded, a lot of folks splashing about.

And to all the heartless bastards who say it's too expensive/guards not doing their job - how would you feel if it was YOUR kid that had been saved by this? Hmm thought so...

Re:Another link with video...

[ArtStone]

or even more to the point - why wouldn't the parents be that "personal lifeguard" who never lets their children out of their sight while they are at the pool, and would come to their rescue if they get in trouble?

Re:Another link with video...

[cfuse]

The Price is about to go up...

As every public pool administrator in Europe and North America realize they could get sued if they don't have the system and someone drowns.

Wouldn't it just be cheaper to fill up the pool with that crap they breathed in the movie 'Abyss'?

Re:Another link with video...

[TClevenger]

And to all the heartless bastards who say it's too expensive/guards not doing their job - how would you feel if it was YOUR kid that had been saved by this? Hmm thought so...

If I couldn't SEE my child at the bottom of the pool, I'd be jumping in and pulling him out. I don't rely on a lifeguard or computer system; I WATCH my child at all times when in a crowded public pool.

Re:Another link with video...

[CProgrammer98]

So you ALWAYS go to the pool with your kid? DOn't they go with School/Scouts etc?

Re:Another link with video...

[TClevenger]

No, he's four. But he won't be swimming in that situation until he's a very competent swimmer.

65,000 pounds. So?

[SiMac]

The editorial comment makes it sound like the 65,000 pounds was a waste of money, but I'm sure that, had the child died, the parents would have parted with that much to have her back.

Seriously, 65,000 pounds for a life ain't bad. Look at the Vioxx lawsuit...

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[Vellmont]

65,000 pounds isn't a lot of money.. if you have the 65,000 pounds to spend in the first place. I think the point of it being a lot of money is that it's not terribly affordable for most public or private pools.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[monkeydo]

But the parent's didn't pay for it. Would you part with $120,000 so that they could have their child back?

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[subreality]

Keep in mind, this is 65,000 UKP *per pool*. So, over two years we've saved one life for UKP$ 65,000 * 75 pools (according to their web site).

Food for thought: Regardless of what you think a human life is worth, at some point, the money would be better spent somewhere else where you can save more than 0.5 lives per 2 years per US$ 9,000,000.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[Trinn]

Yes. Specifically I would part with a share based on my ability to give. If I could give the full $120,000 and still live a life above the poverty line I would. Since I could not, I would have to give less. Saving even one human life is worth it.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The system could easily last another 5 or 10 years, at a rate of one life every 2 or 3 years it would be worth it.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[dougmc]

Seriously, 65,000 pounds for a life ain't bad.

Not at all, especially if it's your kid. But it's not that simple.

The money has to be spent before it's needed, and there's no way to know when or where it'll be needed, or if it'll ever be needed.

Ultimately, you'd need to take the cost of the device, installation and upkeep over a period of time, then divide by the average number of people who drown in these pools (probably very small, but non zero) in that timespan, the divide that by the odds of this machine detecting this and causing their lives to be saved.

Unless a person drowns in each pool each year or so, the cost per saved life is going to be much higher than 65k pounds. And really, if a pool has professional lifeguards on duty all the time, I suspect it's quite infrequent that people drown in pools with lifeguards. I know it happens, but it's rare.

I'm not saying it's not a good deal, but just because a 65k pound machine saved one life, that doesn't mean you can extrapolate that to say we could save 10 lives by spending 650k pounds.

It's sort of like the occasional push to add seatbelts to school buses. Sure, it might save lives, but if you do the math, it works out to costing many millions of dollars per life saved. (As school buses are already quite safe.) At some point, it becomes an economic issue, though nobody wants to be the one to say that $50 million dollars (warning: made up number alert) per child's life is too much to pay.

Still, that video was the neatest thing to watch. I pictured it being my four year old daughter down there, and found myself wanting those machines everywhere. I see their stock going up in the near future ...

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[topham]

WHat nobody has mentioned it what it costs when adults willing put themselves in danger (for the thrill) and need to be saved.

$20K-$60K isn't unusual in the least.

(Which is only about half of the automated system cost, which has thhe potential to save multiple lives without incuring significantly more costs.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[SoloFlyer2]

if the equipment lasts 10 years and it means that instead of requiring 2 lifegaurds to watch a pool you only need 1 person to do actual life saving

2 people x 20,000 per year for 10 years = 400,000
pisidon + 1 person x 20,000 per year for 10 years = 265,000

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[geekoid]

"Regardless of what you think a human life is worth, at some point, the money would be better spent somewhere else where you can save more than 0.5 lives per 2 years per US$ 9,000,000."

that statement is logically stupid.
What if I think it is worth saving .5 lives for US$ 9,000,000? then this statement "Regardless of what you think a human life is worth" is false, but you assert it as if it is true.

Also, there is no place where the completed financial interconectedness of all resource avenues is charted. No place where some grand master controller can look at all things at all time. Just some pool managers that decided to create a safer pool.

Of course, you would also need to see into the future to see where the lives you save go and how much value they add to society.

I mean this girl could go on to make millions, and thus create more tax revenue then the amount spent saving her life. Where as, the other hypothetical people we might have saved if the money went somewhere else might all become drug addicts that cost the system another million or two throughout there lives.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[Chris Burke]

Regardless of what you think a human life is worth, at some point, the money would be better spent somewhere else where you can save more than 0.5 lives per 2 years per US$ 9,000,000.

That is absolutely true. But there are two reasons why it doesn't work that way.

1) Not spending 65K UKP does not guarantee that money will be spent on some other, more cost-effective life saving measure (in particular a measure aimed at the same people benefitting from the pool-nanny).

2) People are completely irrational when it comes to cost/safety analysis with regards to their own progeny. That there may be a better way to protect their own child from more serious danger is irrelevent. The same thing that makes us care about our children makes us unable to reason objectively about it. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing either (it's allowed us to survive this long).

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[kraut]

That's why we have this thing called society. Shared responsibility. Social contract. But then you're probably 12, so we can't expect you to understand that yet.

65K sterling is peanuts in a public sector budget. And it's a one off cost. So yes, I would gladly have my council tax put up by 2 pence a year to have that installed in my pool. Last year it went up by 12% (4 * rate of inflation), and the only explanation I can see is that cutting services is more expensive than maintaining them. Go figure.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[kraut]

Tricky, isn't it? 65K GBP saves one life in the UK. Let's be generous - it'll save one a year, and the equipment will last ten years - 6.5K per life.

The question is then: If you have 6.5K to spend, what is the most effective way to save lives? You could probably buy at leat 650 mosquito nets, saving dozens if not hundreds of lives.... although I'd still rather have one of those things at my local pool.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[subreality]

Of course, you would also need to see into the future to see where the lives you save go and how much value they add to society.

No, that's assessing the value of a human life. In my view, you don't have to. If you own a pool and have $115k to invest in safety, what's going to save the most lives?

A) this gadget

B) $5000 to install a simple underwater camera system that the life guards get a better view of what's going on underwater, plus budget (that you get to spend over time!) for more lifeguards during peak hours, plus extra training, plus extra random bits of safety gear

You don't have to care if this girl will grow up to be the next US President. If option B saves her life plus 3 more, isn't it a better option?

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[subreality]

1) I speculate (And by speculating, I mean blabbing about subjects that I know nothing about) that you can spend US$115k at the very same pool for better safety. For instance, $5k of underwater cameras that lifeguards can watch to get a better view of what's going on down there, plus an extra $5k/year worth of lifeguard coverage during peak hours for ten years, plus $30k of extra lifeguard training, plus $30k of random conventional safety equipment. And I'd guess that you can save more than 0.5 lives/year that way.

2) I agree with this completely. That's why I try to point it out when people do this.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[dtfinch]

US courts value a human life at roughly US $3.5 million. Some of that is punitive though.

I wonder how many (if any) lives the system didn't save. If the lifeguards didn't trust the system, would they still be alive?

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[typical]

So, just to get this straight, you believe that one kid has been *dying* every year in that pool, w/o the lifeguards doing anything?

I call bullshit.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[typical]

Yes?

You realize that you can very cheaply save the lives of children in third world countries? You could easily afford to buy medicine and/or food for someone who would otherwise die or starve.

So Are you at the poverty line or not? I'm guessing not. So either someone has a gun to your head and is insisting that you not send a donation to an international aid agency, or you really do value some things (like the ability to entertain yourself posting on Slashdot) over the life of some kid somewhere.

I'm not blaming you. I'm in the same boat. That kid can go die quietly in a corner somewhere -- I like my Internet connection. Just pointing out the little irrationalities that make up the common mindset.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[cakesy]

I think you came down pretty harsh, which is to be expected from a parent. But maybe becoming emotional about this subject is not the right way to go about it, no matter how hard it is to distance yourself from a 12 year old child drowning. How else could this money be spent, how many more people could this money save? Does your society only extend to the UK? These are important questions, and a price needs to be established.

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[kraut]

No, I was making up some numbers for the purposes of a wildly guessed cost / benefit analysis.

I call "Read the parent poster before flaming".

Re:65,000 pounds. So?

[WhiplashII]

BTW, if you do get into donating money (I hope you do!), be careful about who you give it to. Most of the international aid agencies don't provide much aid for the amount of money they are given. For example, the Red Cross (and others) sent many of their aid workers to the Tsunami effected area via FIRST CLASS AIR TICKETS! (They could have flown 5-10x the flights for the cost of that one ticket!) Look into the "Toyota Taliban" in Afganistan. These people are living extremely well, pulling down large salaries, doing big business. Oh, and they help some people too.

Personally, I donate between 10-20% of my salary to aid organizations. I try to split it between humanitarian stuff and education, but I really like education grants. I mainly use volunteer church organizations (so I know that the maximum possible good will come of the money). Some of the programs are pretty impressive - and all of the money goes to those that need it, not to some aid worker's inflated lifestyle...

Strange. The same thing happened in Norway today.

[Enramot]

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article110 6293.ece Unfortunately only in Norwegian. but there are some pictures.

in conjunction with a lifeguard on duty

[bigwavejas]

I think this coupled with an on-guard lifeguard is the way to go. One shouldn't replace the other. Where I go swimming, during free-swim, sometimes there's so many people in the pool its hard to make sense of anything. I can see where something like this would greatly enhance overall safety.

Re:in conjunction with a lifeguard on duty

[EndlessNameless]

RTFA:

There were five lifeguards on duty. This system alerted them to an immobile person resting on the bottom of a 12.5-foot-deep pool. Underneath all of the swimmers, splashers, and divers, it would have been difficult to even notice the girl in less than a few minutes (and this is according to the lifeguard who performed the rescue).

The whole incident took less than a minute and half because the system alerted the lifeguards in a handful of seconds. You only have a matter of minutes to rescue an incapacitated swimmer before lack of oxygen puts them at risk for brain damage or death.

Re:in conjunction with a lifeguard on duty

[bigwavejas]

I read the article, dill.

