No. Some people will continue to be morons no mater what changes. The studly might as well find that 50% of people have below median intelligence.
Green implies safe, swimming at the beach is never safe, even for a strong swimmer. There are dozens of pictorial danger signs at popular beaches and usually signs about how to interpret the flags.
The problem seems to be “no one knows what they mean” so uh, how is changing them going to correct that, exactly?
There’s a good argument to be made for intuitive design. Red means danger, green means safe. That’s a pretty worldwide understanding. Yellow means caution; that’s a little less universal, but still pretty common.
There are, in my opinion, good reasons to not say “safe” at the beach under any circumstances, so I don’t think using green flags is a great idea, but that doesn’t mean some other form of tweaking is inappropriate.
caution-danger sounds like a good colour combo for the beach eh, especially if we’re looking out for clueless tourists who think the ocean is a big bathtub.
Sure, but without a danger-danger elsewhere, a caution-danger might reasonably be interpreted as “don’t swim here”
alternatively just have up bigass signs saying “Swim between flags when on display”. They used to be pretty ubiquitous
That runs into the problem mentioned in the article that I was just discussing with @Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world, where people apparently interpret “swim between flags” differently.
Not really hard - just have an iconography of the flags with red X marks left and right, and a green tick and swimmer in the middle of the two flags
What about green and yellow?
Too close to green and gold, the indication “only Australians can swim here”.
Lots of things will confuse tourists because “tourists” is a large collective of people and a fraction of those people don’t seek to understand the world around them. The only thing worth doing is adding a few common international languages on the “swim between the flags” signs (if it’s not already done).
Otherwise, what else can get the message across that isn’t communicated with flags, signage, and a literal team of fully equipped life savers set up in front of a busy section of beach?
The only thing worth doing is adding a few common international languages
The problem with this, as the article says, is getting the translations right. To convey the message properly. “Shore dump” is currently being translated into Chinese as “beachside rubbish tip”, and “shore break” is being translated into Korean as “shore relaxation”. And many people are already seeing “swim between the flags” as an indication that people doing serious swimming (e.g. swimming laps) are the only ones who should be between the flags.
In Dutch, they have two words for cyclists: fietser (cyclist) for the average person using a bike to get around, and “wielrenner” (literally, “wheel runner”) for people doing cycling as sport. I wonder if a similar language difference might be a problem here with “swim”. We normally use it for anything in the water, but some people are obviously interpreting it as more like the aquatic equivalent of the wielrenner.
It’s not an insurmountable problem, but it is a difficult one.
Plus: most people don’t read signs. So it’s not a bad idea to make the symbols as self-explanatory as possible.
I believe this is SLSA’s response
https://sls.com.au/slsa-confirms-red-and-yellow-flags-save-lives/
The effectiveness of the red and yellow patrol flags is unequivocal as there have been no recorded coastal drowning fatalities this summer or in the previous year between the flags.
Oof. That is…not the slam dunk they think it is. The whole point of the critique is that evidence shows many people don’t realise they’re supposed to swim between the flags.
Now, I’m not fully on board with the reporting of the Guardian here either. The studies they cite talk about people misunderstanding the signs and flags, but they don’t say anything about what people actually do in response to this. If they misunderstand the sign and then just ignore it and swim between the flags because that’s where everyone is anyway, then there isn’t much of a problem. If, on the other hand, the confusion causes them to either make a conscious decision to swim away from the patrolled areas, or to throw up their arms and go “well I dunno what I’m supposed to do” (and then either decide against swimming at all, or decide that swimming outside the patrolled areas is fine), then it’s a significant problem. But we don’t know, based on these studies, which of those is happening.
The Guardian’s suggestion of using green flags is a silly one, but the study they cited just before that, where pictograms of a lifesaver were put on top of the classic red and yellow flag, could be a good idea to follow.
I think even if they had a few short ropes to demonstrate a “funnel” that may help people naturally think it’s a place you walk in between.
