Fatalities statistics: what kills people the most in scuba diving?

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Boulderjohn, sorry, yes I did understand that the pool length CESA practice was partly due to the restrictions arising merely from being in a pool. I also didn't say, that it is hard on an instructor to do ow ascents repeatedly. Interesting to me to learn CESA is done in ow training (perhaps I once knew that but my memory is poor). From what depth is the exercise performed?

This is quite the thread; often find myself feeling as if I'm in class at university. :^D
 
Interesting to me to learn CESA is done in ow training (perhaps I once knew that but my memory is poor). From what depth is the exercise performed?
I can't speak to the practices of most agencies. In my experience, 20 feet is common. That is about the depth at which I did it yesterday.
 
Very good and civil discussion.

My take on the discussion:

- Sport diving overall has a low fatality rate.
- OOA is probably more prevalent than reflected in the fatality statistics.
- In other words if you are OOA, you will likely survive.
- However, if you are a diving related fatality there is approx a 41% chance that OOA was involved.

Therefore if I want to significantly lessen my already small odds of being a scuba fatality then I should avoid becoming OOA. It is also probably a very good idea to know reflexively how to handle an OOA situation. A case of having superior skills, but wanting to use my superior judgement to not need said skills.

Another somewhat related topic. In the preface to a 1979 Monterey Dive guide was the comment that for the preceding 20 years (OK the date and number of years are from memory, but you get the point) that ALL of the diving fatalities in the county the diver was still wearing their weight belt. Does that mean wearing a weight belt is fatal (NO), does that mean ditching your weight belt will prevent all diving fatalities (NO), does it suggest that ditching ballast (at the surface, at depth - don't want to open that discussion here) might have saved a life or two (YES).

So what has that meant for MY diving. If I die while diving I don't want my family to question this, and I want to give myself the best chance for survival while still living life - so if I have any real question as to whether I can stay on the surface, or that I can't make the surface I will drop some weight. It also means that I will do everything to not get low on breathable gas, AND that if I do there are practiced alternative plans to get me to another source of breathable gas.

So with that all said, this will happen :D

- I'll go on a solo dive (likely)
- Have a massive heart attack with immediate death (not likely)
- not have ditched any weight (was immediately incapacitated and therefore unable to)
- land on the bottom in such a way as to cause a 2nd stage freeflow and emptying of my tank (now we're pushing probability)

And it will be concluded that I died because I went solo diving, ran out of air, and failed to drop weights.
 
Although some of it may have been indicated in the narrative of the case, in general terms, no, there's no breakdown. Also realize that it's such a statistically small sample size (one of the problems with trying to over-analyze any of this type of data) that as you break it down into smaller and smaller bites, your margin of error increases appreciably to the point of making the conclusion you draw potentially useless (and wrong).

I was not looking to break it down too far, I was more interested in seeing if there were any generalities. For example did many of the accidents involve: divers with less then 50 dives, OW divers, dives over 100', penetration dives, decompression dives, cold vs warm water dives or any other relevant factors that could have had an effect. I do not think this can be broken down to the instruction level as there is no way to know how good the instruction was vs how much knowledge the diver retained over time.
 
Ken,

I've been reading the DAN Diving Fatality Report 2010, and am aghast at the discussion on "On-Scene Diving Accident Investigation." You are quoted questioning Steve Barsky in that discussion, and I'm curious about your overall impression of the accident investigation process described in that report. According to Mr. Barsky, much depends upon what the lawyers want to happen. It ever appears that the results of these "investigations" mostly are attorney/client privilege and not released to DAN or the public. What is your observations of this from both your work with the county and your attendance of the DAN workshop?

SeaRat
 
I've been reading the DAN Diving Fatality Report 2010, and am aghast at the discussion on "On-Scene Diving Accident Investigation."

Many, many thoughts - some already expressed in previous threads - so I'll try to keep this relatively to the point. (I initially said "brief" but I'm re-reading this now and this is anything but "brief".) And everyone should know, I was at this conference as a private citizen not as an offical represetnative of the LA County Coroner (though they were aware I was attending). I was there as a participant, not a predsenter. But I'm also curious John, as to what comments/discussions in the DAN report made you "aghast".