My point was one shouldn't replace the other. I'd hate to see a situation where lifeguards aren't as attentive, because they're using this technology.

Re:in conjunction with a lifeguard on duty

[bigwavejas]

complacency, dill.

Clarification

[Poromenos1]

This is the first time a UK swimmer has been saved by the £65,000 Poseidon system since it was installed in March of 2003.

Does this mean that the others weren't saved, or that that noone else came close to drowning?

Re:Clarification

[mollymoo]

This is the first time a UK swimmer has been saved by the £65,000 Poseidon system since it was installed in March of 2003.

Does this mean that the others weren't saved, or that that noone else came close to drowning?

It means neither.

How did she drown?

[Odin_Tiger]

"She just jumped into the water and drifted down to the bottom, as if she was going to sleep." That sounds extremely bizarre to me. How does a person just lose consciousness like that? Shock from cold water, maybe?

Re:How did she drown?

[Spy der Mann]

Perhaps she was suffering from a heart condition, narcolepsy or something.

Re:How did she drown?

[SimonInOz]

"She just drifted down" ... er, who observed this? And why the heck didn't THEY save her?

Re:How did she drown?

[IthnkImParanoid]

If you watch the video, you see she's close to the wall when she comes in. It's possible she hit her head.

Re:How did she drown?

[JorDan Clock]

Because it's pretty dangerous to try and save a drowning person without proper training. Lifeguards learn all the correct ways to pull someone out of the water so that both the drowner and the lifeguard come out of the water safely.

Re:How did she drown?

[SimonInOz]

Are you seriously suggesting people will just stand around and say - oh dear, she's drowning. I couldn't possibly jump in and save her because I don't have the right Boy Scout badge?

Damn - I'm never going swimming in Wales. (Actually, come to think of it I HAVE been swimming in Wales. And I survived. The portugese men-o-war not withstanding).

Anyway - a note to the world. If you are drowning and there aren't any lawyers about (if there I propose throwing them in and NOT saving them) I will dive in and attempt to rescue you, ok?

So sue me

Re:How did she drown?

[Mia'cova]

Rescues can be dangerous. Alerting a weak swimmer near to someone fighting for their life would essentially result in two people drowning. The weak swimmer would approach the drowning victim, be grabbed, and pulled underwater as the drowning victim pulls/pushes themselves upwards for air. That's how I see a conscious scenario working out.

In a scenario like this one, pulling them up improperly would likely result in a lot of extra water in the lungs. This makes resuscitation significantly more difficult. A proper rescue would cover the mouth and nose and tilt the face downwards as they're raised to the surface.

If the victim was injured in a such a way that a spinal injury was incurred, having an untrained patron grabbing them could result in paralysation.

Untrained patrons may also find themselves ill-prepared to deal with other conditions such as seizures.

Not to mention the legal ramifications of this. If a patron was at all injured or traumatized by being in a situation where the facility placed a moral obligation for them to help on their shoulders, there's the potential for an ugly law-suit.

All in all, I think alerting the lifeguards to these alerts is adequate. There should always be lifeguards available to respond to an emergency. When there is limited staffing available to respond to emergencies, the pool is closed. That's standard. Bring public into a sketchy situation is something I would, as a lifeguard, be very hesitant to see.

Just keep in mind not everyone can swim. Not everyone lives near a beach. Not everyone is from a part of the world where swimming is particularly common. Many aquatic dangers are not obvious if you haven't grown up around water. Work in Vancouver for a few years and you'll get a pretty good idea of how swimming abilities range in various countries. I'm not bashing them. I'm just saying swimming abilities and water safety skills range greatly.

Re:How did she drown?

[CProgrammer98]

The computer system observed her. There's the take from one of the cameras in the BBC video.

Poseidon Vista

[LittleGuernica]

In late 2006 they will Install Poseidon Vista, which makes the entire pool searchable, have an "aqua" interface and tranparant water. A new filtersing system is also planned, called PoseidonFS, but will probably come with service pack 1.

Re:Poseidon Vista

[DigitalJeremy]

...service pack 1a. It's been revised.

Re:Poseidon Vista

[WillAffleckUW]

In late 2006 they will Install Poseidon Vista, which makes the entire pool searchable, have an "aqua" interface and tranparant water. A new filtersing system is also planned, called PoseidonFS, but will probably come with service pack 1.

It will also have tabbed swimming, allowing multiple swimmers to use one pool lane at the same time, at different depths, and will come complete with extra features like clogged filters.

Re:Poseidon Vista

[FidelCatsro]

If you think that's bad ,wait till people start finding backdoors to put their worms through

Joke

[lappy512]

This reminds me of a joke about a education school system:

This guy describes to the school administrator about a complex method of educating students, but it seems like a good idea to get students to learn.

But, the Administrator looked at the price tag, and asked, is it really worth it, to spend all this money for education?

And the guy replied: "If it was MY child, yes!"

This shows that some things, no matter the price tag, can be justified to save a life or the education system.

Re:Joke

[Vellmont]

This shows that some things, no matter the price tag, can be justified to save a life or the education system.


If your goal is really life saving, is it possible there's a better place that 65,000 pounds could go that would save more lives? The other question that I brought up in another post is if public pools even have anything like 65,000 pounds to spend on a system such as this.

I think people get too caught up in all the emotionalism of the immediate and visible life saving that this system offers. Something more boring like increased immunizations just isn't as exciting, though it might be a lot more effective per dollar.

Re:Joke

[WhiplashII]

I keep seeing this type of comment, so I guess I will respond here. 65,000 pounds is essentially 3,000 pounds per year (assuming that this system, being digital, has a long life, and using somewhat standard depreciation rates). 3,000 pounds per year is not really enough to do much anyway - but that is not the propper way to look at it. You really look at it this way: The pool has a budget of X. Spending 3,000 pounds per year will make our lifeguards 20% more effective. We pay lifeguards 20,000 pounds per year, so this system is worth 4,000 pounds. We should buy the system.

Really, this is not an expensive system. Think about how much a large pool costs to install (millions, not thousands!) By building this into the pool, it is made far safer, without noticably increasing the cost.

Re:Joke

[Vellmont]

Who pays a lifeguard 20,000 pounds a year? That's about 40,000 US dollars. Either lifeguards are paid WAY more in the UK, or there's something very wrong with that number.

Knowing nothing about the system, I wouldn't be confident that it'll last 20 years. Computers have a way of becoming obsolete, or just breaking down after 5-10 years. How much does maintenance of the system cost?

I still have a basic disagreement over the metric you're using. What does making a lifeguard 20% more effective mean? Does that mean you can have 20% less lifeguards on duty? That works great if you have 5 lifeguards and can go down to 4. It works terribly if you have 1 lifeguard, since .8 lifeguards would mean no lifeguard on duty 20% of the time (making the whole system useless).

Re:Joke

[WhiplashII]

It works terribly if you have 1 lifeguard, since .8 lifeguards would mean no lifeguard on duty

And that is precisely why you should use the metric I gave - this does not make sense if your pool has only 1 life guard, for example, because needing only 0.8 lifeguards does not make sense. It really only makes sense for larger pools. (Most of the cost of such a system is in the installation, because you have to mess with the pool and lining. Upkeep costs would be negligable, and since they were not given I estimated them as zero. Not precise, no. More precise than assuming that you will pay the original installation price every 5 years, yes.)

Re:Joke

[Vellmont]

Upkeep costs would be negligable, and since they were not given I estimated them as zero.

This was a news article, not a cost assesment. Maintenance costs not being provided could simply mean the general public isn't interested in maintenance costs (who is, except policy makers?). Assuming zero or negligible upkeep costs is simply wrong. Your estimates of lifeguard pay is obviously wrong. Where did this "20% more effective" number come from? It sounds like you just made it up, since I can't find reference to it anywhere. You can always justify a cost if you over-estimate how much money it's going to save.

Re:Strange. The same thing happened in Norway toda

[ninjagin]

It's a Norwegian report of the same story, actually.

Re:Lifeguards?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA says that it's deeper than usual, due to the diving boards, and that there were a lot of surface swimmers which obscure what's happening that deep.

I wonder why it decided to save her

[kyle90]

After all, she only had an 11% chance of survival, but Will Smith had a 40% chance.

Scary

[webby123]

Underwater swimming cameras!

Cheaper alternative

[Tanjou]

The system is a good idea, but looking at the camera feed I can't help but think... why not just have one dedicated person (doesn't even have to be a lifeguard) watch the camera feed? No fancy technology needed...

Re:Cheaper alternative

[RatBastard]

why not just have one dedicated person [snip] watch the camera feed?

Boredom. You get bored. look at something else, sneeze, go to the restroom, etc... and you miss the whole thing. Computers don't get bored, thirsty, tired, hungry, etc...

Re:Cheaper alternative

[Reality Master 101]

Let's say the pool is open for 12 hours. People also need lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, etc. Combine that with the fact that people get tired, have bad days and are generally unreliable. Now think about the "sensory noise" of a busy pool...

Hmm, that was the response I was going to make, but thinking about it, you have the same general issues with life guards above the pool. It makes you wonder if adding video feeds to the life guard tower would be a good idea.

Still, all that said, life guards are normally only on duty for limited time. Presumably this sytem could run all the time, and in enough quantity, the price could probably be brought down. As someone else said, it shouldn't replace life guards, but it's a valuable addition.

Re:Cheaper alternative

[ugmoe]

Plus, there are 12 cameras.

\ The system was fitted to the Bangor pool in March 2003 at a cost of £65,000 and involves eight overhead and four underwater cameras.

Re:Cheaper alternative

[TheHawke]

I'd rather have tons of false alarms than the system missing that one crucial moment when a diver is indeed in trouble.

Re:Gotta love PR people

[neurosis101]

He might not be but I wouldn't be surprised if they had a doctor on the development team in order to supply information about what type of response times are acceptable. I'm sure many design decisions were made on the basis of a certain amount of time a person can be underwater. I mean what's the point of a system that can detect someone not moving after 10 minutes if they're going to die in three?

At least I would have had contact with an M.D. and made design decisions with his input.

Re:Gotta love PR people

[Reality Master 101]

Maybe you're not up on the latest medical discoveries, but only recently have we discovered that several minutes without air is a Bad Thing.

I'm sure the GM in question consulted with numerous authorities to verify this obscure, yet true, fact.

With the pace of knowledge these days, it's not surprising that you may not have been aware of this. I heard the discoverer of this startling fact is up for the Nobel Prize. Clearly it took Einstienian genius to uncover this truth.

This instance alone

[HateBreeder]

Justifies the entire cost of the system.

Re:Gotta love PR people

[ultramk]

Actually, the number on this type of thing are very well-defined, and well-established. It doesn't surprise me that someone who has built this system is very aware of these numbers.

The difference between full recovery and horrible brain damage and/or death is measured in seconds.

