Are there any diving specific accident publications with stats, case-studies, and best practices?

[ofg-1]

You know, I can't help but wonder if there is any subject that can be discussed that does not devolve into some type of personal pissing contest for someone?

BTW, I believe it was decided back in the early 1950's that "best practices" are not to drown yourself or others.

 

[Rred]

Even the DAN statistics are somewhat limited. The problem is that there is no umbrella agency, no rules, no way to tell who is called in when there is a diving accident, and even the USCG has no real system for tracking the "collateral damage" from SCUBA as opposed to just a MOB being recovered.

I heard a DAN speaker talking about diver fatalities and the way that an astounding number (50%?) are still, after all these years, being found dead with no air in their tank. No apparent cause of death except "out of air". I asked him if anyone had bothered to ask if any of those divers had J valves, or if anyone had looked at the data for OOA deaths compared with J valve users, and he just said "Gee..."

The point being, folks get distracted, they don't read their pressure gauges, they run out of air. With the J (or any redundant air) they get that nagging OOA experience BUT they also get to just pull a rod and keep breathing while they make a controlled ascent. (In typical open water no-decompression diving.)

But there's no one except DAN that really is out there trying to get the divers, the dive operators, everyone who is involved, to REPORT the incidents so they can be logged and studied. And even then, things like "Was the gear examined? By who? When?" go by the wayside. No standards.

 

[KenGordon]

Even the DAN statistics are somewhat limited. The problem is that there is no umbrella agency, no rules, no way to tell who is called in when there is a diving accident, and even the USCG has no real system for tracking the "collateral damage" from SCUBA as opposed to just a MOB being recovered.

I heard a DAN speaker talking about diver fatalities and the way that an astounding number (50%?) are still, after all these years, being found dead with no air in their tank. No apparent cause of death except "out of air". I asked him if anyone had bothered to ask if any of those divers had J valves, or if anyone had looked at the data for OOA deaths compared with J valve users, and he just said "Gee..."

The point being, folks get distracted, they don't read their pressure gauges, they run out of air. With the J (or any redundant air) they get that nagging OOA experience BUT they also get to just pull a rod and keep breathing while they make a controlled ascent. (In typical open water no-decompression diving.)

But there's no one except DAN that really is out there trying to get the divers, the dive operators, everyone who is involved, to REPORT the incidents so they can be logged and studied. And even then, things like "Was the gear examined? By who? When?" go by the wayside. No standards.

Why are you talking about J valves?

Why would there be an organised effort and nationwide standards for dealing with diver deaths? In the US there are about 50/year. As public health problems go that is genuinely too small to bother even noticing.

As was mentioned above BSAC keep annually reports, the last three years are here Annual Diving Incident Report - British Sub-Aqua Club - previously there we many more online but they seem to have vanished in web site messing. Maybe Edward can arrange for the missing ones to reappear, however divers are pretty predictable at how they do themselves in so the contents don't vary much.

These reports started in 1964. The older ones are highly entertaining as they read as though simply a transcript of the presentation with some indication of the presenter's opinion of the people involved coming over.

 

[Dr Simon Mitchell]

Hello,

Interest in diving accidents may be quantitative or qualitative.

Quantitative data can simply be the number of accidents that occur, but it is difficult to make sense of this (eg comparing types of diving, eras in diving, different equipment) without some corresponding estimate of diving activity. In other words you need a rate of accidents, and this requires a numerator (the number of accidents – which we usually have) and a denominator (the number of divers or dives – which we almost never have).

The hardest quantitative data we have in relation to recreational diving accidents was published by the DAN group in 2006. On the basis that only active divers would bother to insure themselves against diving accidents, they used DAN members as the denominator and diving deaths among DAN members as the numerator (very clever in my opinion). The death rate was 16 deaths per 100,000 divers per year.

Denoble et al. Scuba injury death rate among insured DAN members. Diving Hyperbaric Med 2008;38:182-188.

…..Which I have put in drop box here…..

https://u22145620.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22145620/Denoble. DHM 38 182 2008. Diving death rates.pdf

There are various sources of qualitative accident causation analysis, but the best in my view is:

Denoble et al. Common causes of open circuit recreational diving fatalities. Undersea Hyperbaric Med 2008;35:393-406

…which is available here…..

http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/9920/19175195.pdf?sequence=1

A similar evaluation of rebreather accidents albeit based on a very small number is:

Vann et al. Rebreather fatality investigation. AAUS Proceedings 2007.

…which can be found here…

http://archive.rubicon-foundation.o...le/123456789/6997/AAUS_2007_11.pdf?sequence=3

________________________________________________________________________________________

A comment on the Deep Life rebreather accident “database” discussed earlier in this thread.

