BSAC 2003 Incident reports

[Adrian Kelland]

String once bubbled... As a note though, given the report is unable to compare the number of incidents to the total number of dives for a specific grade/depth and so on they arent as informative as they could be.

String

I don't think they can be as informative as this, unless every diver was to log their dives, and such logs were centralised. Some divers don't log em, and they are certainly not collated.

And the stats are not normalised, but with such a small, self selecting sample, there is probably not much more info to be gained.

It would be interesting to see them compared to and other source of incident stats, DAN for instance?

Adrian

 

[String]

Agreed, they are publishing with what info they have. I just badly worded my post.

Unlike for example air accident statistics it isnt mandatory to log a dive with the authorities so the many hundreds of thousands of dives that happen without incident what so ever dont get recorded.
This makes producing percentages near impossible.

All they can do is attempt to analyse actual incidents which theyve done well.

A comparison between these and some DAN stats would be interesting if only to see if similar types of incidents are common in both UK waters and safer warmer areas and so forth - you may then be able to pick out trends common to all conditions and from there maybe address training issues.

The point i was trying to make is for some things such as the incidents vs depth they dont neccesarily mean that a specific depth is more dangerous - it could simply be a victim of being the most commonly dived depth hence having a higher number of actual incidents.

 

[Adrian Kelland]

String once bubbled...
The point i was trying to make is for some things such as the incidents vs depth they dont neccesarily mean that a specific depth is more dangerous - it could simply be a victim of being the most commonly dived depth hence having a higher number of actual incidents.

I agree.

Headline road safety stats often sufer from the same problem.

Sould I drive everywhere at 70, because most accidents happen between 30 and 50, the most common range of speeds.

Adrian

 

[dbulmer]

Adrian,

Personally I find the reports more of interest in raising awareness of potential issues. While most issues are addressed in training, the incident reports do reinforce the need to be cautious and aware when diving.

As for stat comparisons, I think some people have tried this and concluded that both BSAC and DAN stats showed many similar trends - personally, I find there's lies, even more lies and damned statistics less interesting than hearing of true reliable stories. The problem lies in getting reliable stories in the first place particularly if the media gets its hands on a story.

 

[Adrian Kelland]

I agree David regarding potential issues. Someone I know was nearly hit by shotweights twice last year. Who the hell drops lines down when divers are down?

Any set of statistics can be bullied to tell you what you want to hear. And the BSAC set is not very large.

Adrian

 

[dc4bs]

Diver0001 once bubbled...
Copied from the BSAC report:



Almost rates up there with the pufferfish guy.....

R..

I'll try to remrmber to post the pic I got this past weekend off Ft Lauderdale when I get home from work. We were diving from the Ocean Explorer from Friday to Sunday.

www.oceanexplorercharters.com

It's of my buddy checking out the bow cargo area of a wreck at 80 fsw or so.

About 2 seconds after I took the pic of the 6-7 foot, green eel swiming along underneath him, he gave a big, full body "twitch" and swam back passed me at high speed. I got a really good laugh out of it.

He hates big green eels but they always seem to like to swim with him and follow him around. Maybe he smells good to them?

 

[dc4bs]

Sorry for the delay.

Had to reinstall XP (very long story...)

Anyway. Here's the pic I mentioned in the post above. I lightened it and outlined the eel on the right half.

http://hometown.aol.com/dc4bs/images/eel.jpg

 

[the_dumper]

Cool pic!
I dived on a wreck a couple of months and there were about 15-20 Conga Eels on it, part of the cargo was a load of pipes that they seem to like to live in. My buddy was a few feet away from one when I noticed a hole in the pipe where I could grab it by the tail and it couldn't turn round.
Now that was funny , it shot out at about 20 mph.
I nearly drowned laughing.