Oxy deprivation is nothing to mess with.

m-

Cost benefit

[Michael Woodhams]

Back-of-the-envelope:

100 systems installed, 65k pounds per system = 6.5M pounds.
Five lives saved (according to the article) = 1.3M pounds per life.

+: The systems are only recently installed, and have years of use yet, so should save many more. If they are 20% through their life-cycle, we can expect final cost around 260k pounds/life.
+?: Perhaps the system will allow cost savings through fewer lifeguards.
-: We're not 100% sure those people wouldn't have been saved anyway without the system.
-: I haven't accounted for running costs, just purchase cost.

It is at least in the ball-park of cost-per-life-saved for other safety expenditure such as on airlines and roads - and it will get cheaper. So we can expect these to become wide-spread in the next decade.

Re:Cost benefit

[GPez]

You're forgetting some basic economics: 6.5M pounds doesn't just disappear. It goes to paying the workers who installed the system, the engineers who designed the system, the truck drivers that delivered the system, the factory workers who made the cameras, etc.

Its not just that the 6.5M pounds went down the tube. It would make more sense to look at this system's cost/benefit in relation to *other* similar systems, not just by itself.

Re:Cost benefit

[PsiPsiStar]

>>It would make more sense to look at this system's cost/benefit in relation to *other* similar systems, not just by itself.

Yeah. Like the benefits gained from hiring more lifeguards. Especially since a lot of pool related problems are not like the one described here - they involve trying to keep kids from roughhousing around the pool, etc.

Re:Cost benefit

[surprise_audit]

In this particular pool, more lifeguards may not help - they already have 5. Now, if one or more lifeguards was squatting on the bottom with a scuba set or a wall-mounted air system, yeah, more lifeguards would help. It could even be cheaper than the video system, though possibly not as effective.

Re:Cost benefit

[Michael Woodhams]

I don't get your point. Whatever we spend 6.5M pounds on (more lifeguards, overpriced military hardware, whatever), it doesn't disappear. If we don't spend it (lowering pool admission fees, or rates if it is a municipal pool), then it still doesn't disappear but gets spent on ice-creams, bigger mortgages etc.

Spending money is an allocation of limited resources (primarily labour) to a certain cause. If, for example we spend 65k pounds on an anti-drowning system and it is completely ineffective, then all the labour and resources that went into that system have indeed effectively disappeared. (Except that we now know what not to do again.)

I was comparing the cost/benefit to other systems - roading and airlines. In 1st world countries, safety upgrades are expected to save about one life per $1M (roughly). This system comes in at a similar (same order of magnitude) cost.

Re:Cost benefit

[typical]

Uh...you're assuming that an unassisted-by-a-monitoring-computer lifeguard has a 0% success rate.

I'm dubious that the system "saved" this swimmer either, though it may have played a role in it -- had the alarm not gone off, it's good odds that she would have been pulled out anyway.

Re:Cost benefit

[bluekanoodle]

Except thaat assuming each lifeguard get paid $10 an hour. Now figure the pool is open 12 hours. 12 staff hours a day equals 120. Now adding in all the extra taxes and benefits it cost to support that employee we'll call it an round $150 dollars a day to add 1 more set of eyes.

From what I can get, this was in an indoor pool. That means it's probably open all year. Let's just assume counting holidays and other events, for the sake of this argument, the pool is open 300 days a year. That means to add one more employee it costs the pool operators $45000 a year.

This system pays for itself in little over 2 years, without the problems of boredom, inattention etc, plus no problems with employee turnaround or management. Sounds like adding even 1 lifeguard would be more expensive many times over over the lifetime of this system.

Re:Cost benefit

[Ziviyr]

And how many people died in relation to the performance of those services paid for by that 6.5M?

Traffic accidents by commuters, manufacturing accidents with chemicals/molten metals or just heavy shit falling on people (and the deaths and losses of general quality of life granted by the pollution).

How about those basic economics? We were talking human lives, lets not get too distracted.

Re:Cost benefit

[Ziviyr]

it's good odds that she would have been pulled out anyway.

Nah, when people drown in the local pool they are left there. Got 17 bodies at varying levels of decomposition in the deep end, the filters should get all but the bones in a few years.

Re:Cost benefit

[HD Webdev]

You're forgetting some basic economics: 6.5M pounds doesn't just disappear. It goes to paying the workers who installed the system, the engineers who designed the system, the truck drivers that delivered the system, the factory workers who made the cameras, etc.

True, it doesn't disappear. Most of it went to France.

Re:Cost benefit

[firewrought]

Whatever we spend 6.5M pounds on (more lifeguards, overpriced military hardware, whatever), it doesn't disappear. It still doesn't disappear but gets spent on ice-creams, bigger mortgages etc.

I think both the poster and you would agree that the 6.5M pounds, if not used for one thing, gets *reallocated* for another. We get bigger houses if we let some little kids drown. Nobody consciously makes that decision, but these two desires get balanced out in the market.

Of course, in this case, your ad hoc analysis makes a pretty good argument that society will recoup its investment in this system. Still (and I think this was another point the poster was trying to glue in), there might be more cost effective way of achieving the same ends [e.g., such as spending the money on mandatory swim lessons for at-risk populations or even doing something tangential such as reinforcing a weak levy that guards a major metropolis].

Of course, judging from your analysis, you probably perceive all of this already.... I just feel like typing to put off going to bed. :-)

Re:Cost benefit

[prefect42]

My god, $6 billon of us. Do you really rate our lives as being worth so little? Bloody capitalist pig.

Re:Cost benefit

[bluekanoodle]

What I find hilarious is that you're not able to comprehend that this system is not a replacement for lifeguards, but an additional tool to help them do their job. A tool that is more cost effective then adding another lifeguard. If 5 lifeguards can't see the bottom of a pool on a busy day, 6 isn't going to do much better.

By your reckoning, maybe banks should get rid of 6 security cameras and put more 3 security guards in place. Because we all know how reliable witness's memories are after a traumatic event, who needs a machine to record exactly what happened?

This system also provides a way to review a situation to see why something happened. Having worked as a lifeguard for many years, I can tell you that it can be very hard to catch someone in distress in a crowded situtation. If I had something that woulds help me prioritize my attention, it would have been great. Because in that 1 minute that I've got my head turned to tell some kid to stop running on the deck and send him back to the shallow end, somebody else could be in trouble and I would never see it.

Just like accounting software isn't meant to replace the accounting department, this is a tool to help avoid human errors.

Re:Cost benefit

[WhiplashII]

Especially since I value my life at $5.999 B - that doesn't leave a whole lot for the rest of you!

Re:Cost benefit

[Dread_ed]

For a US cost analysis you will need to include the vast exposure due to one wrongful/negligent death lawsuit.

If you do that this system becomes cheap insurance, rather than an expensive upgrade.

Re:Cost benefit

[PsiPsiStar]

By your reckoning, maybe banks should get rid of 6 security cameras and put more 3 security guards in place. Because we all know how reliable witness's memories are after a traumatic event, who needs a machine to record exactly what happened?

The thing is with bank security cameras, humans are still ultimatly doing the pattern recognition. They're not relying on machines to do facial recognition and pre-identify bank robbers. Some are probably trying, now. But I don't imagine the technology will become viable for a few more years.

Just like accounting software isn't meant to replace the accounting department, this is a tool to help avoid human errors.

True, and eventually I can see such systems being useful. But I think realtime pattern-recognition technology like this is currently dramatically over-hyped and underperforming.

I mean, it'd be great if it does what it says, but I just don't buy the sales pitch. This single success, which supposedly wouldn't have happened without the system, doesn't convince me. Maybe if we measured the failure rate in pools with or without this technology in order to calculate the benefit...

Cameras to record events? Sure, great idea. Belief that technology can ourperform humans when it comes to real-time pattern matching in chaotic situations? Not yet.

What would it cost, for example, to have an underwater observation deck? A small air bubble with air piped into an enclosed transparent chamber so that one of the five lifeguards could see the bottom of the pool and move if there was an emergency?

Good God!

[Black Parrot]

> by paging lifeguards when it could not detect her moving.

Let's hope they never deploy this where I work!

Re:Good God!

[Gentlewhisper]

Let's hope they never deploy this where I work!

I don't mind! It'd be one real reason to move more and get more muscles on my mouse arm!

KISS

[Junta]

Could have nets, less chance of pushing the drowning person aside than bringing them up.

Re:KISS

[pclminion]

That's a FANTASTIC idea (no sarcasm), and if I believed in patents I would urge you to patent it ;-)

Re:KISS

[mriya3]

Nets in a pool? ...What if someone gets trapped in it ?

Re:KISS

[SteveAyre]

Good idea, but I think it might be more of a risk though.

What if you tangled your foot in the netting? You might pull up and thus no longer be at the bottom of the pool setting the alarm off, but be stuck underwater and in a 12ft deep end no-one would be able to survive that sort of a manual rescue.

Having such a system would also make the budget constrained councils probably stop employing lifeguards thinking the system would replace them. However they're still needed, for manual rescues, in case the system fails, for first aid such as if someone slips while walking alongside the pool and hits their head.

There are too many pools already doing away with a lifeguard and instead relying on "parent supervision". An untrained parent whose attention is not guaranteed will never be as safe as a trained lifeguard.

Re:KISS

[Taladar]

An untrained parent whose attention is not guaranteed will never be as safe as a trained lifeguard.

You are right. But neither of those two alone is enough. Both the parents and the lifeguard are responsible for watching the children. And the parents, not the lifeguard are to blame for drowned children. If they were not confident in their child's swimming skills they could have send it to courses or avoided going swimming completely. The lifeguard has neither of those choices.

Re:KISS

[Tekgno]

Maybe not use a net per se, but use the concept of it, if you used a polymer mesh with fine enough holes that allowed water to pass through sufficiently and small enough to prevent any possible tangling of peopleit would serve a dual use for rescueing people and easily lifting debris.
A motive system could also be constructed so that the "net" constantly moved along the bottom and thus constantly cleaning it.

Re:KISS

[ponxx]

I don't think many people drown because they "can't swim", not in a swimming pool anyway. People can get a knock on the head, could have a heart attack, or go unconscious for any number of reasons...

It is very easy to spot someone drowning in a pool because they can't swim. They flap their arms, possibly scream, etc. They don't go down "silently"...

Re:KISS

[ponxx]

actually, just to correct myself, apparently plenty of people who can't swim drown "silently"...

Re:KISS

[Junta]

I wouldn't have the nets in a way that could be tangled up in unless being deployed (maybe in recessies that come open on deployment but stay closed and mostly smooth otherwise.

no records of people folling that system?

[leckmi]

firstoff, nice to hear "IT saved a young life". are there any records of people making fun out of fooling that system?

