Are Finns bad divers? Thread split

[Chavodel8en]

Its just not a good or helpful -- or intelligent -- way of analyzing accidents - categorizing divers by nationality.

As Storker implies, sounds more like that the cave diving community is so small that one group of divers with bad habits, plus one accident, has lead impressionable minds to the result that "Finnish divers are bad divers." Im not a statistician, but I know that this is too small a sample size to make any good conclusion

And anyways, whats the point of this analysis? If we determine on SB that Finns, or Chinese or etc are disproportionately "bad divers," so what?

If you are ever insta-buddied with someone, should you ask their nationality? No, bc that would be stupid. There are much better ways of determining if your insta-buddy is a good diver or not.

 

[StefinSB]

I venture to say that if we had caves in Lybia this thread wouldn’t exist.

 

[undrwater]

So the discussion was moved, but still goes on. I'm curious if there is evidence to point to a particular nation's...what...culture?..that would predispose its citizens to unsafe behavior.

 

[ahereng]

This last accident should not be seen in the same context as the accidents in Norway and France. These dives were at the extreme end of the scale, but the last accident was a fairly standard dive with a really bad outcome.
If the buddies/crew/investigators will publish some more details, that will be their prerogative.

 

[Steve_C]

If you walked up to me and said "quick name a country whose divers seem to have a disproportionate number of deaths" without thinking about it I would say Russia and then the US. But, of course, Russia and US are large countries and have a large number of divers.

In general it may well be that some countries tend to have people who are less risk adverse and do things with less training. Statistics will clearly show that is true with driving a car in some countries.

 

[arew+4]

Prior to the Sebastian's almost half of the WRC champs were Finnish, then you've got Hakenen and Raikonen in F1.

Oh wait you said divers.

 

[BoltSnap]

Although Finland has a small population my understanding is that scuba diving is popular. The opposite is true in China.

I doubt VERY much that the diving population is small in China. PADI and almost all other international training agencies are focusing on China because of the wealth and extremely large population there. Finland with less than 6M people can't possibly have any significant diver population compared with much larger countries.

 

[BoltSnap]

I venture to say that if we had caves in Lybia this thread wouldn’t exist.

First, it is "Libya" not "Lybia"

Libya has caves for sure but they haven't been explored for diving yet. I am trying to document where these caves are and if they are submerged and suitable for diving but it has been extremely difficult to do so because of the situation in Libya.

Why wouldn't this thread exist if there were caves in Libya?? I am not following you here.

 

[BoltSnap]

So the discussion was moved, but still goes on. I'm curious if there is evidence to point to a particular nation's...what...culture?..that would predispose its citizens to unsafe behavior.

Well, there are statistics of traffic fatalities by country detailing the death rates per capita in each country and listing some of the reasons why so. Libya has the HIGHEST fatality rate in traffic accidents where the number two country in the world has half the death compared with Libya. There are several reason for this most incredible and very sad fact but it has to do with failing infrastructure, inept government and cultural attitude towards driving safety and obeying traffic laws.

I still don't understand the objection here to discussing diver attitude and death rates by country.

 

[BoltSnap]

In general it may well be that some countries tend to have people who are less risk adverse and do things with less training. Statistics will clearly show that is true with driving a car in some countries.

We have this issue in Libya with death rates in free diving and in DCS injuries due to lack of proper training and cultural attitude towards following rules. We have more uncertified self-proclaimed "instructors" teaching free and scuba diving when these charlatans aren't' even OW certified. When I speak against these charlatans (without mentioning their names), I am attacked as somebody who is trying to destroy people's "livelihood." I was threatened few times because of my writing against this fraud. We have had many fatalities due to free divers taking a breath from their friend who is on scuba underwater and coming up holding their breath. We also have extremely high DCS incident rates compared to Libya's population (less than 6M).

In short, culture and popular attitude have a lot to do with it and shouldn't be ignored.