Death v # of Divers and Scuba Oversight

[drrich2]

There are many reasons health care is regulated, including beyond what you cite.

Sport diving is not entirely self-regulated. Some areas have laws that impact it directly (e.g.: dive flags), and liability laws in general have a big impact even though not written specifically for scuba diving. Sport diving does not exist in its own little world.

In this day and age, divers are not nearly so dependent on a LDS, and many book trips, etc..., without going through it. It's often not the divers that clamor for change; surviving relatives can be an issue. Awhile back, a man & his son, neither cave certified, died cave diving at Eagles Nest in Florida. Wasn't long before a relative was pushing to get the place closed to cave diving, IIRC. If you look at some of the threads discussing cave diving, I think you'll see that fear of potential government regulation of diving is very real. Undercurrent had a recent article on a liability case that seemed bizarre to me; I'm on an iPhone right now so I'm not going to look it up just now.

Looking at the root cause of an accident & implementing preventive policies can be very positive. Or, you can have policies unlikely to do much good. And either way, if they're formal policies, you can be held to them (even if no law required you to have them) & they can increase your legal risk.

 

[Pedro Burrito]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

This discussion was split from: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-and-incidents/504068-liveaboard-fatality-caymans.html

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[TSandM]

I didn't read the original thread, but it sounds as though it started with a clump of fatalities in the Caymans, and a discussion on what could change to reduce the number.

Unless there is a consistent underlying cause, there's no good way to address the issue. It reminds me of an experience I had about 15 years ago, when I got three patient complaints in one year. My boss came to me and told me, "You have to change something, because you got three complaints.". Of course, the three had absolutely nothing to do with one another, or even with the same part of the process of being cared for in the ED. I looked at her and said, "What do you suggest I change, because these are all entirely different?" She answered, "I don't know, but you have to change SOMETHING, because you got THREE complaints.". It was a statistical anomaly -- I had gone years without any complaints, and went years after that one without any more.

If the accidents in the Caymans are analyzed, and it is clear that there is a single underlying problem -- whether that's inadequate steps taken to prevent an incident, or inadequate response to one -- then something probably ought to change. If not, well . . . it's a statistical anomaly, or related to a systems problem that is beyond the reach of the dive ops (or government) in the Caymans to change. (For example, the ageing of the diving population.)

No outdoor activity is perfectly safe. People die riding bicycles, riding horses, hiking, swimming . . . and diving. In fact, given the inimical environment in which diving takes place, and the fairly minimal training that many divers get (I don't mean bad training, I mean not many classes or ongoing coaching or review), it seems like an amazingly safe sport. If you start to put policies in place to reduce the fatality rate, those policies will have costs -- costs in money, costs in inconvenience or restriction of where divers can go and what they can do. The lower one tries to bring the fatality rate, the more restrictive the policies need to be, and the more divers will pay in various ways for having them. Since one of the biggest causes of fatalities now seems to be older people with unsuspected (or known!) heart disease, having cardiac issues in the water, you aren't going to get the fatality rate to zero unless you draw an age limit and say, "Nobody over 45 gets to dive.". (Even then, it won't work.)

Procedure-related fatalities you can diminish, but you will never render an outdoor activity, particularly one that takes place in or on the water, perfectly safe.

 

[boulderjohn]

This is satire, but like all good satire, it has a real point beneath the surface.

Bowling Deaths Double in 2006 » Taken For Ranted

---------- Post added April 15th, 2015 at 10:07 AM ----------

When you are dealing with really low total numbers, if you start applying percentages to an anomaly, as Lynne pointed out above, you can get some ridiculous numbers.

Can you ever get a zero total?

A few years ago a lobster trapper decided to check his traps with about a half a tank of gas, diving by himself. He got entangled and died. In one year two different divers in two separate accidents died when their rebreathers malfunctioned while they were testing them in a swimming pool. Last year a trained cave diver insisted that the tank he was using at 100 feet had nothing but air in it, even though it was clearly marked as pure oxygen. It had pure oxygen. On Christmas day 2013, a father and son decided to try out their brand new scuba equipment in one of the most challenging advanced caves in the nation. The father had OW training, and the son was not certified at all. Several years ago a dive shop owner in Cozumel went with one of her DMs and a boy friend on a single tank air dive to 300 feet. She got narced and was turned around by the DM at 400 feet. The three buddy breathed off of the third diver's tank after the first two ran out of air. She died, and the DM will never walk again.

So what does the scuba industry to do prevent deaths like those mentioned in the last paragraph?

 

[RJP]

Rationalizing fatalities as inevitable as long as the percentage is 'reasonable' is a fairly archaic view of safety. There isn't a statistically acceptable number of fatalities, unless that number is zero.

Good news - ZERO people have died diving in the Cayman Islands since the original story at the end of March. Since today is the 15th of April we can project that out to zero deaths for the full month of April. A propitious trend indeed, indicating approximately zero fatalities for Q2'15. While the year got off to a rocky start with 8 fatalities in Q1, looking at the statistics since then we can conclude that diving in the Cayman islands is now perfectly safe for the remainer of 2015!

Why not, right? I mean if we can look at Q1 and conclude something's gone terribly wrong...