Kind of pointless

[EdwinBoyd]

I'm happy to hear that the girl was not hurt and I'll be the first to throw out the corny "if it saves one life then it's worth the cost" However, we're speaking about a pool here, it's not as if the lifeguard has an entire beach to scan. At best the device sent the page seconds before the guard on duty would notice and at worst it encourages the guards to perhaps not be as diligent as they should be. "Excuse me my son appears to be drowning" "No fear ma'am the Hasslehoff 3000 is on the job"

Re:Kind of pointless

[sobachatina]

I wouldn't fault the lifeguards at at all.

When a pool is filled to capacity a life guard would have to be looking right at her to notice her slip under. Once underwater it is unlikely that she would be noticed be someone above water- especially with all the movement going on.

In my opinion the advantage of the system is not just another set of eyes (that never get tired). But a set of eyes underwater where it would be difficult for even the most attentive life guard to see.

Re:Kind of pointless

[pclminion]

In my opinion the advantage of the system is not just another set of eyes (that never get tired). But a set of eyes underwater where it would be difficult for even the most attentive life guard to see.

But couldn't that be achieved for far less than £65,000 by simply having an underwater camera watching the bottom of the pool, and display the images on tiny televisions on the lifeguard perches? I bet you could throw something like that together for less than a few thousand.

This Poseidon system also uses camera, but I fail to see the need for all the complexity. It claims to detect "persons motionless underwater," but I know I'm not the only one who plays "dead man's float" in a pool, so wouldn't that lead to false positives? If somebody is drowning, their lungs will fill with water and they will sink to the bottom. They don't float near the surface. Surely it's sufficienct to just watch the bottom of the pool with a cheap-ass camera?

Re:Kind of pointless

[ugmoe]

Once she was under it was difficult to see her due to the depth at the deep end. Before she went under, she didn't struggle or scream, so it would have been difficult to see her at the surface.

Gwynedd Council had considered reducing the depth of the deep end at Bangor because of visibility problems and surface glare, but that would have meant removing the diving boards.

Brian Evans, head of leisure services for the council, said: "The incident was what we would call a 'silent drowning'. The girl did not struggle or scream, and there was no visible occurrence that caused her to lose consciousness.

Re:Kind of pointless

[geekoid]

So now you want the life guard to watch the
monitor, and the water?
Seems like an extra diversion to me.

Aslo, a good enough under water camera that is design to stay underwater for long periods of time is not 'cheap ass'.
Plus it is just not the cost of the equipment, there is installation AND a profit margin for the company that they bought it from.

Or did you want the life guard to rig this up?

Re:Kind of pointless

[pclminion]

So now you want the life guard to watch the monitor, and the water?

Yeah, how hard can it be? They're already flitting their eyes around constantly, how hard is it to glance at a monitor every minute or so?

Aslo, a good enough under water camera that is design to stay underwater for long periods of time is not 'cheap ass'. Plus it is just not the cost of the equipment, there is installation AND a profit margin for the company that they bought it from.

Actually, I wasn't thinking of retrofitting existing pools (that would obviously be more expensive). For new installations, it would be fairly simple to build a small alcove with a plexiglass port, and put a standard "cheap ass" camera behind it. The camera doesn't have to be IN the water, it just has to have a view of it. Haven't you ever been to Seaworld?

Re:Kind of pointless

[bluekanoodle]

The the idea is to help the lifeguards here, not give them one more thing they have to look at. In a drowning, minutes count.

Also even if you add a dedicated lifeguard to monitor this system, their pay and benefits over the course of 2 years will exceed the cost of the system. (assuming $10 an hour, plus payroll taxes, benefits etc at 12 hours a day, over 300 days a year (indoor pool))

The last thing you want is some jury rigged solution. First time it fails and someone dies, someone's relative is going to be looking to sue for negligence.

Re:Kind of pointless

[CProgrammer98]

but I know I'm not the only one who plays "dead man's float" in a pool

And you do that on the BOTTOM of the pool do you? Neat Trick!

Re:Kind of pointless

[nuggetman]

I lifeguard in a water park and part of our rotation is a 10-foot-deep pool that people drop into from a slide. Seeing the bottom of a 10 foot pool that is nearly empty is a strain, I can only imagine a 12 foot crowded pool

Re:Kind of pointless

[nuggetman]

Yeah, how hard can it be? They're already flitting their eyes around constantly, how hard is it to glance at a monitor every minute or so?

In theory, you should cover an entire pool in 15 seconds, plus do a downard head sweep to make sure no one's drowning in front of your chair out of your immediate downward angle of vision. We don't need to try to scan a monitor at the same time.

Re:Kind of pointless

[bluekanoodle]

Well of course the most ideal situatuion is to give kids dixie cups full of water and tell them to have fun. The system worked for what was need. I can tell you that making the pool shallower would have cost more then this system and resulted in complaints from patrons.

As stated above, adding more lifeguards is more expensive and not as effective. In this case the system worked faster then the lifeguard. Who's to say they lifeguard would have seen it?

It was the lifeguards complaints of not being able to see, that prompted the purchase of the system in the first place. Sure maybe the pool could have been designed better in the first place, but we're living in the now, not "should have land. The pools in the ground now. It would cost a lot more to dig a new pool that was engineered right in the first place.

If painting the pool would fix it, don't you think it would have been done? There is a reason that the majority of pools built have white or bluish walls. It is the most effective color at making the water look clear. Try watching someone swim in a black pool, you can't see a darn thing.

I don't even know why I bother. Don't you think people who know alot more about swimming pool design and safety have spent alot of time thinking about these things? What, because you're on /. you know more then everyone else on every subject?

Re:Kind of pointless

[pclminion]

And you do that on the BOTTOM of the pool do you? Neat Trick!

No, I don't. But if you read the description of the Poseidon system, it claims to detect motionless bodies anywhere, not just at the bottom of the pool. So it seems a person playing dead man's float would trigger the system.

related images not in the article

[file cabinet]

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,224690 ,00.jpg
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,224691 ,00.jpg
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,224692 ,00.jpg
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,224693 ,00.jpg
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,224694 ,00.jpg
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,224695 ,00.jpg

Paid for itself....

[MajorDick]

It would seem this gadget quite paid for itself by this one action, no other action need be performed by this unit for its lifespan to prove its worth.
 
On a dark note, possibly, if here in the US, it would have saved a hell of a lawsuit of wich th atty fees would probably sum that total.
 
But a life at 100k $ us...not bad...not to mention I am sure her and her family couldnt be more happy.....

Re:Gotta love PR people

[pclminion]

Does he think he's a doctor or what?

You don't have to be a doctor to know facts (such as, brain damage starts to occurs 4 to 6 minutes after removal of oxygen).

What if the guy had said, "If that car had hit her head on, she surely would have broken some bones?" I guess he's not qualified to make that statement, either?

Doctors distinguish themselves by diagnosing illness and then working to cure it. That doesn't mean the rest of us are blithering idiots.

In other news...

[mriya3]

"An automated swimmer tracking system installed in a pool in Wales allowed lifeguards to ban a man that was urinating in the pool"

Re:Wales Needs Vowels

[oberondarksoul]

Just a hint: might want to check your facts. We use miles in the UK... :P

not a good idea in the US.

[xmorg]

The fact that the system will send warning to the Lifeguard, opens up a whole area of lawsuits.

Kids will be kids, and will go motionless in the water, or there will be tons of false warnings. The game marco polo will have some issues, no doubt, and in the end, some kid may drown, and the lawyers will be all over both the company, lifguard, and the city/owner of the pool.

Re:65,000 pounds. So? - Other stats ITFA

[Overzeetop]

The article says 8 UK pools (one save). 100 pools worldwide for a total of 5 saves.

11.8M/5 = 2.25M per life, assuming all systems stop working today. That's a steep price - probably close to a jury award.

If you'll grant me 1000 total patrons per pool, I get about $118/patron for the system. Not too bad, quite honestly. The question is: would pool management feel that they could reduce lifeguards if they bought this system? That might reduce the overall effectiveness. The whole false send of security thing.

One thing that wan't mentioned is the loss rate at those pools. Have they missed any drownings in that time?

It already paid itself back...

[Yaa 101]

People in Europe and the UK are worth about 1.000.000 Euro's, this is the smallest amount that this person will hand over as taxes to the country it lives in.

So apart from being great to save lifes, it is really an economical sound thing to do.

Too bad its from the BBC.

[Some Random Username]

Where they do everything they possibly can to prevent you from actually being able to view the video unless you have a browser with and plugin they like.

Anyone got a link to the actual video itself?

No,

[geekoid]

They would call it an 'added safety feature' that doesn't gaurantee the safty of any person.
SWIM AT YOU OWN RISK. Minor MUST be accompanied by Adult.

Price of a human life

[Teppy]

I know that there will soon be people chomping at the bit to mandate these things.

I did some calculations. There are 7.6 million residential pools in the US, and 832 drownings per year among children age 0-14. This number includes non-pool drownings, so the cost to save each child is actually higher than below. There are also a smaller number of adult deaths. Assuming a pool lasts for 20 years:

Cost per pool per year:
$100,000/20 = $5,000.

Cost per year, nationwide:
$5,000 * 7.6M = $38B

Cost per life saved:
$38B / 832 = $45.6M

The per capita Gross Domestic Product of the US is $40,100. At this rate, one person must work 1,140 years to save someone else's life. I realize that it's very chic to say you can't put a price on life, but if you don't, the entire population of the world will quickly be working full-time to do nothing but save lives.

It's a shame that logic always loses out to "Please, won't someone think about the children!"

Re:Price of a human life

[kraut]

If you have small children, you shouldn't have a pool. Or at least it should be safely fenced in.

I thinkat 65K sterling it's unlikely to be mandated in the US anytime soon.

Re:Price of a human life

[SewersOfRivendell]

If pool 'splash' alarms haven't been mandated, why would this be? The splash alarms have saved many lives (even if only by virtue of being around longer and deployed more widely) and are at least $117,800 cheaper. Of course, there are false alarms to contend with, but it's your 2-year-old's life on the line.

I know that there will soon be people chomping at the bit to mandate these things.

I, on the other hand saw this article, and I immediately thought "well, someone from Slashdot's rabid GOP wingnut contingent will inevitably come out of the weeds to provide statistics 'proving' that it's too much to spend to save lives." And then I saw the earlier +5 messages, and I briefly had hope for humanity.

Oh well.

Re:Price of a human life

[rbarreira]

Please try to stop thinking about everything in terms of costs. Or do you also calculate if it's worth it to pick your nose every time you feel like doing it?

Re:Price of a human life

[RexRhino]

You are ignoring the increased economy of mass production. The system cost $100,000 now, but it would be a fraction of that cost if every pool had one.

The high cost comes from the fact that the development cost has to be recouped from sales of the item. So if it cost $10,000,000 to develop, and you only sell 10 of them, there is a cost of $100,000 for each one just for development. If you sold one for all 7.6 million pools in the country, the development cost is less than a big mac.

That is why I can afford a laptop more powerful than a NASA supercomputer in the 1960s, or I can make a long distance phone call for $0.05 a minute that used to cost $5.00 (not adjusted for inflation... it would cost even more with inflation) a minute in the 1960s.

