If so could you please tell me. If you had a link to the story that’d be amazing. I work at a pool and we plan to leave the new blocks up permanently.
Yep, at our YMCA about 8-9 yrs ago a girl dove off the starting blocks (4ft deep) broke her neck and was paralyzed. Due to insurance costs had to take them down, permantly. No link. This was in Billings Mt
Lots of pools put smaller orange work cones on blocks if they are up temporarily or permanently, so random public users don’t go on them. Most have rules, such as swim team use only, etc. This seems to work fine in the many pools I have been to or belonged. Cones equal no go.
The pool I swim at leaves some blocks up most of the year for the age group team. During the High School season all 10 lanes are up for two months. I’ve not heard there to be any issues in regards to the public. The pool has a policy that no one uses those blocks unless supervised by a certified coach and USA swimming has a mandate out to the age group programs that all of their team members are to be approved before using a dive block.
There are insurance issues involved for the pool and the agegroup programs about supervised use.
Also USA swimming rules are you can’t dive into water with out meeting the minimum dive depth of 4’6" even from deck height. The blocks I refer to are at the deep end of the pool 12’
Might be hard to find evidence because in my n=1 experience, every public pool I have ever swam or worked at only installed starting blocks during swim practice or meets, and otherwise stored them. My high school and university pools always had them in, but those were not open to the public except for limited 2-3 hour public lap sessions, i.e. no open/recreational public swims.
As a former lifeguard, I can imagine keeping the blocks in would be a nightmare if it is a pool heavily used by kids/families for recreation. Kids want to jump off the blocks constantly. If it’s not allowed, policing it becomes a headache because let’s face it, kids always try to get away with stuff they’re not suppose to, and if it is allowed, the potential for a kid slipping and cracking his head open will go way up.
I wouldn’t do it.
I’ve had major, permanent damage to my ego at the starting blocks.
We have covers that would completely prevent being stood on.
The high school leaves them up but when not in use they are covered with a plastic hood. These are in the 12 foot deep end and sometimes people use them without supervision during open swim. We do not have them at the municipal pool. There should be no diving or use of starting blocks in shallow water.
Every YMCA pool I have ever been to has blocks all the time, with the standard orange cones.
Well that makes a big difference. I’ve never seen any that had covers. I think most injuries that would occur would be because of people, namely kids, using the blocks inappropriately, so if the covers prevent that, then I don’t see a problem.
The pool is 5’ 6" deep enough to allow diving but not deep enough to “teach” people to dive. (Dont get me started on that) but the covers and steep pyramids and provide no standing platforms
If you leave them open, eventually some kid will decide it is fun to do cannon balls off them next to the lap swim lane. Your life guards have better things to do than pull some crazed lap swimmer off a crying 8 year old.
Not major but at a local pool the blocks that are set up (permanently as far as I know, I’ve never seen them down or moved) are quite old. Some shift forward when you move your weight, go to start etc…did a dive a bit ago and the block shifted forward quite a bit and threw me off balance. Ended up with a nice black bump on top of my left foot for about a week, couldn’t really kick in the water either from discomfort.
If so could you please tell me. If you had a link to the story that’d be amazing. I work at a pool and we plan to leave the new blocks up permanently.
A guy in my masters class always scrape’s his feet on the bottom. Last night he was bleeding pretty bad, hope hes ok 
The pool is 5’ 6" deep enough to allow diving but not deep enough to “teach” people to dive. (Dont get me started on that) but the covers and steep pyramids and provide no standing platforms
My tangent along the lines of your post:
My parents were not swimmers so I learned to frolic in the water with my friends at our local municipal pool. My friends would dive in anywhere, and I guess back in that day no one stopped us. After seeing my friends dive in the 3 foot section, I decided to try it. Yes, I hit my forhead on the bottom - it sucked but I just got skinned and a bruise. I could have ended up a quadraplegic or even dead. A very hard lesson to learn and I was super vigilant about this with my kids.
An aside. When I was in my residency at the VA, I had to round on the long term care ward and there were quite a few quadraplegic veterans. Most injuries occured during horseplay with their friends and not during actual training or in the line of duty. These were goofing off kind of injuries. The ones that really stand out in my mind - the ones that seemed to be the majority. were the guys who were drinking and dove into a pool and broke their neck. Scary stuff.
If so could you please tell me. If you had a link to the story that’d be amazing. I work at a pool and we plan to leave the new blocks up permanently.
While I didn’t see the accident, at the first district swim meet I attended as a volunteer, a swimmer jumped (not dove) off the blocks and injured his neck. He was hauled off in an ambulance before the meet began, and a strict, “feet first” entry policy was established.
Our blocks used (1991) to be in the shallow end at our pool a friend hit his head practicing relay starts (1 metre deep aka 3.3 feet). He had a spinal injury but was back training inside a long difficult year. He is now a full time Tri coach and is very safety conscious.
This is now a rule of Swim Canada for meet warm ups.
I remember back in the day when I was little (pre 1987ish) and I was on my first swim team. We started everything in the shallow end off of taller blocks than were in the deep end.
They took all of the deep end blocks out when we weren’t having a meet. I do think that I remember being told why we stopped doing that was because of people hitting their heads on the bottom.
Now for leaving the blocks out, what kind of blocks do you have? I’ve seen quite a few different types, including ones that looked like boxes on the edge of the pool. I can’t imagine those were unsafe to leave up.
I have also seen pools that have canvas covers for the blocks, that keeps people off of them.
Is it an issue that you don’t want people on them? Or don’t want people tripping on them? I think the first issue is fairly easily resolved with signs and alert life guards.
jake