Water Safety
Analysis of drowning incidents suggests that most people have a poor level of awareness of 'open water' safety issues. Anecdotal evidence suggests that generally people under-estimate the hazards presented by open-water. In a number of drownings the casualty enters the water in attempt to save someone else in difficulty. In the UK, even in the summer the sea temperatures rarely exceed 15C with inland lakes and lochs often colder.
On average there are between 450-600 drowning fatalities in the UK every year and inland waters account for 63% of these deaths. These figures are generated from data drawn from the RLSS/ROSPA drowning statistics database and the more recent National Water Safety Forum, Water Accident Incident Database (WAID). RLSS UK is committed to improving our understanding of how and why people drown and actively manage water incident data and input into the new national WAID database, with the aim of accurately targeting resources effectively to reduce drownings.
The Royal Lifesaving Society UK works in partnership with the National Water Safety Forum to record all drownings in the UK and produce the National Drowning Statistics. To see the most up-to-date statistics please click here.
