n the nearly 20 years since California’s first proposed barriers ordinance, this state’s pool and spa industry has evolved from opposing laws of any kind to accepting them as a fact of life — as long as they are workable and effective.
Preventing child drownings is top priority. And we have to face this issue head-on because the public is concerned. But so many times, officials make their point by proposing legislation or regulations that would place an undue burden on the industry and consumers — and still not help with the most important goal of saving lives. In evaluating safety legislation here in California, we always want to make certain that laws actually do aid in the prevention of accidents and are reality-based, rather than being an emotional reaction.
In assessing safety legislation to see if it fits that description, we look for several things:
• Make sure the bill is livable for virtually everyone.
Encouraging everybody to follow safety laws requires making sure anybody can live with them. To that end, a bill should allow several options. Don’t narrow it down so you only allow certain devices that are very, very expensive, for example. That will put a project out of range for some people.
Some pool owners don’t have children, for instance. It would be easy to make the argument that you shouldn’t have to put a device in if you don’t have children. But the California industry hasn’t. There are still visiting children, so there’s a risk of exposure. Low-cost alternatives should be allowed to accommodate these pool owners.
You also don’t want consumers to be forced to use things that don’t work for them or that they don’t believe in. We want pool owners to make cognitive choices that not only help them determine their own safety regimen, but also reinforce the importance of safety and supervision.
If they’re just following orders, they’ll either disable the device as soon as the inspector leaves the premises or depend on the device to stand in for their own supervision.
• Beware of product-specific laws.
We want to encourage the innovation of new safety products. We don’t like single products being legislated; it’s anti-competitive, anti-consumer and plain wrong in our system. It has to be opposed by people who want realistic, open, selective possibilities for devices that will help them do their job of providing supervision for children.
Certain specifications make sense. For instance, you can’t have openings or protrudences in a fence that work as toeholds and allow a child to climb over it.
But you don’t want laws that have devices so meticulously sketched out as to which decibel they will emit, for example. That denies people the right to do what is comfortable and appropriate for them and thus becomes self-defeating. A louder alarm may be suitable for larger yards, but it could be a nuisance for those in smaller confines.
The law that we put into effect is so flexible that it states that any other device can be used if you can show the local official that it is as safe as the items that are specified in law.
• Make sure specified products exist.
We’ve seen bills pass our desks specifying a product that doesn’t yet exist. It may specify that a product be approved by ASTM or another testing institute, when no products have received such approval yet. Or it may be a technology that hasn’t quite hit the market yet. This type of law paralyzes everyone — how can you follow it? You have to be cautious to make certain it’s reality-based.
• Watch out for false claims and statistics.
One of the continually aggravating parts of evaluating and countering legislation is the area of false claims. Barrier proponents have said, “Studies have shown that 89 to 90 percent of all child-drowning accidents would never have occurred if there had been barriers.”
But no such study exists on the face of the Earth. Every study that has been done states that there is no measurable improvement because of the over-reliance on a device rather than adult supervision.
Other so-called studies state that in California, the greatest cause of death for toddlers under age 5 is drowning in swimming pools. But these people are lumping all drownings together — from buckets to rivers to lakes. The fact is, more kids die in rivers in California than in pools.
The lesson: Always challenge the assumptions that are thrown at you as fact.
• Push for legislative bills rather than regulatory ordinances.
We prefer the statutory rather than the regulatory approach. Statute is harder to pass and to tamper with afterward, whereas regulations can be adopted or changed much more quickly.
We also want bills that clearly explain what citizens must do, rather than those that turn decisions over to regulatory agencies.
In addition, you’re dealing in an environment where there is a lot of emotion, and people who are willing to take advantage of that emotionality — some manufacturers want the government to do their marketing for them, while some activists want to be deemed the guru of child safety. Bills make it harder for them to bend the law to their will.
