[qchris]

I haven't heard anyone mention this rule, which I think is useful:

Cars, dogs, and water.

These are the big three common things that children interact with regularly that can, and will, cause irreparable harm or death with functionally no warning and virtually instantaneously. Kids also don't have the experience or the intuition to figure out if a situation is dangerous; cars move too fast, dogs are too hard to read, and water danger is hard to grasp even for adults (the number of people, including grown adults, I've seen panic and had to get pulled out after gleefully jumping into water where it turns out they can't reliably touch the bottom is fairly high).

The first two require some strictness (i.e. being very clear about rules like never going near a road without an adult, and never hitting a dog or pulling it's ears), but water basically requires regular swimming lessons from qualified instructors. It's something I wish happened earlier, and that more families had easy access to.

[Aromasin]

I surf a lot, and I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to save people from a riptide. They're always completely exhausted, barely keeping head above water, and minutes from getting pulled out to sea with no energy left to swim around the rip and back to shore. I pulled out a couple on deaths door on their honeymoon just a couple weeks ago - that could have crippled their families. It's frustrating the lack of awareness people have around the sea. Unless you know the shore you're swimming on intimately, or the sea is flat with no swell, there's no guarantee you'll be able to fight the sea if you're further out than up to your waist in water.

[clan]

Around here flat sea is the killer as it usually is a sign of strong undercurrents. To the uninitiated it simply looks more calm. It can pull you down for real.

If you just float to open sea (typical tourist in a dingy or paddle board) you might need to get a "fun" helicopter ride from the friendly sea rescue services. Most people tend not to know that if the emergency is due to gross stupidity they will be billed afterwards (they are kind - so that is rare). Their rates are however significantly higher than regular tour operators.

So I do agree the lack of awareness is frustrating. If the locals stop swimming you should too.

But... Send me down under to Australia.and I would probably die in 5 minutes. Everything seems to be dangerous and/or poisonous there.

We are all to some degree "tourists" at some point in time with all that entails.

[rurban]

On the other side as surfer I just love riptides. We call them the lift. It just takes us out to the surf for free.

You may not fight it, you must use it and step out to the side.

[untrust]

Why are riptides safe for surfers? Is it because you can just take a break on your surfboard and float? I would think getting dragged out to sea on a surfboard would still be dangerous...

[derbOac]

Not OP, but my impression from reading the literature is that the problem with rip currents is that people either exhaust themselves fighting the current, and/or get pulled out beyond their ability to swim back.

The typical distance a rip current will pull people out is about 100m. Given that about 50% of the US population can't swim functionally at all, this can be very dangerous. However, it depends — 100m is not very much for an experienced open water swimmer, who might be used to swimming 1500-3000m routinely.

Most updated recommendations suggest people should ride the current until it stops and then signal for help and/or swim away from the current. This is to avoid exhaustion and because research indicates rip currents can go in different patterns.

If you know what you're doing and can swim that distance, it's not that dangerous. Experienced surfers would fall in this category, as they're used to navigating shore currents.

[rurban]

Riptides are only dangerous for beginners who don't know how they work. It's a narrow stream outwards, about 3-4m wide. Like a street. At your surf you get out by paddling parallel to the beach just a few strokes. Beginners fight the rip, but you just need to step out. For surfers it's a dream

[blarg1]

Even without the board, it's just understanding the water, and knowing all the tricks for swimming in the surf.

Like you hear people become exhausted and drown, when it is just so easy to relax and float around, even with waves washing over you.

[ToDougie]

Great example. I used to love rip currents as a youngin. Just swim parallel and body surf back to shore. Sometimes I used to just swim into them for the workout and amusement. But I got older and it had been about a decade since I had ventured out into the ocean -- was out body surfing for about 20 mins before I got caught in a fairly normal riptide and ran out of energy really fast. Would have been really unfortunate if I hadn't been in the same situation hundreds of times before. I was panicked and debated yelling for help lol.

[lazyant]

Dogs are the 3rd deadliest animal to humans (discounting humans themselves), but since they are popular pets and more like another family member in some Western countries, they get a big pass imho (or rather, their owners) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_deadliest_to_h...