But yes, I agree with your premise, even if your arguement is flawed. Because any cost is essentially paid for by the labor and toil of humans, and because there is an opportunity cost to everything, there is in fact a price on human life even if we find it distastful to admit it.

Re:Price of a human life

[typical]

It's a good thing that people like him run things, though, or else we wouldn't get very far.

You have the luxury of being able to make irrational decisions and expressing distaste at actually evaluating things because he is willing to do it.

Re:Price of a human life

[KLFrosty]

Actually, I think you are mistaken about this technology not being practical for residential pools. If several million lower-end systems were built to be installed in residences, the cost per system would go way, way down. I can see implementing something like this for a backyard pool as little more than an underwater webcam hooked up to an embedded PC with a horn, for about a $5000 sale price (selling millions of them means a multi-billion dollar market). Assuming the system lasts for 10 years, we're talking about a tenth your estimated cost. Keep in mind that the system would not have to be anywhere near perfect to be useful. Sure, some kid could swim down to the bottom and stay there for a minute, and trigger the horn. But then there would be some parents who wouldn't be wringing their hands for the rest of their lives, saying, "We only turned our backs for ten minutes."

Re:Price of a human life

[WhiplashII]

The complex answer has already been given, so here is the short one:

Don't install this in all pools, only in the large public ones!

Duh!

Re:Price of a human life

[WhiplashII]

I hope he doesn't do it, because he is not doing a good job of making an alternative analysis!

Fortunately, in our society (except in government, unfortunately) we have an excellent method of removing money from those that do not know hwo to use it effectively - it's called competition!

Re:Price of a human life

[InfraRED]

this calculation is simple BS,
if you ordered 7M units, price would drop at least 10x, maybe 100x.

really?

[toiletmonster]

So out of all the money you earn each day you only keep $1 a day and you give the rest to charity? Or if you live in the US, I might rephrase and ask if you really only keep $9,827 of your annual salary and give the rest to charity?

I'm guessing you are either in high school or college and don't realize just how long it really takes to make $120,000.

Re:really?

[Trinn]

If $1/day supposedly keeps someone above the poverty line...that's news to me. (or perhaps a sign that the poverty line is set WAY too low)

Re:really?

[Blkdeath]

I'm guessing you are either in high school or college and don't realize just how long it really takes to make $120,000.

Firstly, those statistics are based on a spectrum that includes low to middle class countries and middle-class residents therein.

Secondly, in North America, the UK, Europe, etc. the amount of disposable income (money remaining after the necessities of life) is largely dependant on the things you choose to spend your money on. Even the cost of housing will dictate your disposable assets. Do you need that $1200/month appartment, or would $600/month be suitable to your needs? Do you live on your own, with a significant other, one or more roommates, family members, or friends? What kind of car do you drive? Cell phone, high speed Internet, cable/satellite television, etc. are all bills that add up to less disposable cash at the end of the month.

I personally know a millionaire who drives a 1988 Ford pickup. I'm surprised teh thing still runs. But based on his accepted style of living, more than 50% of his annual income is 'disposable' (and subsequently invested).

If you're able to contain your consumeristic instincts you can bank $120k (plus interest) in 4 years on a modest $60k/yr salary.

Re:really?

[Anne Thwacks]

Except this is England, where the average salary is under $40,000, gas costs $1.8 per LITRE and you are not going to get a home for $600/month unless its subsidised.

Re:really?

[Blkdeath]

Except this is England, where the average salary is under $40,000,

Pounds, US dollars or CDN dollars? My example was in CDN currency.

you are not going to get a home for $600/month unless its subsidised.

What type of home, for how many people, and how many incomes? Keeping in mind if you have 2*$40k incomes and are paying $1200/month each person is only paying $600. Likewise in a $600/month 'flat' you'd be paying $300 apiece.

Too many people in our (North American / Brittish) culture are under the impression that 2 people somehow require a 3 bedroom, 2 storey house when they could get by just as well in a 1 bedroom appartment. I know too many people facing bankruptcy because they over-extend themselves on their housing budget only to lose everything some months later.

Also, people seem to be far to passive about home buying. When they consider themselves ready to buy a house they contact a real estate agent and begin their search. A house is the biggest thing you're likely to purchase in your life - don't you think it deserves a bit more consideration than narrowing it down to 1-2 choices? Why not wait until the housing market becomes soft and prices go down? So you'll get a higher rate on your mortgage, but with savings and open loans you can always negate the higher interest and re-negotiate it a few years down the road. Spending an extra $20-90k on a house offsets almost any increase in rates.

Currently I rent. I'm saving money for as long as it takes until the market is in a suitable condition to purchase. I intend to put upwards of 20% down and save enough for my first years' mortgage payments. I don't intend to get caught in the $900B personal debt that my fellow north americans have themselves stuck in at the moment, nor do I intend to declare bankruptcy any time in my life. Silliness.

With my rant over with, if you take a good hard look at your finances I'm sure you can find ways to change your lifestyle to ensure that you've always got money in the bank. One of the biggest causes of stress is finances. Learn to live within your means and eliminate that stress level and you'll find more success in your career and your personal life.

Not in my pool!

[Anonymous Coward]

I will not step foot into a pool that has this kind of system installed!

There is no reason for our municipal pools to be used as a tool for the government to spy on our swimming habits. This is ridiculous! I do not want government cameras watching me and my loved ones bathe. As father of 4 little girls, my first concern would be that these swim videos would be traded on the French black market.

I believe Thomas Jefferson put it best, "The man who has traded liberty for security will not get either."

Re:Not in my pool!

[Dhalphir]

Teach your kids to swim then.

It's hard to argue...

[Himring]

With success. This is technology at its best.

Download the video here:

[Some Random Username]

http://download.poseidon-tech.com/Bangor/Film/

Username and password are both user1.

Re:Download the video here:

[westyx]

how did you manage to capture that? wmp 9 here won't even play the video

Re:Download the video here:

[Some Random Username]

That's the official video from the people who make the system. I just found a link to it.

Re:Download the video here:

[westyx]

ahhh, cool

Re:Download the video here:

[DeadInSpace]

Thanks.

Scaling up

[Effugas]

If this were deployed in every pool, there would be competition, and with competition would be significantly reduced prices. Honestly, just a "bottom-of-the-pool cam" to every lifeguard, with an alarm for sections of the bottom that aren't changing but do have someone -- this would catch quite a bit, and be really cheap to implement.

15 cents per person is too much?

[Trillian_1138]

You didn't take the math to its completion. Sure, if each of the 832 people has to pay for their own rescue, it's $45.6M per person (going by your math, which I have no reason to doubt).

But one of the great things about living in a country is that you get to pool (no pun intended) the resources of everyone who lives there. So $45.6M /295M in the USA (according to Google) is about 16 cents per person per year. I'd say 16 cents is a bargain for a life-saving technology.

I think I understand your objection, in that if we buy every new technology we *may* end up paying "too much" and spend all of our money on mechanisms which are only going to save one or two people. But at what point is "too much" to save a life?

I completely agree in that, at some point, a line needs to be drawn. But it's ridiculous to say that "one person must work 1,140 years to save someone else's life" because that's not how our country works (or any, as far as I know). I'm not going to need to work for a thousand years for fire protection or the police department or public education for that matter because those are things that, as a society, we've decided get used enough to pool our resources to buy as a city/county/state/country.

A better argument might be "For $38 billion we could do XXX and save more lives." That I could get behind. I was even with your math for the first two calculations, as I expected you to simply say "for $38B we could save a million people from dying of AIDs" or some other life-saving expenditure. But talking about a 'per-person' cost of something that wouldn't be billed 'per person' seems unrealistic.
-Trillian

Re:15 cents per person is too much?

[typical]

So $45.6M /295M in the USA (according to Google) is about 16 cents per person per year. I'd say 16 cents is a bargain for a life-saving technology.

And why the hell do I have to buy the life of a $45.6M toddler when I could save a starving African kid who just needs some rice or something for a hell of a lot less? Just have another toddler -- it isn't going to cost you $45.6M to do so. You don't like something that sounds callous? How come you're so willing to apply it to the aforementioned African kiddies, throwing away a large number of lives to save a few?

Human life is expensive. A surviving, healthy, educated person is quite valuable. But I seriously doubt that the typical person produces $45M in value over the course of their lifetime.

Re:15 cents per person is too much?

[Trillian_1138]

If you look at my last paragraph, I did say you needed to compare with other posibilities for the $38B. I honestly think there are better usages for that much money than the auto-pool thingamajob. I just disagreed with the GPs claim that the $45.6M "per person" was how money costs are divided for projects funded with taxes.
-Trillian

I saw this years ago

[grahamsz]

I used to live in Kinross in scotland, and the pool there has a section with a moveable floor.

It uses some sort of hydraulic arrangement to vary the pool depth, so it can do anything from a diving pool to a 6in deep baby pool.

It may not be fast enough in this situation, but i see no reason why it couldn't just push the pool floor all the way up until the unconcious individual is out of the water.

Re:I saw this years ago

[MonkeyBob]

Ummm... and where does the water go if the entire floor moves up????

Re:I saw this years ago

[Mia'cova]

Variable-depth pools have grated floors. There are small holes so as the floor is raised or lowered, the water passes through. So with less depth, there is more water beneath the floor. These pools are great since you can teach young kids in them, then a few minutes later, an older group for a fitness class. Many pools also have a variable depth portion at one end of a 50m length. In that case there is a bulkhead that raises and lowers to block off the variable-depth part when it is not flush with the rest of the pool. The bulkheads are typically heavy and raise to the surface by having air pumped into them.

Re:Wales Needs Vowels

[StonedRat]

The welsh alphabet is not the same as the english, in welsh W is a vowel.

How about

[melted]

How about just watching your freaking kids using the freaking pool? What if pool owner installs this $100K+ system and it fails to react to a drowning kid? What if no one is available to rescue the kid? What if the potential rescuer is also a poor swimmer?

There are thousands of "what ifs" here. The point is, watch after your kids until they're smart enough to watch after themselves (about 20-21 years or so). This is coming from a person who had a severe trauma at 1.5 years of age due to parents not watching.

Spending hundred thousand dollars is not a reason to be careless enough to let your kid (or friend) drown in the pool.

Re:How about

[rbarreira]

Knock knock. Is anybody home? Smartass, this can also save adults, not only children. Or are adults too smart to drown?

Re:How about

[thebatlab]

No, it shouldn't be the only defense but honestly, parents can't watch kids 24/7. This should just be an extra safeguard to save kids lives. And it did.

Re:How about

[thebatlab]

Where does it say that it was 3:00 AM and nobody at all watching?

Sure, you can think of ways to break the system but let's face it, so far it has saved lives. How many lives has it taken away? I think the reward is justifying the cost. If it saves one person's life, don't you think it's worth the reward? It probably would be if it was a person you knew.

