how can we stop our citizens from drowning?

Stop young men from showing off?

Well you can’t help stupidity If there are notices up and there usually are and people ( mostly lads) choose to ignore them you can’t do anything
All we can do is teach our kids from young that a notice is there for a reason but some young men just know best or just don’t think
It’s sad but that’s how it is nothing more to be done i m afraid and it will happen again this year and next

It is like all those groups of lads where one has just passed his driving test, and 3 or 4 of them jump in a car and drive round their neighbourhood, in town or country at great speed, run out of road, hit trees etc etc and kill themselves.

Short of incarcerating all young males between 15-25, I cannot think of a solution.

In other countries you can get fined if not wearing a life preserver jacket when near a body of water.

Education - at school, colleges etc. On TV. Advertising hoardings. Giving statistics.

Some recent deaths have been drink related in towns and cities where there are rivers - York and Durham come to mind. Years ago, a student here left a bar to walk home, it was thought he’d gone on a jetty to be sick in the river, overbalanced and drowned.
Wearing a life preserver in such places isn’t feasible.

Warning notices and in some places fencing, doesn’t seem to deter those keen to get near the water.

Macadia

In other countries you can get fined if not wearing a life preserver jacket when near a body of water.

What happens if you live beside a body of water? or go to the seaside? We are buying a house where the street runs beside a brook for about 100 yards. Will we need to wear a life jacket every time we walk into town?

I think it only applies to under 18s (not sure) but, yes, ridiculously, you would have to wear it while walking to town or going to seaside.

Most of the drownings I have read about, the victims were known as strong swimmers.

We just had another one occur last week. It is so sad.

All children should be taught to swim and given appropriate safety advice. The rest is up to them and to their parents

My dd goes deep lake swimming wearing a wet suit, always in a group. It is nonsense about wearing buoyancy aids, that is up to the individual. If they need a buoyancy aid they should not be in a flowing river or other `dangerous` waters

DGS and his dad do free diving ie 20m deep in lakes, no buoyancy aids and no breathing apparatus

Sometimes accidents happen to the most safety conscious people. Sometimes people get drunk and do stupid things. Sometimes people are just stupid.
I know people who rave about wild swimming and I suppose its their choice but, when children drown it is a tragic statistic and we should do what we can to make them aware of the dangers...making out that jumping into a cold lake on a hot day is fun and healthy is not my idea of caring about the kids.

I don't think we can ever do anything about many young men feeling immortal and taking risks.

escaped

I don't think we can ever do anything about many young men feeling immortal and taking risks.

Totally agree this has been a fact for many generations.
My neice was a teacher at a local Senior school one of the pupils jumped off a near by Pier, survived but Paralysed from neck downwards. She said he was always pushing the boundaries.

Sometimes its not the person acting out but it is nature acting out. I have known people who have died from drowning and in almost every case they were not acting irresponsibly.

So many of the deaths by drowning are accidental. Recently the ones I can remember seeing reported were a young girl fishing with her dad, another young girl who fell into the Thames, and an older man attempting to save children he thought were in trouble in the sea. Strictly speaking all those deaths were preventable, but in reality things go wrong and people make decisions impulsively, or simply fall. It’s tragic, but I don’t think it is possible to eliminate all deaths by drowning, whatever safety measures are taken.

Macadia

In other countries you can get fined if not wearing a life preserver jacket when near a body of water.

Surely not. I know some countries make it a legal requirement to wear life preservers when you're more than a certain distance out on the water, but nowhere where it applies if you're on land.

Over 1,000 public swimming baths have been closed since 2010.

A very few years ago most of a family travelling home from a lovely holiday in Scotland, stopped for a break beside a well known Loch Lomond beauty spot. Not knowing how deep and how cold the water was and it being a hot day, some of them jumped in. They died.

As others have said, only educating people about the dangers of deep, cold water will make a difference. Even good swimmers can't always manage the speedy physiological effects on their bodies.

I doubt we ever can. Quite apart from the dangers of lakes and rivers (and as a pp said, young men thinking they’re immortal) you’ve only got to watch a few of the RNLI ‘Saving Lives At Sea’ programmes to see the daft things people (who can often swim quite well) do all the time.

In particular, RNLI incidents involving paddle boards have apparently risen sharply - winds and tides taking people too far out very fast.

Re respect for the sea (the old grey widow-maker*) as my ex RN father used to call it, I particularly remember what a Barbadian told us of his granny’s saying:
(In the local accent) - ‘Thee sea have no back door.’
How true!

*from Kipling, IIRC.

Yes Baggs. Isnt it the gasp factor. Jumping/falling into cold water stops your breath.

Another one for schools to warn about!! I wish we had warnings on TV still. But I suppose young men 15 to 25 are hardly likely to watch TV anymore.
Living near the Thames, we have always been aware of the flow speed and the unkonwn depth of the water which together with underwater hazards is a recipe for disaster when youngsters, and older, men mainly attempt to awim across on hot days. Often after plenty of alcohol.
They aren't likely to read warning signs either. Same sort of dangers as walking on icy ponds or rivers.
Not a great deal we can do to answer the question posted. Keep safe yourself. And yes Monica a rubber ring and arm bands when you go into town!

I doubt we can stop such accidents when spirits are high and you are young we do daft things in the moment as sense goes out of the window

I agree allsorts the young feel invincible it’s sad but unlikely to change a hot day, a body of water and a knowledge of how to swim and plop …. They re in
Living near the sea my grandkids thankfully had full knowledge from small as to when they could or couldn’t swim
and why
What countries make you walk around in buoyancy aids when near (not in ) water Macadia I ve never heard of it or seen it ?

I was in Spain once and the beach was cordoned off as dangerous conditions, a young man I m sorry I ll say it quietly (he was a Brit ) defied the ropes and went in the water within minutes a Spanish policeman had pulled him out and hit him across the shoulders a number of times with his baton It was a good few years back so perhaps they re not so handy with their batons now but he probably saved his life

We had 323 accidental drownings in Australia in 2024.Mostly people getting caught in rips in the sea or being washed off rocks whilst fishing. Some in backyard pools, some rivers and dams. We do have lifeguards but many people ignore the ‘swim between the flags’advice, partly because those areas are crowded I suppose. They are very,very strict about fencing private pools which seems a bit strange because dams, lakes and rivers etc are just open of course. It seems many of the sea drownings are visitors who just don’t realise how dangerous our tides can be.

Often I think our brains go into "holiday mode". And we just don't see the dangers.

M0nica

It is like all those groups of lads where one has just passed his driving test, and 3 or 4 of them jump in a car and drive round their neighbourhood, in town or country at great speed, run out of road, hit trees etc etc and kill themselves.

Short of incarcerating all young males between 15-25, I cannot think of a solution.

‘O would that there were no age between fifteen and thirty, for in between there is nothing but stealing, fighting, wronging the ancientry, getting wenches with child, and drowning through their own stupidity.’

(Wildly misquoted from Shakespeare)