Dack
Contributor
Because I am aware of my own mortality I feel the need to regularly read this forum and learn from others experiences. Failure is the best teacher...but I'd much rather read about it than take these lessons myself.
I was wondering if anyone has put together any sort of comprehensive analysis of scuba accidents with the intent of trying to identify key factors that are common between different types of accidents. Does such a database already exist? Or is there interest in creating one?
My mind wants to make risk associations, but those aren't always backed up by data. For example, one could casually say "probability of fatality increases with depth". But is that true within recreational limits?
I was thinking of doing a methodical walk through the posts on this board and collecting up the data. But beforehand I wanted to come up with the right metrics.
I recognize this will be incomplete at best, with missing data and only a small sample of overall accidents and incidents. But it could be quite interesting...
- Fatal / non-fatal
- Had air / out of air
- Physical injury / illness (DCI etc)
- Depth of accident: Surface / 10m / 20m / etc
- Within NDL limits / not
- Within recreational depth limits / not
- Experience level (how to quantify? # dives, training level, years diving?)
- Oxygen / nitrox / other mix
- Open water / cavern+cave / wreck
- Good health / preexisting condition
- Water temperature
- Fresh / salt water
- Boat entry / shore entry
- Current / no current
- Swell / no swell
- Equipment failure / none
- Animal attack / none
- Final medical diagnosis: Drowning / etc etc etc
I was wondering if anyone has put together any sort of comprehensive analysis of scuba accidents with the intent of trying to identify key factors that are common between different types of accidents. Does such a database already exist? Or is there interest in creating one?
My mind wants to make risk associations, but those aren't always backed up by data. For example, one could casually say "probability of fatality increases with depth". But is that true within recreational limits?
I was thinking of doing a methodical walk through the posts on this board and collecting up the data. But beforehand I wanted to come up with the right metrics.
I recognize this will be incomplete at best, with missing data and only a small sample of overall accidents and incidents. But it could be quite interesting...
- Fatal / non-fatal
- Had air / out of air
- Physical injury / illness (DCI etc)
- Depth of accident: Surface / 10m / 20m / etc
- Within NDL limits / not
- Within recreational depth limits / not
- Experience level (how to quantify? # dives, training level, years diving?)
- Oxygen / nitrox / other mix
- Open water / cavern+cave / wreck
- Good health / preexisting condition
- Water temperature
- Fresh / salt water
- Boat entry / shore entry
- Current / no current
- Swell / no swell
- Equipment failure / none
- Animal attack / none
- Final medical diagnosis: Drowning / etc etc etc