’m not a big fan of the government, and I haven’t been impressed with its work trying to prevent drownings. In my experience, government officials often make up their minds before hearing input from the people most knowledgeable about the subject. They make decisions in a void, based on influence as opposed to reality.
I don’t think the pool industry should be held responsible for irresponsible parents. We can’t be the parents or babysitters, and it’s unreasonable to hold us to that standard. It is my opinion that you can’t mandate common sense.
But I’ve also come to believe that government involvement in drowning prevention is a fact of life, as it is with airplane safety, car safety and home inspections. The very components we use are tested for safety because the government mandates it — and because people can get hurt, or even killed, misusing our products. It’s a waste of time to try wishing laws and regulations away.
I don’t have a great deal of control over what government bureaucrats do, but I do have control over the way I market and build pools, and the way I educate homeowners.
That’s why I got together with a couple other Genesis 3 members and the safety advocates at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) to form the Pool Safety Alliance. We’ve been in discussions almost a year to find common ground, with the larger goal of developing educational programs and possibly becoming involved in safety legislation and regulation.
To me, it’s a matter of how involved the government gets. I think that involvement will be based on several factors: the severity and number of incidents involving the product, and how elected officials view our industry, in terms of its responsiveness and responsible actions.
Working with “the other side” — the child-safety advocates and consumer groups who often push for restrictive legislation — is one way to develop effective solutions and show that we want to fix the problem.
In an ideal world, I think the industry would recognize problems and take a proactive role in correcting them, without being litigated or legislated into submission.
Heading them off
It seems to me that often the government steps in when everyone reaches an impasse, when there’s a clear and distinct hazard and nobody’s willing to address it. Politicians and regulators are left trying to correct the problem for the public well-being. But often they step outside the role, and it becomes a nightmare of convoluted rules and massive amounts of paperwork. And most of the time, the problem doesn’t even go away.
But you can almost understand why they do that. Sometimes it seems as if they just need to justify their existence. But the fact is that when they attend hearings to discuss proposed laws, they are met with hard-liners on one side who believe the only safe body of water is filled up with dirt, and then individuals in the pool industry who don’t believe there is a problem and want to see all restraints or constraints removed.
The people who could do the most work preventing drownings — builders and the medical specialists who work with drowning victims — make themselves powerless by taking such hard-line positions that make them look irresponsible and unreasonable. But both sides can agree on one thing: Neither wants to see any individual harmed in the use of our product — child or adult.
It seems as if many of our problems could be solved if sane minds got together and said, “Look, this is a valid concern. Let’s come up with a proactive way of handling this so government doesn’t have to get involved,” rather than trying to whitewash the problems or blow them out of proportion.
We should be able to collectively come up with credible solutions and educate the public instead of letting the government and interest groups dictate solutions.
It’s not easy, though.
When we first started working with the children’s hospital, we were suspicious of each other. All their exposure to us came from safety groups, and all our exposure to them came from within our own industry.
It took a while to break the ice and develop a sense of trust so we could speak candidly. But we were clear with each other on our terms for having a dialogue.
We said, “Yes, we know our industry is flawed in a lot of areas, but we develop a product that’s wonderful for families, and we’re not interested in talking to anybody who believes all pools should be filled with dirt.”
They, on the other hand, said, “If your only goal is to simply sweep the safety issue under the rug, then we really shouldn’t be talking to you either.”
Through different eyes
We still disagree on quite a bit, mostly about the role of parents vs. mechanical devices to keep kids safe. The question is: Where should the line be drawn?
As a parent, I think a desire to rely on mechanical devices is flawed. I understand that if there should be a lapse in supervision, barriers are there and help. But I also think that in many cases, they create a false sense of security, so you end up relying on this as a mechanical babysitter. We’re still working out a common position on that question.
But we wanted to look at the issue from someone else’s perspective. I really believe that once you think you know it all, you’re not part of the solution — you’re part of the problem.
That’s true of both sides.
I may overlook options or ways of making the product more user-friendly only because I may have tunnel vision.
The biggest issue that the children’s hospital has opened my eyes about is the need to protect people purchasing a home that already includes a pool. There has been a spike in drownings once pools are resold.
The good news is that, in my opinion, this shows we’re doing a better job of educating individuals who initially buy the pool. But then they sell the home to someone who doesn’t have any of that experience. All of a sudden, there’s a higher chance that someone could drown or be injured in the pool. From what I can see, we could make more of an impact by addressing this issue than anything else.
This problem is fixable. I think there should be a rule that pools meet reasonable safety standards when the home is resold. Home inspection already occurs on all homes when they're being sold in California, so how difficult is it to include the pool in that process?
More important to us, though, I think our industry should develop some kind of educational program to prepare new homeowners for pool ownership.
Clearly, these incidents happen well past the sale, and the pool industry has very little to do with it at that point. I don’t feel that I am necessarily responsible for how that second or third user behaves, but I think educating him is in everyone’s best interest.
This issue also presents our industry with a clear opportunity to proactively solve the problem before the government steps in.
If we don’t address this problem, who will? If we don’t take advantage of the fact that we have an intimate knowledge of our product, then we leave that responsibility up to people who don’t know — in other words, the government.
None of us wants to see people disenchanted with our product, but how does it look when drownings are reported in the news? These tragedies are hardly promotional tools for those with sales-based mentalities.
It’s time for the industry to start being more proactive and less reactive. Because if we don’t address safety problems, the government will.