 

[DougCoDiver]

Back in the late 80's when I first was diving, the sport started to grow rapidly. In the late 80 and early 90's there was an uptick in the number of deaths and DCS. The cert agencies started to modify thier dive tables to be much more conservative than the Navy dive tables. As a result the incidence of death and injury decreased.

Diving is a inherently dangerous sport. There are many other sports as or more dangerous. We, as divers, accept the risk. We train to minimize the risk. I often tell people diving is serious fun. Our mantra is Plan your dive, Dive your plan.

Dive ops that that add unnecessary risk to this sport, will likely not be around too long.

I think dive incidents need to be investigated and analyzed. Reasonable precautions minimize the chance of a dive incident.

It is up to the individule diver to exercise caution and be prepared.

 

[boulderjohn]

Back in the late 80's when I first was diving, the sport started to grow rapidly. In the late 80 and early 90's there was an uptick in the number of deaths and DCS. The cert agencies started to modify thier dive tables to be much more conservative than the Navy dive tables. As a result the incidence of death and injury decreased.

According to DAN statistics (see page 8), from 1970 through 1983, when there were far, far fewer total divers, there was an average of 125.5 deaths per year in North America. From 1984-2006, with far more divers and much better reporting available, the average plummeted to 80.5. There was no uptick in the late 1980s and early 1900's. It was just the opposite.

The first PADI tables were introduced in 1984 after a major research project on the effects of different dive profiles on divers. In one way they were more conservative than the Navy tables---they shortened the allowable first dive bottom times by a few minutes. In all other ways they were less conservative. The made many more pressure groups to lessen the amount of rounding off of pressure groups. Since rounding always goes in the more conservative direction, less rounding is more aggressive. More importantly, the change in the surface interval calculations was much more aggressive. The Navy tables based surface intervals on the 120 minute compartment, which didn't matter all that much to them since they usually only did one very long dive per day. PADI's research indicated that recreational divers could base their surface intervals on the 40 minute compartment, but they used the 60 minute compartment to be more conservative. That is why the Navy tables wash out on the surface intervals at 12 hours, while the PADI tables wash out in only 6 hours.This allowed divers using the PADI tables to get into the water for a second recreational dive much, much sooner than they could with the Navy tables.

I am unaware of how other agency tables were designed.

 

[EFX]

Can you ever get a zero total?

No. Part of the problem was alluded to by TSandM when divers have heart attacks underwater. Usually, this results in drowning and it may get characterized as a diving accident rather than a health problem. Golfers that collapse on the fairway aren't described as golfing accidents. So called diving accidents to older divers may be higher than they should be.

A few years ago a lobster trapper decided to check his traps with about a half a tank of gas, diving by himself. He got entangled and died. In one year two different divers in two separate accidents died when their rebreathers malfunctioned while they were testing them in a swimming pool. Last year a trained cave diver insisted that the tank he was using at 100 feet had nothing but air in it, even though it was clearly marked as pure oxygen. It had pure oxygen. On Christmas day 2013, a father and son decided to try out their brand new scuba equipment in one of the most challenging advanced caves in the nation. The father had OW training, and the son was not certified at all. Several years ago a dive shop owner in Cozumel went with one of her DMs and a boy friend on a single tank air dive to 300 feet. She got narced and was turned around by the DM at 400 feet. The three buddy breathed off of the third diver's tank after the first two ran out of air. She died, and the DM will never walk again.

So what does the scuba industry to do prevent deaths like those mentioned in the last paragraph?

Probably nothing because you can't fix stupid. And regulations can't control people's choices.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

One of the things that pops up occasionally when we are talking destinations like GC is how some of the dives are conducted. Many are led by a guide, DM, or instructor. While the majority of these are responsible people you have some that push the limits. A Grand Cayman fatality was what got me started on my Scuba related writing career

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ac...eath-cayman.html?highlight=Death+Grand+Cayman. by Fosterboxermom

I can't see the thread anymore unless I am logged out but if you read the whole thing, it's pretty clear that there were a number of factors that contributed to this death. Divers with little to no training in proper buddy skills, a lack of judgment when it came to selecting an operator to dive with, a "professional" who had little regard for the skill, training, and experience levels of his charges, and all of those conspired to kill a new diver. This was the ultimate trust me dive.

Trust me dives have the potential to kill because they very often are done by people who don't really know each other. This problem is not exclusive to GC. Cozumel has had a few. There have been some in the South Pacific. Why they keep getting done is a mystery in some cases. Quite clear in others. Until divers, instructors, and agencies decide to do something meaningful about them they will keep happening and people will, every so often, continue to die.

I was made intimately familiar with this incident since Fosterboxermom and her husband came from North Carolina to take my AOW course after witnessing this event and realizing that they had been doing trust me dives for years. That realization scared them enough to make a 700 mile trip to train with me. They brought the deceased diver's computer profile of the dive, a copy of the ME's report, and eyewitness testimony.

 

[Colliam7]

But I don't like pointing fingers and making assumptions without facts or data.

Clearly, you have no future in politics, or government service in general. And, with that attitude, I think you may as well eliminate career options such as television commentator, and radio talk show host. I guess you will have to stick to diving.