By the way, kids are always going to find ways to get into locked pools at night. How else do you go skinny dipping if you're not near a lake/river/etc? Give me a break.

19 seconds?

[iCEBaLM]

I watched the poseidon video capture of the rescue, the alarm looks to have been sounded 11 seconds after the girl was unconscious. The lifeguard doesn't actually dive in until the 30th seconds. Where was the lifeguard for 19 seconds? Is this typical? Seems a little long for a lifeguard who should be right poolside to me.

Re:19 seconds?

[petermgreen]

swimming is much slower than running.

therefore if your aim is to get to someone as quick as possible it makes sense to run round the pool before jumping in. also the initial entry is probablly the easiest way to gain depth and its easier to see whats going on with the added height of the poolside than when you are in the water.

The system is a waste of money

[ajax142]

As a long time swimmer and a lifeguard myself, I have to say I think a system like this is a complete waste of money.

I've been to lots of pool where the lifeguard were sitting at a desk reading and not watching the water or in some cases there stayed inside an office. Now most of these pools were lap pool where only 'hardcore' swimmers spend time, but still a pulled muscle in the deep end and even the best swimmer can go down.

On the other hand I've been to other pools, and worked at one with really good lifeguards. The pool I worked at had Ellis lifeguards and our training and expectations were a orders of magnitude higher that the traditional Red Cross lifeguards at most pools (sorry I have to shame any organization that tells you to treat someone for a neck injury before getting the person breathing). I doubt the girl in the article would have made it to the bottom at my pool. A good lifeguard can tell which swimmers can swim and which can't by watching them. Those that can't swim get watched more, and if they do something stupid, like jumping into the deep end, in seconds you'll know if their coming up or not.

I think that system like these will only decrease the number of good lifeguards hired and we will see more and more lifeguards sitting behind desk or in offices reading because "the computer is watching the kids". The £65,000 cost of the Poseidon system would have been better spend hiring more and better trained lifeguards and keeping them well trained.

Re:The system is a waste of money

[rbarreira]

A good lifeguard can tell which swimmers can swim and which can't by watching them. Those that can't swim get watched more, and if they do something stupid, like jumping into the deep end, in seconds you'll know if their coming up or not.

Suppose the system lasts for 10 years. Suppose that the running costs of the system bring the total price up to 70,000 pounds. How many goo lifeguards can you contract for 10 years for that price? Is that number enough for watching a very crowded pool?

Besides, lifeguards are human, not gods. Computer systems are much less faulty than humans for some kind of tasks. This may very well be one of those tasks (finding out drowning swimmers).

Re:The system is a waste of money

[KillerBob]

The £65,000 cost of the Poseidon system would have been better spend hiring more and better trained lifeguards and keeping them well trained.

Shame on you. If you're really an experienced lifeguard, you would understand that the best lifeguard in the world can still make mistakes. All the training in the world won't give them a 100% guarantee of saving everybody who has an accident in the pool, and any system that improves the odds is a good investment. Whether better training could have saved the girl any better is something we can't know. What we do know, however, is that the girl wasn't noticed by the lifeguards, and that the system's alarm helped the lifeguards to react in time to save her life. 65k well spent.

And incidentally, I got my NLS back when it was still called the Royal Lifesaving Society of Canada (RLSSC).

Re:The system is a waste of money

[ajax142]

Yes, I'll agree that anything that helps a lifeguard is good, and they do make mistakes, lot of them actually. But in my option, systems like these will be used as excuse to hire fewer real lifeguards as people will think the systems can take the place of them. As a lifeguard I'd think you'd agree that no computer system can see what a good lifeguard can spot in the pool.

Re:The system is a waste of money

[jonastullus]

Computer systems are much less faulty than humans for some kind of tasks.

and camera-based object recognition in bad lightning conditions with surface glare and low contrast is not necessarily one of them!

as an addon this system can (except for its price) not hurt to install, but once someone relies on it and cuts back the expenses allocated for human life guards, the unreliability of the system will kick in and (unless this system has been designed with the utmost care) will likely lead to more drownings than before its deployment!

think about issues like dirty camera glasses, packed pools where no two cameras can see any one swimmer, swimsuits that have a similar texture to water (esp. underwater), false alarms by children trying to stay underwater as long as they can (where a lifeguard might realize they are just fooling around), ...

as an addon, this is a good thing, but hopefully this will not substitute any human lifeguard expenses in the near future!

Re:The system is a waste of money

[KillerBob]

As a lifeguard I'd think you'd agree that no computer system can see what a good lifeguard can spot in the pool.

Absolutely. And if some beancounter ever does try to use such a system as an excuse to cut back on staffing, I'll be the first banging on their door and telling them it's a stupid idea. I'll also be doing my level best to prevent them from ever going ahead with it, and to stir up public outrage at the idea. If people stop swimming at the pool because they don't feel safe, the pool will have to hire more lifeguards....

Re:The system is a waste of money

[rbarreira]

I perfectly agree.

Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

RTFA, the British don't call it pool, they call it Billiards!

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

No they don't , billiards is an entirely different game then pool. There are 3 basic games, billiards, pool & snooker.

• Billiards , 3 balls no pockets .
• Pool, 15 balls, all diferently colored (full and half) with numbers and with pockets.
• Snooker , also 15 balls (though I'm not too sure bout that), half of them are red, the rest colored differently, no numbers, with pockets.

Re:Billiards

[Basje]

FYI
snooker has 17 balls:
10 red
1 green
1 brown
1 yellow
1 blue
1 pink
1 black
1 white

pool has 16 (8 full (including the black), 7 halves and 1 white)

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

as I said , I wasn't too sure about snooker. And my count of the amount of snooker and pool balls, was with the white ball excluded. sry. Somehow didn't think about counting that one too ...

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

Joke

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

The problem is, a while ago I've actually met someone who thought this 'joke' to be a truth ...

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

pedant

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

You know how a dictionary works ? Good for you !

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

Your attempts to win this one are impotent

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

Poor little guy ... I'm not trying to win anything. It's slashdot, you really give a rat's ass about this discussion ? How cute :P

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

Not at all.

You, however, are trying to cover up how deeply personally you take all of this. It's also worth noting that your condescending tone is asinine, as your poor tact and terrible use of argument betrays how truely puerile you are.

I haven't felt a need to be rude about this matter, I really think that you should reconsider your tone. With every post, you make yourself look worse. Since you've chosen to condescend to me, however, I'll allow you to burn yourself as you see fit.

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

wow.... and you keep on going. Amazing !

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

What do you think that you're accomplishing. Seriously?

Where do you think that you sound smart? Where do you think that I look bad here?

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

Just like a duracell bunny :P

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

You have noticed that I'm merely replying to your messages, and so, whenever you're done, the thread dies.

I however, am rather indefatigable.

Re:Billiards

[PGC]

and still not shutting up :D

Re:Billiards

[NitsujTPU]

Not that you are either.

Once was enough

[Bit_Squeezer]

" This is the first time a UK swimmer has been saved by the £65,000 Poseidon system since it was installed in March of 2003"

Money well spent

[curtlewis]

65k british pounds is about $110k US. The system has saved one life already. I'm sure that girl thinks it was worth the money as well as her parents. I do too.

If it worked once, it'll probably work again. It'll never replace lifeguards, but it certainly has shown it can be a valuable assistant.

£65,000

[_Hellfire_]

Sounds like £65,000 well spent to me.

Is drowning painful?

[johansalk]

I heard once that drowning was a horrible way to die, but my personal experience of it from what I was later on told was a near-drowning event when I was a kid was, dare I say, pleasant and much like a dream. I was seeing cartoon characters in the depth that were smiling for me till someone 'saved' me and I was 'woken up' to my parents' panic. Maybe I wasn't drowning.

Re:Is drowning painful?

[KillerBob]

I'm saying this as a lifeguard, not as somebody who's ever drowned....

The part while you're conscious is terrifying. If you lose conscious, you suffocate. I've had vascular chokes applied at Jiu Jitsu, and I imagine that drowning, when unconscious, is much the same... you start to grey out, you get weak, then you get numb, and finally, everything goes limp and you black out. If it's done right, you're out in under 20 seconds, and probably won't remember anything that just happened. Likewise, I think that drowning, once you go unconscious, is a pretty peaceful way to go, and you probably won't have much memory of the conscious part if you're rescued and revived. You could very easily have hallucinations or dreams while you're suffocating, depending on how far gone you are. Children tend to have lower oxygen carrying capacity than adults, because of a lesser volume of blood, and as a result they usually go unconscious faster. They are also a lot easier to revive :)

However... the part before you fall unconscious is pretty darned frightening. You run on complete adrenaline, and are a lot stronger than you would normally be. People who think they're drowning, and realize what that means, will grab on to anything that floats, including rescuers, but they'll usually relax, and sometimes pass out as soon as they realize that they're safe. Sometimes, however, it's safer for the rescuer to wait until the victim goes unconscious before rescuing them, particularly when you aren't part of a team, and don't have people to help you.

The real risk with drowning cases, and the reason I suggest that anybody who drowns goes to the hospital irregardless of how they feel after revival is secondary drowning. Often what happens, when your lungs fill with water, is that the water will be absorbed into the blood stream. Later, when you're asleep, the blood can reenter the lungs and because your pulse is lower and your breathing is both slower and shallower, you can suffocate hours after the accident actually happened. If you've had an accident in the water and there's *any* chance that water entered your lungs, you should go to the hospital for observation overnight.

Re:Is drowning painful?

[rbarreira]

The real risk with drowning cases, and the reason I suggest that anybody who drowns goes to the hospital irregardless of how they feel after revival is secondary drowning. Often what happens, when your lungs fill with water, is that the water will be absorbed into the blood stream. Later, when you're asleep, the blood can reenter the lungs and because your pulse is lower and your breathing is both slower and shallower, you can suffocate hours after the accident actually happened. If you've had an accident in the water and there's *any* chance that water entered your lungs, you should go to the hospital for observation overnight.

Thanks for this piece of information, I had no idea!

PS: I wouldn't never trust a lifeguard with a nickname of KillerBob ;) j/k

Re:Is drowning painful?

[klagermkii]

Really? Surely water can't come back from your blood stream and into your lungs. We're all made of 70% water, what stops that from leaking out through my lungs everynight and possibly drowning me?

I don't doubt that there could still be water trapped in the lungs that somehow suffocates you as it settles but I can't imagine it's coming out your blood. Perhaps someone with more medical knowledge could explain.

Re:Is drowning painful?

[demonlapin]

This is, medically speaking, totally incorrect as to mechanism but correct on one essential point: when you inhale large amounts of water, go to a hospital.

Why? You breathed in either pond water (yuck) or chlorinated water from a pool. The chlorine in the pool water acts as a direct irritant to the tissues of the lung and causes the blood vessels to become more leaky than usual (just like the swelling around an infection). This causes the fluid to exit your vessels and fill your lungs, which causes you respiratory distress. The more proper term is chemical pneumonitis, and if you get in bad shape from it you may end up on a ventilator for a while.