It is a useful reference list of accidents, but the attributions of causation should be viewed with great scepticism. As has been pointed out, they are often based on inadequate data, and appear heavily influenced by an agenda to make rebreathers other than those manufactured by Deep Life / OSEL appear dangerous. You need look no further than the Skiles case already mentioned in this thread for a blatant example of this. The OSEL manual for their own rebreather states:

USING THIS REBREATHER WITHOUT STUDY AND PASSING A MANUFACTURER-APPROVED TRAINING

COURSE IS NO DIFFERENT FROM TAKING THE CONTROLS OF A HELICOPTER IN FLIGHT WITHOUT

TRAINING: IT IS SUICIDAL.

It also states:

SOLO DIVING IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH REBREATHERS AND INVOLVES EXTREME RISK ON THIS

EQUIPMENT.

Amongst other things, poor Wes had no training and was alone when he died, yet despite explicitly characterising these practices as "suicidal" and "not compatible with rebreathers", Deep Life / OSEL still tried to blame the rebreather for his death and this interpretation still appears in their “database”. There are other examples of cases where the Deep Life explanation of events has been rejected in a coroners enquiry or court case, yet there is no acknowledgement of this in the “database”.

Simon M

 

[Bob DBF]

I heard a DAN speaker talking about diver fatalities and the way that an astounding number (50%?) are still, after all these years, being found dead with no air in their tank. No apparent cause of death except "out of air"

Usually the cause of death is drowning. A definitive cause may not be found even if an autopsy is performed.

There are ways, other than a diver to go OOA, for a tank to be empty after a fatality and before or during a recovery, and before an investigation, if there is one. A more astounding number of divers are found dead on the bottom with their weight belt on. Because two things happen, does not necessarily mean one caused the other.

Considering the haphazard way SCUBA deaths are tracked, investigated, and data is compiled in the US, and some other places, I don't give much credibility to a lot of stastics that are in common use.

I was trained on j-valves, and although they had their place in time, they are not infallible, and I much prefer the ongoing feedback of an analog SPG.


Bob

 

[Rred]

The reference to the J valves was mainly to demonstrate that even something simple and obvious (i.e. what equipment was involved in an OOA fatality) has not been considered when statistics are being kept.

I don't say they are infallible, I had a dive buddy signing OOA despite the J. It was one of those "but we were taught to open the valve only 1/4 turn" days. (Yeah.) Nothing is infallible, but a J does allow the tank to reach out and slap your face in a way that pressure gauges never do. "Hello! This way!" while the gauge stays silent and unread.

How many divers die from whatever causes each year? Dunno, but I suspect more divers die than toddlers drown in five-gallon buckets. I mention that because someone did in fact track that, and in the US our 5-gallon buckets all have to have "baby in the bucket" warning labels on them now, for nearly 20 years, to let people know that toddlers can and will fall into the bucket and drown. Seriously. I guess toddlers are an easier sell than divers.

 

[boulderjohn]

I heard a DAN speaker talking about diver fatalities and the way that an astounding number (50%?) are still, after all these years, being found dead with no air in their tank. No apparent cause of death except "out of air".

I am having a hard time believing this is true. I used to read the annual DAN reports carefully, and I sometimes wrote reports on ScubaBoard about the results. I just went into my files and pulled up the 2008 DAN report at random and scanned through the summaries of the fatalities. There were more than 70 descriptions of fatalities in that report, and only 5 of those fit that description.

 

[Dr Simon Mitchell]

I am having a hard time believing this is true.

Hi John.

It would seem out of gas is still a big player. If you have a look at that fatalities paper I linked to....

Denoble et al. Common causes of open circuit recreational diving fatalities. Undersea Hyperbaric Med 2008;35:393-406

.....which is the result of a detailed examination of hundreds of fatality events by a panel of true experts, insufficient gas was the most common initial triggering event (41% of over 300 deaths) and it was the disabling injury in a further 27% of events which were triggered by something else.

Surprising!

Simon

 

[KenGordon]

insufficient gas was the most common initial triggering event (41% of over 300 deaths)

If only there was a method to guess how much gas to take or some way to check when in the water...

 

[KenGordon]

How many divers die from whatever causes each year? Dunno, but I suspect more divers die than toddlers drown in five-gallon buckets. I mention that because someone did in fact track that, and in the US our 5-gallon buckets all have to have "baby in the bucket" warning labels on them now, for nearly 20 years, to let people know that toddlers can and will fall into the bucket and drown. Seriously. I guess toddlers are an easier sell than divers.

Although fewer toddlers than divers die in buckets (160 in five years), more toddlers drown than divers. In some places drowning is second only to motor vehicle related deaths amoungst young children. Since these are preventable they are very worth looking into.