You are quoted questioning Steve Barsky in that discussion

Just to be clear, I asked Steve ONE question in the reported follow-up discussion which was to give others in the room perspective, not to question Steve's abilities. The question was: "How many investigations do you do a year?" I don't want your question, John, to come off sounding like I was grilling Steve or questioning his comments. Steve's been doing this (accident investigations) a lot longer than I have and has even written the one & only book on the subject.

. . . and I'm curious about your overall impression of the accident investigation process described in that report.[\quote]

In Steve's presentation (whch I just re-read), he essentailly talks about (as an investigator - as opposed to an expert witness who is more of an advocate) detailing all the facts of the accident by interviewing people, looking at the gear, looking at the site, talking to first responders, etc., and the need to avoid altering anything in the equipment while you do all of this. I think that's absolutely perfect protocol.

He also mentions that a lot of jurisdictions who don't deal with this often (and even in LA County, we average only about 5 scuba deaths per year) don't have protocols in place or do things in different, perhaps less effective ways, than those who do it more frequently. None of this should come as a surprise. Sometimes, officials involved in an accoident simply don't know what to do because they've never been confronted with it before.

I'm guessing what's got you going is not Steve's presentation, but the post-presentation discussion, which centers on insurance/attorney involvement in everything. And it's important to make a distinction betwee the two. In the initial investigation of the accident, Jack Webb's voice can be heard: "Just the facts, ma'am." But once a lawsuit has been filed, fingers are being pointed and the conversation changes to "This was your fault" and "No it wasn't." Big difference.

According to Mr. Barsky, much depends upon what the lawyers want to happen.

I think that's an unfair charactarization. You're making it sound like the lawyers are hiding evidence and bribing witnesses to have things go their way. That's certainly NOT the case. But there's no question the lawyers - usually on trhe plaintiff's side - dictate the direction of the legal conversation in terms of what potential areas of weakness or liability there is and how to respond to that. And many times, you may get a plaintiff's attorney arguing something like "You should have been able to predict that Mr. X was going to have a heart attack" and it's a tactical legal decision as to whether or not you address that or dismiss it as being ridiculous on the face. And a lot of times the decisions are driven by an underlying thought of "How will this play before a jury of 12 non-divers, many of whom think it's dangerous to be underwater in the first place?"

It ever appears that the results of these "investigations" mostly are attorney/client privilege and not released to DAN or the public.

Well, yes and no. One of my personal concerns is how do we get this information to the diving public? It's not that there's a conspiracy to withhold facts. It's just that these things sometimes take time and also, once the litigation process starts, attorneys want to play their cards close to the vest so as not to release strategy and weaken their legal position. I understand and respect that. And when I post comments here, even these now, I'm weigihing in my mind the balance between what I'd like you guys to be able to know, what I know that may be considered privleged info and should be kept to myself, and what could affect any cases in which I might be currently involved. Some of the attorneys I've worked with do NOT want their experts commenting in the public realm, and some are OK with it as long as it's done with caution.

And don't think for a minute that attotrneys on both sides don't monitor these types discussions. There was a case I was involved in a few years ago (now over and done with) where there was a lot of commenting and speculating going on in a given thread. There was a particular person commenting who had no direct connection to the case, who was not invovled in the legal rpoceedings, and who knew nothing than other what they read in the thread. They kept making wild speculations that were not all based on the facts or had anything to do with reality. I was being deposed and one of the questions from the plaintiff's attorney dealt with a comment this person had made as if it was true fact. I answered that they weren't involved, didn't know what thery were talking about, etc. Plaintiff's attoreny tried to argue that because this person was posting so often, they were obviously a qualified expert (FYI, the term "expert" carries a legal distinction in court), and it got to the point where plaintiffs were going to subpoena this person to be deposed to testify as to what they knew and didn't know. (That part never came to pass and when I contacted this person privately to advise them of the situation, they stopped posting.)

