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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

If they don't have enough lifeguards on duty, how are the drones supposed to work? They find a person drowning, then communicate that to a life guard who is so far away they can't do anything about it? I get how they could spot sharks in the area and send a signal that can be followed up on, but a person drowning is a pretty time-sensitive situation, so if you don't have someone on hand, what do you do about it?

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It explains in the article, it drops an inflatable raft.

And then lifeguards have vehicles to get there as well. They're not limited to running on foot.

How does a raft administer cpr?

I guess the goal is that the drone can intervene before CPR is necessary.

But there's always a limit in capabilities - providing better access to some help is clearly still of benefit, providing faster access to limited capabilities over a wider area may be a better end result than the same resources being used for higher capabilities, but more limited reach.

The same argument could be made in the other direction though. More, but worse, coverage could lead to behavioral changes that result in worse outcomes. Specifically, people feel more confident and go swimming when normally they'd only do so in lifeguarded waters.

Really we need to wait and see what the data shows (if they review it), as the article states for now they haven't performed any rescues.

I really doubt that right now, anyone is going swimming when they wouldn't have otherwise because they think a drone will rescue them.

Maybe many years from now when drone rescues become commonplace. But it's not exactly something to worry about at the moment.

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