I grew up near a lake in the Alps and I am quite sure that any floatation device in Europe that is not safe for leaving your kids unsupervised has a big warning sign printed on the floatatiin device itself.
An exeption were these orange things you strap onto a child's arms, and inflate, which they can't really remove by themselves.
>An exeption were these orange things you strap onto a child's arms, and inflate, which they can't really remove by themselves.
Those are widely considered NOT safe, a non-swimmer child is probably much safer without them than with them, as using them lulls the caregiver into a false sense of security and they pay much less attention to them. They also teach children the wrong posture for swimming/floating, which can be difficult to unlearn. In the US the common wisdom says that if you use them you must be in arms reach of the child at all times - but that's what you'd do without them anyway, so what's the point?
The idea that you'd leave a non-swimmer child unattended with them is, frankly, horrifying.
The problem there, though, is the lack of parental supervision, not the armbands themselves. The bands do keep the child's head above water. But no matter what, parents need to understand that you don't leave a small child alone near water.
Unfortunately those are profoundly unsafe. They only keep the child's head above water while they are slid all the way up to the shoulders. If they start to slip down the arms, which they are apt to do when swimming, they'll tend to slip all the way down to the hands and if the child isn't strong enough to pull themselves up out of the water it can keep them from being able to swim at all as it holds their hands up.
Try to imagine if you were less buoyant like if you had ankle weights on and someone tied two empty milk jugs to your hands. Your hands are suddenly not useful at all for swimming and you can't pull them underwater so now you're forced to hold yourself up by pushing your arms out.
Arm bands should never be used. Unless they're the kind that has a chest piece, there is a significant risk of them pinning a child's face in the water.
I'm not sure what inflatable things exist that go on a child's arms and they can't remove themselves. Water wings are considered quite unsafe.
Is it possible you are thinking of something like Puddle Jumpers (look up an image online), which look like water wings but strap behind the child's back, and don't actually inflate? Those are, indeed, considered safe.
Those are called "water wings" in the US and the person you were replying to feels quite the opposite about their safety; the ones I've seen available for purchase in the states are easy to dislodge accidentally.
The ones which are just placed on the arms and not tethered to each other have a failure mode where they easily come off if the child puts their arms straight up. Unfortunately, this is also a common drowning fear response.
In general, I want people to have full market freedoms, but I put those water wings pretty near lawn darts in terms of danger.
I'd call lawn darts safer, as the danger with them is a lot more obvious. Everyone understands that throwing sharp things at people will lead to injury. It takes a significantly more informed consumer to know that a product masquerading as a safety tool is ineffectual at best.
All of the ones I've encountered in Europe have a butterfly-ish creature on one side and warnings in a dozen languages on the other side - not a safe flotation device.
An exeption were these orange things you strap onto a child's arms, and inflate, which they can't really remove by themselves.