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How changing our safety signs every summer can save lives
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How changing our safety signs every summer can save lives

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Sun, sand and free time sum up the holiday season for many Australians, yet it is one of the deadliest times of the year, especially for overseas-born beachgoers.
About one in three of at least 139 people who drowned in Australia last summer were born abroad, according to Australia’s Royal Life Saving Society, the country’s top water safety educator.
Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day in 2024, an average of almost three people drowned per day, making this period particularly dangerous – especially for those less aware of beach safety.
“Overseas-born people are five times more likely to drown while swimming. Over the past decade, overseas-born people have accounted for more than a third of all drownings,” a spokesperson for Life Saving Victoria told SBS News.
“The core problem facing Victoria’s multicultural communities is a lack of skills and knowledge in swimming and water safety.”

The spokesperson said there are several factors contributing to this higher level of risk, including access to safe water environments, language and cultural barriers, coming from landlocked countries and fear of water.

Language ‘a bit complicated’

Beach safety signs are a tool used to increase knowledge and warn beachgoers of potential hazards, but research shows that the signs often fail to effectively communicate the risks to non-English speakers.
A recent survey by Monash University, in collaboration with Life Saving Victoria, found that only 14 percent of Korean students in Australia understood what the red and yellow flags meant.

Masaki Shibata, a lecturer in intercultural studies at Monash University who led these studies, said part of the reason is how the message is conveyed on beach safety signs.

Safety signs inform beachgoers of both permanent and incidental hazards. Source: MONKEY / Then Peled

“The language can be a bit complicated… I think there are some misunderstandings because of the color coding,” he told SBS News.

The study found that when signs were shown with a red and yellow background, 80 percent of participants saw the red as a high warning level.
Almost half of respondents indicate that they enter the water despite a dangerous current sign with a yellow background next to images of people in the water.

A similar 2024 survey of Japanese students found that three in five had little understanding of safety flags and about 60 percent had difficulty understanding warning terms.

Even Google Translate ‘gets it wrong’

Shibata said some commonly used terms, such as “rip current” or “shore dump,” were even unknown to students in their own language.
‘In other words, they don’t know the situation [word’s] exist,” he said.
“If you put the shore dump or shore break into Google Translate, it actually comes out wrong at the moment.

“In Chinese and Korean, it emerges as a place to throw garbage on the shore.”

Experts warn that understanding phrases like ‘rip current’ – one of the most common hazards on Australian beaches – is crucial to improving beach safety.
According to the Royal Life Saving Society, an average of 45 people die each year in Australia from rip currents.
A spokesperson for Life Saving Victoria said they “emphasize the importance of effective coastal safety signage in preventing water incidents”.
“It is important to note that signage is only one part of a broader, multi-disciplinary approach to drowning prevention that reduces the risk of drowning by addressing hazards, exposures and vulnerabilities to protect individuals and communities.

“Life Saving Victoria has a dedicated multicultural department that conducts water safety activities on a daily basis throughout the year.”

Improving translatability

In recent years there have been increasing calls to improve beach warning signs for non-English speakers – and some changes have already been made.
For example, Victoria’s Bass Coast Shire Council recently announced a trial of new coastal safety signs at high-risk locations including Kilcunda Beach, Woolamai Beach and Forrest Caves.
The council has said the signage, developed by Life Saving Victoria, features evidence-based design, multilingual messaging and clear hazard warnings.

Shibata said some terms “need to be revised in English first” to make them more understandable to culturally and linguistically diverse communities (CALD).

“For example, let’s say that ‘shore dump’ can be changed to ‘crushing waves’. Because the shore is a location and dump is an action, but it doesn’t actually catch waves… that’s why there are a lot of different interpretations,” he said.
“So let’s put the wave there [in the phrase] …and then we know that the dump can be misunderstood so that we can turn it into crashing waves.
“It is important that the signs are very clear and very simple, very translatable,

But Shibata warns that no matter what the signs say, some people don’t read them.

Beach education while studying English

Some initiatives to raise beach safety awareness for CALD communities begin before they even arrive in Australia.
Monash University, Surf Life Saving Australia and the University of NSW Beach Safety Research Group have created a beach safety reading exercise for students preparing for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam.

Shibata said the exercise was designed to “educate those who are not interested in water safety or who simply ignore our message.”

“We developed the exercise for IELTS but then incorporated information about beach safety and rip currents, beach science and risky behavior on Australian beaches,” he said.
“So even if they are not really interested, they can just study English with our material, but unknowingly learn about beach safety.”
The survey results showed that participants’ knowledge improved after completing the IELTS exercise, especially in identifying rip currents, red and yellow flags and beach signaling terms.

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