Disclaimer: yes, I am a doctor, but just barely. The above is not medical advice for your specific situation but is instead general information designed to educate the public. Do whatever your doctor tells you to do.

the test

[zogger]

When I was a lifeguard, we made people, no matter how old or fit looking, do a several lap swim test, starting at the shallow end of course. No test, no going in the deep end. Had to call the cops a few times with (usually drunk/stoned) belligerent young males who insisted they could swim when they obviously couldn't. The women and kids were always OK with it though, never any trouble with them that I recall.

Re:the test

[takev]

Doesn't that take a lot of time if you have a lot of people showing up? I live in the Netherlands and swimming pools can be very busy, at some pools you pay for an hour of pool time, so there is a continues stream of people.

Now in the Netherlands (up to a few years ago) everyone got swimming lessons in junior high, so almost everyone can swim. I find it worrying that parents need to get swimming lessons for their kids now, they are quite expensive I've heard. We are in a country surrounded by water.

Re:the test

[Tekgno]

Depends on your point of view. As mentioned yesterday under the topic of pumping out New Orleans, Most of the Netherlands are below sea level and prone to flooding. In such cases I would consider myself to be surrounded by water :P

just my 0.02AUD

Re:the test

[indifferent children]

I agree. I was a lifeguard for two years (summers only) in high school (40-60 hours per week). We didn't require a multilap swim test, just 10 meters or so. It was enough to weed-out poor swimmers.

I had to go into the water twice in 2 years to rescue somebody, and one of those was a kid who was taking the swim test. It was pretty obvious from the way that he approached the water that he was a non-swimmer, so both eyes were on him the whole time.

My sister was later a lifeguard at a pool that didn't have a swim test policy. She probably had to pull somebody out of the water twice a week! That is dangerous for the lifeguard and the swimmers. Stupid.

Re:the test

[tomjen]

How can it be dangerous to the lifeguard? (assuming he is able to swim).

Re:the test

[indifferent children]

The rules for a rescue (note, my training was 20 yrs ago): reach, row, throw, go. The last thing that you want to do is go into the water and grapple a drowning swimmer. They are usually panicked and can be incredibly strong as they wrap themselves around you seeking safety. Lifeguards (and even worse: untrained rescuers) run the risk of being killed in 'double drowning' situations.

Re:the test

[bluGill]

Not really. At least not in the pool I remember seeing it. Just swim one lap in water where it isn't over your head, in front of the life guard. (that is you don't seem from deep to shallow, you swim in the shallow part)

Life guards can recognize people. They didn't make everyone take the test, only those who were borderline. They wouldn't ask me to take any test today because from the moment I jump into the pool it is clear from my swimming style that I could pass. Back when I had to take the test I was a young kid who could just pass it (Actually the want to get into the adult section caused me to take it many times before I was strong enough to pass. Back then annoying to fail, in hindsite a good thing)

Come to think of it, the lifeguard in that chair probably watched a dozen tests an hour. But he wasn't in a part where people were likely to drown - not yet over year head, but only good swimmers allowed)

Re:the test

[bluGill]

To echo what the other guy said: When someone is drowning they panic.

It has happened to me where someone I was swimming with paniced and grabbed onto me. This prevented me from swimming (I could not move my arms or legs enough to stay above water), and was leading into a double drowning situation fast! Fortunately I had heard about the only solution: dive - the drowner will not follow you down. Once I was underwater I was able to come up a safe distance away and help.

Re:the test

[indifferent children]

A lifeguard's work (at a well run pool) is preventing the need to rescue someone. Do you sneer at your useless seatbelt or airbag because they don't seem to do anything for years at a time? So STFU, and get back to Baywatch; I'm sure that they are much better lifeguards.

Re:Wales Needs Vowels

[UnixRevolution]

Actually, the concept of your post comes from an Onion article about Clinton sending vowels to bosnia. It's in the onion book "The Onion's Finest News Reporting, Volume One".

I thought your post was funny. Don't worry, i have mod points, i can.....D'oh!

New game for kids

[dtfinch]

How long can you hold your breath at the bottom of the pool? Long enough to trigger the alarm?

Re:New game for kids

[jonoid]

How long can you hold your breath at the bottom of the pool? Long enough to trigger the alarm?

The problem with holding your breath underwater is that all the air you are holding in will cause you to float to the top, due to the fact that the air is making you less dense than the water. To stay underwater with all that air in your lungs would take some sort of upwards propulsion. Assuming this machine detects motionlessness as well as time under water, it would be quite difficult to hold your breath and stay motionless at the same time (unless you strapped weights to your feet or something).

Re:New game for kids

[dtfinch]

I wanted to keep the post simple.

Re:New game for kids

[KillerBob]

The problem with holding your breath underwater is that all the air you are holding in will cause you to float to the top, due to the fact that the air is making you less dense than the water.

Depends on the person. :) With my lungs so full that I can't take any more air in, I "float" about 6" below the surface of my pool. If I'm anywhere below capacity, I sink to the bottom of the pool. I actually really enjoy holding my breath, and sitting on the bottom of the pool, watching the sky by overhead. Very relaxing, even though I can only do it for about 3 minutes at a stretch.

What if it you only have a "partial save"?

[NotQuiteReal]

What if this system, rather than letting someone die (which is the unfortunate, but natural consequence of drowning), what if, the system merely gave enough warning to save the child to the point of a permanent vegetative state? How does that figure into your calculations?

Re:What if it you only have a "partial save"?

[Zeebs]

While an incredably morbid line of thought, I'll bite. The system could still be "profitable" if some ratio is exceeded between so called partial saves and complete saves. That exact ratio would require knowing how much it costs to keep someone in a persistant vegetative state.

Just as a matter of personal preference I would actually rather not know that cost, less it some how come up in conversation and I seem creepy.(er then I already do)

I have a pool at my complex

[Nf1nk]

One thing I enjoy doing, in my pool is sitting on the bottom all alone and staring at the sky. With my weight belt I can do it for slightly more than a minute, but for that minute I am wonderfully relaxed, and I can think about nothing but holding my breath. I bet doing this would play hell with the system.

Re:I have a pool at my complex

[6th time lucky]

With my weight belt I can do it for slightly more than a minute, but for that minute I am wonderfully relaxed,

and if you passout you will be wonderfully dead. Sorry, not trolling, but if you do that you are asking to become a statistic, or in the running for a Darwin Award...

It's kind of like the sig, "Ever stopped to think, and forgot to start again"

Re:Gotta love PR people

[rbarreira]

You're an idiot. Seriously...

Re:Blydu Tydu!

[pointguy]

Offtopic? If you don't understand something don't moderate it.

You're new here, aren't you?

Not me

[SuperKendall]

I can exhale a bit, enough to sink to the bottom of a pool and then sit there for a minute or two. There's always a bit of residual air in your lungs to work from...

Yes I've done it before, just for fun. I can't swim at all well so I find it relaxing to just sit at the bottom of a pool (on the very rare occasions I even go in one).

I would easily be able to set off this alarm (though I wouldn't want to on purpose).

Re:Gotta love PR people

[back_pages]

That doesn't mean the rest of us are blithering idiots.

Oh here we go with the sweeping generalizations! Why don't you stick to what you know and just speak for yourself for a change, eh?

Wait a sec.. damnit!

Price is not worth it.

[raehl]

At $120,000 a pop, it's probably not worth it. What is the operational life of the system? How much does it cost to maintain? How many of the systems will actually save a life?

Like it or not, life DOES have a monetary value. If we only save one life per $10 million spent, that's probably not worth it (as we could save many more lives spending $10 million elsewhere.) The FAA values a life at about 2.3 million dollars - and only mandates changes where the cost of changes is less than 2.3 million dollars times lives expected to be saved.

The reality of life is that if we're all going to have MEANINGFUL lives, some of us are just going to have to die sometimes.

Re:Price is not worth it.

[eoinmadden]

Do you know what a "budget" is?

I think you forget that the £65,000 came from the local goverment's swimming pool budget.. not the hospital budget, not the public transport budget; the swimming pool budget.

By the way, you say the FAA value a life at 2.3m dollars. What do you value your life at?

Re:Price is not worth it.

[dan the person]

I value mine at about $10.

Spend more than $10 on me and you'd be better off spending the money on vaccinations saving 10 peoples lives.

If you think $10 isn't much consider that i am saying my life is worth 10x a poor persons life

Phooey

[Francisco_G]

I was imagining some kind of grille covering the floor of the pool, that hydraulically rises to surface level whenever it detects a drowner.

Flaming Space Meatballs

[typical]

That's why we have this thing called society. Shared responsibility. Social contract. But then you're probably 12, so we can't expect you to understand that yet.

65K sterling is peanuts in a public sector budget.

I have some excellent Flaming Space Meatball insurance to sell you. Only $40K, and that's peanuts in a public sector budget -- imagine the horrors of lacking coverage and then being attacked by a Flaming Space Meatball!

It only takes one...

[micah_gideon]

to validate this sort of a system — Advanced Class scheduled August 25, 2005 from 8:00 PM to 9:40 PM Location: Princeton Unprepared Party Scrabble; 65,000 is a small price to pay for a child's life and it's not likely to be the last.

Speed limiters on cars

[typical]

You know, a lot more people die each year in cars than pools.

Try and convince people that speed governors on cars restricting them to the speed limit would be worthwhile, and they will kick and scream until the end of time. But when it to dropping a hundred thousand bucks on every pool out there in the hopes that some kid will try breathing water in it...well *that* is entirely worth it.

Re:Speed limiters on cars

[mollymoo]

What makes you think speed limiters would save lives? Don't you think a system which treats an 80 year old woman in a 1970 VW Beetle at night in the rain the same as a 27 year old fighter pilot in a McLaren Mercedes SLR on a sunny day might be, you know, an over-simplification?

Re:Speed limiters on cars

[TheLink]

Sure driving fast increases the risk of fatalities. But there's such a thing as too slow too.

Driving too slow costs lives too. I am assuming most people don't want to spend so much of their lives in traffic jams.

Someone driving too slow can slow thousands of others. You can do the math. e.g. 5000 people, X minutes more each day for Y years because of some person driving too slow. Not sure where you want to take the 10 minutes from - waking time, personal time, or work time. Some people don't have that much personal time after subtracting work etc, 10 minutes can be quite significant.

A driver who is driving too fast often pays a lot of his life. But a driver who is driving way too slow may not pay as much compared to how much he is costing everyone else.

that's one conclusion...

[YesIAmAScript]

If you're gonna do that math, you should also give some other examples of what we could do with the $0.16/year/person this costs.

I have to say, as a non-pool owning, non-kid having, it bothers me that you just go ahead and bundle me in amongst the people paying for this thing. At the very least, it would seem to me that only people who have pools should have to pay for saving kids who fall in them. That way, it's part of the cost of buying a pool, something that should be taken into account when pricing one.

