Australia’s red and yellow beach flags can be dangerously confusing. Is it time to change them?

Every summer in Australia, millions of people head to the beach, and every year, thousands are rescued by lifeguards or Surf Life Savers and even surfers or other bystanders. Tragically, many people lose their lives on our coasts.

The red and yellow flags, iconic to many Australians, are meant to be a simple and easy to understand message. They denote a safe and patrolled place to go in the water at the beach.

Surfers are supposed to surf outside the flags, while others swim (or wade, or frolic) between the flags.

But for many international visitors, the message is less clear. They may not make sense to people born overseas. Research shows international students often misinterpret what beach flags indicate, rely on visual cues like other swimmers, or assume calm water is safe.

These flags are not universal. Around the world, beach safety is communicated in different ways, with different colours, symbols, messages, and even patrol systems.

Despite the significant efforts of water safety organisations, drowning rates continue to rise in Australia, and people born overseas make up a substantial proportion of these deaths.

The system isn’t working.

What do the flags mean, and why do they matter?

The red and yellow flags have been a part of Australian beach culture and safety since the 1930s. They’ve been marking the patrolled area of the beach ever since.

The idea is that if someone swims between these flags, they are under the watchful eye of professional lifeguards and/or volunteer surf lifesavers.

Usually, the flags are positioned on an area of beach away from rip currents – the fast-flowing, seaward channels of water responsible for an average 26 drownings a year and the vast majority of surf rescues.

But recent studies found that about 70% South Korean university students and 60% Japanese students interpreted the red and yellow flags as indicating a dangerous area.

And a study conducted in the Netherlands showed only 3.4% of surveyed participants correctly interpreted the red and yellow flags. About 40% thought they denoted danger.

These results should be no surprise. Other global safety systems such as road or workplace signs use red to mean danger or prohibition, yellow for caution, and green as safety or permission.

Even half of domestic Australian university students surveyed thought red and yellow flags marked a safe area, so surfers should also stay between the flags. In fact, surfers are not supposed to surf between the flags.

The global picture

Globally, beach flag systems are not standardised.

For instance, in Brazil, Spain, and some areas of the United States, beaches use a traffic-light colour system: green for safe, yellow for caution, and red for danger or closed conditions. Portugal sometimes adds purple flags to warn of marine stingers such as jellyfish.

In some northern parts of Spain, yellow flags are sometimes used to mark designated “cooling off” areas where people are allowed to swim or bathe to cool down, despite red “danger” flags also being in place.

The International Life Saving Federation recommends a global set of eight beach safety flags, including the familiar red-and-yellow for patrolled swimming areas, red for high hazard, yellow for medium hazard, and black-and-white for watercraft zones.

Unlike some countries, the federation explicitly discourages green flags to denote “safe” conditions, on the grounds that no beach or even patrolled area can ever be completely risk-free.

Communicating beach safety

Even if people don’t know what the flag colours mean, in Australia beach signs often say “swim between the flags”.

But research at Bondi Beach in Sydney found that around 30% of overseas-born beachgoers misunderstood this message.

They thought “swim between the flags” meant only people who can actually swim should go there. In other words, if they weren’t good swimmers, they believed they should stay outside the flags.

This is exactly the opposite of what the safety message intends.

Translation tools are not a reliable fix. A recent study found key hazard terms are incorrectly translated by Google Translate.

Take, for example, the term “shore dump” (which means a place where big waves can suddenly break, and “dump” a swimmer underwater). This phrase is currently rendered in simplified Chinese as “岸边垃圾场” (àn biān lèsè chǎng), which means “a place on the shore to dump rubbish”.

“Shore break” (which means the same thing) appears in Korean as “해안 휴식” (haean hyusig), meaning “shore relaxation”. This creates serious risks.

Where to from here?

Redesigning the flags might help.

A recent study conducted in Europe developed and examined a modified version of the red and yellow beach safety flag, incorporating a pictogram of a lifesaver.

This study found adding the pictogram nearly doubled participants’ correct understanding of the flags.

Some experts have also advised that changing “swim between the flags” to “stay between the flags” could improve the translation because “swim” has different connotations in different cultures and languages. Some people might think you should only swim between the flags if you’re a strong swimmer or planning to swim laps.

Simply changing the colours of flags for Australian beaches may not be enough.

The red and yellow flags are tied to a century of lifesaving culture, volunteerism, and community trust. But that legacy shouldn’t stop us from testing whether green flags improve our beach safety communication.