[prosaic-hacker]

Your desire that everyone learns to swim is laudable but as with all useful skills it takes work. Our completely distracted society is loosing skills like map reading, making change, driving manual, tying knots(still learning) ... (Sounds like a reason for Scouting and 4H) I will even posit shoelace tying given all the Velcro shoes.

12K is a lot for ROV (other comments suggest the could be cheaper ones) but the good news is the operator has had 10,000 hours practice on a Xbox. The Engineer/PM/Accountant in me hopes the ROV is reusable and will be used over many years spreading the cost out over time saving many people.

Hopefully the saved will come to Jesus (pronounced "heysous"), I mean the local teen working at the swimming pool who has a knack for teaching adults to swim.