All in all, I have to figure this system, if produced in the volumes required to cover every pool in the US would cost a lot less than $100,000, thus making a lot of this math invalid.

Really?

[YesIAmAScript]

You're sure about your math (let alone that apostrophe)?

It just can't be true, at least in current Euros. If the average tax rate is 50%, and a person works on average 40 years, then that means the AVERAGE person in the EU makes 50,000 Euro per year?

That's pretty far out of line with my understanding. I would have to imagine it'd be perhaps closer to 30,000 Euro on average.

and you're really missing one thing..

[YesIAmAScript]

This is the cost of the monitoring system only. You have to have a person there within a few minutes to save them. So that means this system only works if you have lifeguards on duty.

Houses don't always have lifeguards on duty, which is part of the reason their pools are so dangerous.

So you need to add the cost of a full-time lifeguard for each pool, or close to it. And once you've done that, you probably don't need the computer monitoring, because a life guard is unlikely to miss a person falling into a home pool, which is probably only 40 feet by 20 feet.

underwater video cameras

[ian_po]

According to the article, the lifeguard can't always see beneath the surface due to the glare. Instead of paying some company £65,000 for an automated system, why not have a volunteer or the lifeguard monitor a few underwater video cameras. In this case it was the underwater camera that caught what happened. Humans are much better at analyzing moving imagery anyway. The only problem with human is that we are error prone. Giving the lifeguards monitors would also allow them to watch for shenanegans going on beneath the surface.

Re:underwater video cameras

[windowpain]

I'll go you one better. Have one or more video cameras mounted on the ceiling looking down. Looking straight down and using polarized lenses should minimize glare. Have a couple of cameras underwater too.

Put a monitor not only at the life guard chair but put them in various places around the facility: the locker rooms, snack bar etc. The more eyes the better. This should cost less 1/10 what the system described, making it cost effective for smaller facilities.

Re:Do same with Linux box and "motion" program

[Tidal Flame]

Look, there are tons of programs out there that can detect motion in images, and I'm sure that one is great. And I'll be the first to admit that organizations don't always spend their money as well as they could... but I do think that this system is just a bit more advanced than that. It needs to be pretty accurate. You can't afford to miss anything, and you can't really afford false positives either. Detecting non-motion in a pool is one thing, but not everyone who's in trouble just stops moving. Granted, it's easier for the lifegaurds to see someone who's thrashing around, but to make this sort of system effective you need to allow for people who are moving around as well.

Re:could not detect her moving?

[Tidal Flame]

I know it's popular to make fun of the editors around here, 'cause they don't always do the best job, but no, that sentence makes perfect sense.

save or life or save a business?

[samjam]

$120K may not be the price of a "possibloe" loss of life, but if there are two pools in town, and one has the system and one doesn't, the other pool may need to buy one to save their business.

For public pools, if citizens want one, they get it and pay for it. Maybe the next mayor or councillor will promise it just before election to show that they care more than the current bunch in power.

My point was

[melted]

If this serves as an excuse for parents to not watch their kids, there will be more harm than good.

Re:Except...

[CProgrammer98]

If you have air in your lungs, you probably wouldn't be sat 12 foot under the surface - unless you have a weight belt of course.

I've worked witn Poseidon

[HuguesT]

This is the 4th person being saved by the system. So far the system hasn't missed anybody drowning. There is about 1-4 false positive per day per pool (which is acceptable according to lifeguards).

The system is very quick, reacts in about 10s. It essentially works by finding and tracking everybody underwater in the pools. It knows the 3D location of all swimmers, and reacts if someone is underwater and motionless for a few seconds. Poseidon/VisionIQ did a lot of innovative research in 3D tracking which has been published and patented over the last 10 years or so. Some of the people working at that company are among the smartest I know.

Poseidon is a small company and as it is they barely break even. The system is not just clever software, but lots of cameras and a fast computer system. The installation is not easy as all cameras have to be calibrated for the specific 3D architecture of the pool. The cost may look steep but really is isn't that much compared with the normal cost of the pool maintenance, as it is essentially a one-off cost.

At a large public pool apparently someone can be expected to drown every other year or so in spite of lifeguards presence. Poseidon can make a difference. It cannot replace lifeguards as someone trained has to do the rescues, it is just an alert system.

In 2004 in the UK a person drowned in a pool which had rejected the Poseidon system. The next day the paper's outline were "Person drowns for want of 65,000 Pounds".

For all the Linux afficionados out there, last I heard Poseidon ran on Windows NT 4.0.

For all the naysayers out there, when Poseidon started no one thought they had a business, but they single-handedly created their own market. We can now expect competitors to show up. As most trailblazers Poseidon might be bought out in the future by some big security company spinoff or something. We can also expect the system's cost to come down somewhat in the future, and hopefully to be more prevalent.

Nevertheless I'd be very proud to have been associated with a small outfit who has measurably saved people's lives. Very few endeavours succeed in that regard.

Best.

Re:I've worked witn Poseidon

[Demerara]

We can also expect the system's cost to come down somewhat in the future, and hopefully to be more prevalent.

Absolutely! As the price drops, the $38bn guff in earlier comments will indeed begin to look like pennypinching.

Now, a campaign to influence public policy and have such systems mandatory for publicly funded swimming pools is called for.

What are the economies of scale for this system? One obvious one is to port it to Linux (thus saving the NT licence fees)!

Woudn't cameras have the same effect?

[Anyd]

Maybe simple underwater cameras could have the same effect. Put a monitor out by the lifeguarding stand, and let the lifeguard(s) keep an eye on that. Perhaps it's not as novel an idea, but the cost difference could be enough to make them common place in public pools. One of the scuba shops in my area had cameras mounted under plexiglass windows in the pool, so patrons in the store could watch classes in session. Although I never worked as a lifeguard at a public pool, I was certified. And as a scuba instructor I ran snorkeling tours off a boat. I had to deal with distressed swimmers on a regular basis, but fortunately I never had to deal with an unconscous person in the water. Even with that background, if I glanced at a monitor and saw anything like the picture posted in the article, I'd be in the water in a heartbeat.

Re:Price of a human life -- Open Source Poseidon?

[Fjan11]

I'm sure that most of that $100,000 current selling price is margin to recover development cost. If this thing is mandated and the total adressable market becomes millions then there will be economies of scale and there will be competing products entering the marketplace.

Perhaps someone will even build an Open Source Poseidon and you will just have the hardware cost: a few cameras, a PC, and installation cost: $5,000 tops.

wasn't too bad

[zogger]

This was at a large private pool run by a condo association. You recognized the residents fairly soon after working there, they only needed to be tested once. After that, not too many new people, and when they came in (friends of the residents), they would usually have been told they needed the swim test.

Firefighting and False Positives

[MikeyTheK]

The false positive problem is certainly an important one, as is a method to alert others in the vacinity that there is a problem. As firefighters we carry a device called PASS, which, when we aren't active does several things: 1) after 30 seconds of inactivity it sounds an alert tone, at low volume, for about five seconds. 2) After the five second low-volume tone, it increases volume to an obnoxious level for another five seconds. 3) After the second five-second alert it goes hog wild until it is manually silenced.
We get lots of false positives with this system on the fire ground, because much of the time of people not in the building fighting the fire is spent standing around. This is especially true for the RIT or FAST team - a separate team of firefighters that is standing by outside the structure and waiting to execute an entry and effect a rescue within five seconds of a "mayday" going over the radio, or hearing someone's PASS alert going off inside the structure.
In firefighting the PASS alarm is useful because we can tell which way to go to find the injured, unconscious, or trapped firefighter or team. Unfortunately such systems don't work so well in water, because the speed of sound is much faster (water is more dense than air), so your ears are unable to distinguish direction, except with extended training (tens to hundreds of hours of underwater time).

The good news about such a system is that the lifeguards, like the RIT or FAST teams, get used to false positives, and learn to evaluate situations quickly to figure out what's going on.
In addition, such a situation can be further improved if only one lifeguard is initially responsible for the monitoring of the system and evaluating alarms, at least for ten seconds or so.

On the question of how long you have when you drown, AED (that's automated external defibrilator) companies have researched this topic extensively. For a non-trauma-induced cardiac arrest (drowning is included in this category), you have an approximately 90% probability of survival if defibrilation is conducted within one minute of arrest. The probability of survival goes down by roughly ten percent per minute after that (the curve isn't linear, though). In addition, we have found that after about four minutes even in victims that are effectively converted, the quality of their outcomes are significantly diminished.

So what about CPR? CPR in the vast majority of cases (approaching 99%), is not sufficient intervention to convert a cardiac arrest. In fact, it is believed that in the cases where CPR alone was successful in converting an arrest, that the victim was not arresting, and the report was wrong, based on various enzyme and other chemical levels in the bloodstream. CPR buys time, it flattens out the conversion curve, so that defibrilation and IV intervention can improve both the probability of survival and the quality of the outcome.

Near drowning experience

[SeanDuggan]

You'd be surprised how quiet they are. They're not bothered to scream or shout - they're mostly trying to breathe. They move very little, splash very little, kick straight down, do dumb, ineffective things with their arms.... The quiet, animalistic panic just before drowning is a little eerie to watch.

I can vouch for that from personal experience. Years back, when I was a child, we used to go to a pool a mile or two down the road from our house. There was a set of stairs on one side and to the left of it was the shallow end and on the right, it started sharply declining. I hadn't learned to swim yet, but I was Ok as long as I was in the shallow end. Well, I got confused one day and jumped off on the right side. Luckily, it was shallow enough still that I could push off of the bottom and just barely reach air. Still, I remember how scary it was because it took pushing off as hard as I could to get up there and there just wasn't enough time to gulp air and still cry out for help. Luckily, someone spotted my flailing (a friend of the family nearby) and helped pull me out. In retrospect, I should have been pushing towards the side of the pool, but I was, of course, kind of panicked at the time.

Mod Parent Down

[mdielmann]

Reason - really, really bad math.

Assuming the grandparent's figures are correct, the cost per year, nation-wide, is $38B. The cost per life saved is $45.6M. So, $38B/295M is $128.81 per person per year for the opportunity to save 832 children per year. That's a little more significant than $0.16.

That would also be about 100M subscriptions to save a kid in Africa, if the comparison matters to you.

And now they should be mandatory

[dptalia]

Naturally, some group of concerned citizens has spoken out that this is "proof" that these systems should be mandatory...

Patents

[tepples]

A larger market means other companies are going to invent similar safety devices.

Yeah, twenty years later.

Low hanging fruit

[tepples]

Do you really rate our lives as being worth so little?

If 100 dollars will vaccinate 100 people in developing countries, preventing them from dying young from disease, then it would be reasonable to claim that each life saved is worth one dollar.

Mod parent up

[HanClinto]

Mod parent up, good article, thanks!