Dive Tigger
Guest
97% of the readers and poster's here are making the same misunderstanding as you typed. They are looking for the one single cause that they can point to and say "See, that's the single thing that killed them". (ie zero air)
But most of us who have investigated accidents, sent months of letters, spoke to onsite witnesses, and pulled dead divers off the bottom know that's not the case.
Every accident is a line sequence of events, that when perfectly combined, results in a homicide. Breaking just one step in the sequence will most likely result in survival. Just like the Medical examiner always lists the final cause of death in a dive accident as drowning, it's up to the reader to do the extremely hard, long and difficult work of finding out each sequence of events that led up to the drowning.
I completely agree with you that it is rarely one single event/error/malfunction that causes diver deaths. One of my diving friends said to me once - if one thing goes wrong under water, manage it. When two things go wrong, end the dive. I have found this advice has held me in good stead in my limited diving career.
I'm not looking for a magic bullet or a quick fix. What I would like to see, among other things I have mentioned, is more of a focus in training on task loading - in a calm, cool, environment, all of us make good decisions. When stuff starts going to h*ll, that is where the true test of our skill kicks in. I don't want to be coddled or babysat by my dive shop when doing a course, just so I can get another cert card in my wallet. I want to feel safe in the water, have others feel comfortable diving with me, and not become a statistic.
The role of accident analysis in all of this is, IMHO, to find out what those chain of events are that cause injury or death and train our divers how to deal with multi-incident problems underwater.
I agree that the Near Miss section of this website is a good place to find information and learn - I just recently read a posting by someone who had an OOA diver who grabbed someone's reg and took off to the surface with the buddy in tow. NOT a good day! I am thankful for those who experience events like that who are willing to share and learn from them. The sport of diving is an awesome one and we need to take care of each other.