Preventive measures

The recent report on water safety guidelines highlights the advantages of taking a proactive approach to improving consumer safety, says Meglena Kuneva

Earlier this month the European child safety alliance, EuroSafe, released a new report entitled ‘Protecting children and youths in water recreation: safety guidelines for service providers’. This important document, developed with the support of the European commission, gives basic but crucial advice for reducing water-related accidents, particularly when it comes to children on holidays. It is an example of good collaboration and a proactive approach towards improving consumer safety by addressing the safety of services.

Every year in the EU there are over 50,000 boating injuries and 235,000 swimming pool-related injuries, most of these involving children. Drowning remains the second leading cause of death in children. Tourists are at especially high risk and it is estimated that nearly 50 per cent of water-related injuries to children can be attributed to problems with the safety of services.

It is not so much faults in the equipment or products that are responsible for the majority of injuries and fatalities, but rather the misuse of the equipment. Misuse tends to be due to lack of training, unclear safety rules, or users’ unfamiliarity with the environment, all of which are risk factors that can be best reduced by working with the service providers.

Tourism and water recreation service providers such as hotel operators, water sport trainers and beachside rental providers can adopt preventive safety measures, including simple actions such as providing age appropriate personal flotation devices, which reduce the risk of drowning by 85 per cent, or providing safety instructions before allowing consumers to take to the water.

While this may seem obvious and many providers do have exemplary practices, there is no European-level policy requiring recreation service providers to adopt known standards of prevention. The result is inconsistency in safety standards, both within and between countries, and this can reduce consumer confidence and impact the tourism industry.

The safety of consumer products has been regulated since the 1960s. However, the safety of services was not addressed until 2001 when the general product safety directive was extended to include products supplied by service providers.

Up until then, the design and construction of a jet-ski, for example, was largely regulated, but its safe use was not. In the case of jet-skis, this led to a number of high-profile fatal accidents, which eventually pressured some national and local regulators to impose more control over rental services.

We issued our initial report on the safety of services for consumers in 2003. The report stated that cross-border sectors, such as the tourism and leisure industry, should be the primary focus of safe service legislation. However, the report acknowledged that the lack of adequate data and information on service-related safety issues needed to be addressed to effectively move forward.

Many recreational activities have professional associations that develop general codes of practice or safety manuals. However, specific hazards to children, who are the most at risk, are usually overlooked and the safety information is not always evidence-based. The new guidelines, the scope of which includes children up to 18 years of age, help to fill that gap. They present evidence-based information and give service providers essential child- and youth-specific injury facts and preventive measures.

The preventive measures recommended are not too costly to implement, and will have a great return if implemented, leading to improved safety across the EU. These guidelines are an important step forward in improving water safety and reducing deaths and accidents. They are a good example of what can be achieved when specific sectors commit to addressing the safety of services where no legislation exists. I urge all water recreation service providers to use them.

I applaud the European child safety alliance for this initiative and also the professional recreation associations and injury prevention organisations who have collaborated to improve the safety of services. Adoption of these guidelines will improve consistency between member states in their approach to water safety and help to put safety at the centre of the tourism and leisure sector.