There is a wolrd of difference between how we would look at an accident and say "What happened, what can we learn, how can we avoid this happening again" and an insurance compnay looking at it and asking "What will this cost us" and a plaintiff's attorney looking at it and saying "How much can I get for this"? At some point it becomes a numbers game when the insurers are trying to pay out as little as possible and the plaintiff's attorneys are trying to exploit every angle they can and a lot of it becomes confidential.

On the other hand, when things go to trial, that's all public record. And if you're willing to spend some time and dig through transcripts or go to LexusNexis or whatever, you can get this information. Some of the complaints I hear here boil down to "Why didn't anyone just hand me this info on a silver platter? I don't want to have to work to get it." I understand that, but that isn't the way the system works. In LA County, Coroner reports are public information. Pay your $88 and get a copy of whichever one you want. Police reports are NOT public information. But information in police reports revealed in public testimony IS public information. It's a complicated puzzle and jumble.

What is your observations of this from both your work with the county and your attendance of the DAN workshop?

My general opinion is that it's an imperfect system with a lot of people playing a lot of different angles and people do the best they can. But not everyone walks away happy in terms of trying to find out what happened. I will try to assure you that there's not some grand conspiracy going on to withhold information from the public realm. Most of it, probably 80-90%, gets out. And the few details that don't, at least from a standpoint of understanding things as a diver, aren't that relevant anyhow.

As to the overall conference, I thought it was a fabulous, candid, frank exchange of ideas. It's probably the first (and only) time that many of the major players in this industry have sat down in one room and really had meaningful discussions of "How can we make this sport safer and what problems do we see?" One of the concerns expressed, but put aside, was that - because the findings were being recorded and being published - people would be on-the-record in topics that are normally only disucssed behind closed doors. Some of the poeple attending (mabe 150 overall) I already knew, some I knew of, and some I'd never met. But it was an exciting three days and I think everyone - myself included - left Durham, NC, with a different perspective than they when they walked in.

Hope this all helps.
 
Ken, you prett much nailed my concerns. I was not thinking "conspiracy" as that is not my mindset. At the same time, it is hard to imagine a piece of equipment (the rebreather Steve mentions) being stored in that condition for 2 months before it is looked at.

I think the part that took me back was the statements that attorneys are mainly in charge of the course of the investigations. This was the exchange that caught my attention:
CAPT. JOHN MURRAY, U.S. Navy: You implied with looking at the gear that if you reached a point or if there was somethingabout the particular investigation that made you question maybe the BC malfunctioned or maybe you did not drop
weights as the person intended to, that you sort of would be careful not to alter the piece of gear, that you sort of would
inspect it but not actually detach the weights if they were detachable. So how do you figure out where you are going to send
it in that situation? For me the answer is easy because I send it to NEDU [Navy Experimental Diving Unit]. How do you
figure that out?

BARSKY: The way I would figure that out is I would talk to the attorney and say, “This is the situation I believe we have.
This is the way it appears to me, and how do you want me to proceed?” And let it go from there. Because it is always going
to come back to — if it goes to litigation, and the assumption is in our society here in the United States it probably is going
to go to litigation, particularly if there was a death involved — if you have altered it from the way it was, all bets are off.
And it is very, very difficult to establish a defense. Again, if this is done on behalf of the dive industry, it is going to be a
defense case. Did I answer your question?
Thanks for your "take" on the discussions.

SeaRat
 
I think the part that took me back was the statements that attorneys are mainly in charge of the course of the investigations.

I think the way Steve phrased it may have made sense to everyone in the room but doesn't necessarily read the same way to those not in the room. Don't forget there are three types of general investigations that may happen:

1. Official investigation by Police, Coroner, Navy, Coast Guard, etc. - Attorneys not involved in those at all and have no input.
2. Internal investigation by certifying agency - Attorney may or may not be involved. May have limited input. Results will certainly be turned out to attorney in event of litgation.
3. Investigations as part of a lawsuit - Attorneys definitely involved and steering the course of things.

So the impression of "attoryneys in charge of the investigation" would definitely be accurate when you come to phase 3, definitely not in phase 1, and limited in phase 2.

Does that help clear things up at all?
 

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