Swim South Florida: South Florida family goes high tech to keep children safe in the pool

Florida leads the nation in child drownings. We are surrounded by beautiful bodies of water and its why swim safety is more than a story. It’s a priority for us.

In this “Swim South Florida” story, Local 10′s Nicole Perez has introduced us to a South Florida family who has taken that message to heart and is taking extra steps to keep their children safe around the pool.

David Fridmann believes swim safety is a must for his family of four.

“A father has to teach a trait. He always has to teach them how to swim because it’s a lifesaving skill. Not teaching them yourself or someone else is like murder, God forbid,” said Fridmann.

The Red Cross recommends several water safety tips to prevent drowning. One of them being placing a fence around your pool. Something Fridmann did immediately upon moving into his Miami home.

“That was our first proactive thing to do for making a safer environment. Then later on I found out about these cameras, and I was a little skeptical,” said Fridmann.

Fridmann is referring to his Swam Cam.

Asher Brand, Swam Cam CEO, said the camera is always on, searching the area around the pool for movement and when detected, the alarm will sound in three different areas.

“Swam Cam is a pool alarm system that uses A.I. detection for human movement. We are drowning prevention, as opposed to drowning detection. So, we prevent drowning by detecting human movement before they even get to the water,” said Brand.

Fridmann showed Nicole some of the features which include the keypad, the camera that will record video and allow a person to speak through a speaker to anyone around the pool area and it will also dial 911 if needed.

Fridmann’s skepticism about the camera at first stemmed from not wanting to have false alarms.

“It’s triggered only from here to here, so I reduce false alarms. If I have false alarms, I’m going to take this off and I’m going to leave it to gather dust,” said Fridmann.

Brand said Florida is one of the company’s biggest markets because of the number of pools here.

“The U.S. is the largest pool market in the world. It has about half of the residential pools of the entire worldwide market and unfortunately because of that, the annual drowning deaths are also the highest. More than 400 kids have fatal accidents every single year,” said Brand.

For Fridmann and his family, he said swimming is a part of their daily life and by adding the camera, he feels it’s an extra layer of protection.

“My kids like to go swimming. It’s good exercise for them and we do it often. This is something that I think is very preventable. It’s up to a person to figure out their own children and safety measures if you’re going to have a pool. That’s the responsibility you’re taking,” said Fridmann.

For more information about the Swam Cam, click on this link.

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