They have gone the way of the buggy whip, it seems.(please excuse the lousy metaphor)
This rather long-winded article gives some explanations.
There are still some public pools where you can risk your life. I seek them out. Someday they may be gone for good, and I think it’s sad.
(my apologies in advance to anyone affected by a diving board accident)
Boy–I hear ya.
Several years ago–say, 15–the local public pool opened for the summer with the two low diving boards in place but without the 12-foot (I think) high dive. There was a moderate public outcry which was answered by the city saying it was a liability issue–and no, no one had ever been hurt.
Then, sometime in the last five years, the low diving boards went, too.
Now this is a pool that has swimming lessons all summer and used to have diving lessons, both as part of the regular swimming lessons and on their own. Now, of course, it doesn’t. You can still dive into the water (from the deep end) but forget the board.
So there’s whole generations of children who will never learn how to dive safely.
I know how to dive safely and I can (and have) dived into 3 feet of water from the side, without getting anywhere near the bottom. I guess I can kind of see the industry’s point about backyard pools, which are small and don’t have that big a deep area. In the last backyard pool I dived into (belonging to my in-laws) you could end up in the shallow with a decent spring, although anyone who knew what they were doing would aim for the deep part.
And that may have been my last diving board experience ever. My 10-year-old has never even been on one.
The generation after this one may spend its life in knee pads, elbow pads, and helmets.
Our municipal indoor pool (in the building where I go to work out) has a diving board. I was a little surprised to see it.
Agreed. When juries stop handing out awards for which the responsible party is liable, maybe some of the fun can come back. Try buying more than $5M general liability for a public pool.
Yesterday, I took my five-year-old son to our community pool.
There’s three-foot and a ten-foot boards there.
I’m going to have to pay close attention at the City Council meetings 'cuz I sure do like having them!
Doesn’t seem to be much of a problem around here. The local pool has a 1m and 3m spring board, and a couple of platforms. The only problems I’ve ever seen are the jackasses that try and jump into the swimming lanes.
I spent a few hours at the community pool at my in-law’s development yesterday, and nope, no diving board. Of course, that makes the who place ever so much safer – now, instead of one key jumping-in point, we had a horde of seven-year-olds running across the pavement and leaping in wherever they felt like. Repeatedly.
I wish I’d had a chance to learn how to dive properly, just 'cause. My neighbours daughters have (I’ve no idea about their son), but by the time I went through swimming lessons there was a guideline on how deep a pool must be to have a diving board–I can’t remember hwo deep, but it’s more than 8 feet. Since then I’ve only seen diving boards at university pools and at my neighbours, who have a deeper pool than normal.
My favourite swimming pool has a 1m board AND a 3m board AND a 10m board (and some other heights in between, but I can’t remember what) AND a massive water slide AND a rope swing. Unsafe ahoy! 
Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the planet 
I hope nobody ever points out to the city that pools contain lethal amounts of water. Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 and the number two cause of death for children ages 14 and under.
The city would probably respond by filling the pool with styrofoam peanuts and stretching a tarp over the pool, just in case.
Our community pool has a diving board, but it is marshalled over by a teen life guard making sure the kids go off one at a time and not until the previous jumper is safetly back at the wall.
It makes me pine for the days when we would jump on the trampoline ( next to the inground pool) and directly into the deep end. (The entire pool was 12 feet deep. Best.Pool.Ever.)
Some times we could coordinate our jumps to attack the diver off their diving board.
And my best summer memories were being allowed to float down river ( Lake St. Claire - which is a river of sorts between Lake Huron and the Detroit River) in tubes, where boaters were at and freighters merrily went by not to very far from us, and we would come to land three islands down. Walk with our tubes north on the island, swim between the islands ( not very far) and do it all over again. Without life jackets. We were 12.
That was before safety existed.
Slight hijack
My local rec center has an indoor pool with a diving board, but I noticed something else when I was there the other day. There was a group of adolescent boys, about 12 years old, using the diving board, mostly running off it and going in feet first. Now boys at this age are about the most macho time of their lives, always puffing up, showing off, and terrified of being exposed as a wimp.
I noticed three things about these boys - One, not a one of them ever went in head first. Two, they were all wearing swimming goggles, and three, every single one of them held their noses shut with their thumb and index finger when they entered the water. Any of these behaviors, especially the last one, would have generated so much ridicule in my day that I’d have been unable to show my face for a week.
What’s up with that?