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Pool alarms and silly Joan |
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Written by Patrick Middleton
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Sorry Joan but what you’re saying is just plain silly
Last summer actress Joan Collins allowed herself this outburst in the UK Spectator: “We’ve had, by law, to install four hideously ugly alarm posts on each corner of our gorgeous infinity pool in the South of France, creating an infrared barrier which is supposed to prevent people drowning. The alarm is supposed to emit a high-pitched whistle except that it only works if the potential drownee is wearing a complicated plastic bracelet – quelle horreur! It is a tragic truth that dozens of children drown in ponds, bathtubs and in the sea every year, but I’m not sure that this device will help much. And what new rule will we be forced to adopt next? A cover over every frog pond? Railings around the ocean? The mind shudders!”
It takes less than three minutes
Sadly, the evidence is that the new law is being widely ignored. Well, my mind shudders rather at the thought that Joan Collins’s huffing and puffing about what she calls “this totally ridiculous nanny-state law” could lead anyone to ignore the rules to ensure pool safety. Accidents still happen but the “nanny-state law” has helped reduce the death-toll of children – in both 2004 and 2005, before the new legislation was applied, four under-fives drowned in pools in the Alpes-Maritimes alone. It takes less than three minutes for a toddler to drown in 20 centimetres of water.
As some readers will have noted, Ms Collins hasn’t even understood its provisions which came into force at the beginning of last year. She wasn’t compelled “to install four hideously ugly alarm posts”. She had a choice of four solutions: an alarm system, a fence, a cover or a canopy entirely enclosing the pool. Experts, like Rupert Scott of Enclôture, claim that a fence is the best solution since “it’s as foolproof as possible”.
From Riviera Reporter Issue 121, June/July 2007
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