[afiori]

This is like the statistics that cows kill more people than sharks, if it was common to keep bears as pets they would kill way more people than dogs

[xnx]

> Dogs are the 3rd deadliest animal to humans

4th according to that confusing chart (confusing because mosquitos are off to the side).

[jefftk]

How much of being third deadliest is just there are tons of dogs around humans, so they have far more opportunities for an interaction to go poorly?

[rglynn]

Yeah, given that I'm surprised the number isn't higher. Also there's this note:

> Dogs seldom kill humans directly. Rather, they are primarily a vector that transmits rabies

[aitchnyu]

Looks like most of them are stray dog attacks. There was an Indian operation where 25% of dogs rounded up had rabies, and vaccines fail due to improper storage.

[n8henrie]

What? 25%? Isn't rabies in dogs lethal in fairly short order (like in humans)?

I'm pretty sure the rural county in which I work hasn't seen rabies in a dog since like 1986.

I work in an emergency room (frequently caring for dog bites) in an area with numerous packs of strays. Dog rabies is always a concern, but I've never seen a confirmed case.

[aitchnyu]

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2024/Sep/05/q...

[n8henrie]

These were tests done on carcasses, not on captured strays -- see also my parent comment. Rabies kills in short order.

[amy214]

> Cars, dogs, and water.

Just to go off of this, springs as well. Usually it's garage door springs or suspension of a car springs. People will DIY thinking it's a small thing but they can easily decapitate you. Some garage door springs have been known to level the families of entire neighborhoods or small townships. Garage door spring related deaths are far more common that you will ever know. Garage door springs also are known to be the main transmission vector for tetanus so if you survive the unspringing be advised there's a 90% chance it flung a deadly dose of tetatus and botulism (also grows on springs) into your every bodily orifice. You may think "well why is a kid fixing a car's suspension" but of course kids like poke around and explore because they're curious or they could be exploring your shop or your garage door mechanism.

[silisili]

I'm so confused by this comment because initially I agreed with it - garage door springs are way more dangerous than most people think.

Then it kinda devolved into nonsense and obviously fake info.

Was it meant to all be tongue in cheek? Sorry if it's a woosh moment.

[closewith]

Depends where you live and the age of the child. In the first year, asphyxiation/choking and infectious diseases are more dangerous than the three on that list.

From 1 to 10, falls are by the far the biggest risk.

If you live in the US, firearms trump all of the above, but only in the US.

[salmonellaeater]

I think OP was saying those three things were surprisingly dangerous. Kids have a natural fear of heights and falling, while the three on the list not so much.

[closewith]

> Kids have a natural fear of heights and falling

A learned fear, like the rest. There's no innate fear of falling.

[sampullman]

Are you sure? From what I've read, and personally experienced there's some innate fear of heights. Similar to snakes and spiders, it's baked in.

[noahjk]

Babies will happily crawl off of the edge of whatever they're on. I'm not sure if it's because they aren't afraid, or if it's because they're so used to being carried that they don't grasp the concept of gravity, or both.

My toddler recently went out on our roof to retrieve a football. I expected her to be a bit nervous, but she walked right up to the edge, no fear apparent at all. I had to desperately shove my instinct to yell for her down so I didn't scare her and distract her.

[yencabulator]

Here's an experiment showing 27 of 36 crawling-age infants had no apparent fear of heights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cliff

[bobthepanda]

IIRC very small kids are also developing depth perception, they aren't born with it.

[closewith]

100% sure. It's completely uncontroversial scientifically, so I'm not sure what you read, but it's also obvious to any parent.

[sampullman]

I can't find the article I was thinking of, it was a while ago. I'm pretty sure it was about the visual cliff experiment though: https://www.simplypsychology.org/visual-cliff-experiment.htm...

It looks like there have been a number of studies over the years, so not completely uncontroversial, unless there's something definitive you've read?

The point isn't that babies never fall off stuff, just that at least a part of the fear is built in.