To think water safety needs to be made into a bigger thing?

[MeltingPregnantLady]

This summer several young teens and young adults have drowned jumping into or swimming in areas of open water having fun in the heatwave and cooling off seemingly oblivious to the risks involved (as teens and young adults often are!).

I live reasonably near the coast and at no point have any of the schools done any water safety education - even basics - in class. We have because we feel it is important however not all parents will think like us. Should there be some kind of drive either in schools or in the press or at waterfronts telling people just how dangerous seemingly safe areas of water can be?

I know a few schools that have summer safety assemblies which include the dangers of water. Parents should be pushing home the dangers of water to their children too. We live near a reservoir and there's been patrols recently with the hot weather but that hasn't stopped idiots trying to swim in it. What they don't realise is there's huge suction pipes under the water and when these are switched on you wouldn't stand a chance if you were swimming at the time. Two people have already lost their lives in that reservoir years ago.

Some parents don't give a shit though. We have a derelict mill on our land which is fenced off with massive warning signs NOT to swim in the water. It looks lovely but there's ledges underneath the edges of the pond - I don't even allow my dogs to swim in it. 9 times this week DH has asked people to leave there as they've climbed fences and totally ignored the signs with their children. I can't understand why people would ignore keep out dangerous water signs.

The problem is that many outdoor swimming spots which are perfectly safe if used sensibly are now fenced off and bejewelled with huge NO SWIMMING signs. So I can only conclude that people think “I’ve swum in X and it was fine, so Y will be fine too.”

I swim outdoors a lot - all year round - and the key to this is (1) teaching children to make safe, informed decisions about whether/where to swim and (2) making sure they are prepared if they find themselves in trouble (which could include finding themselves in water when they hadn’t intended to swim - see above).

The wonderful RNLI do loads of school visits in my area. And they and the coastguard are v active on social sharing stories and safety advice.

I think schools should teach safety and I remember the public safety films from when I went to school. Can’t stand the attitude of not the schools responsibility and they have a full curriculum why should they do it.

The Spirit of dark and lonely water needs to pay a visit....