Fatalities statistics: what kills people the most in scuba diving?

[MMM]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

this thread was started in Accidents and incidents but being of a more general nature, and of broad use, and not about a specific dive accident, it has been moved to this forum.

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[FlyingSquid]

Many of you might have seen this link:
Alert Diver | The 2010 DAN Diving Fatalities Workshop


I thought it was a good idea to share with you some takeaway figures from these statistics. Some have particularly called my attention.

- They examined 940 fatalities that happened over a period of 10 years. The mortality rate is about only 4.7 deaths per million dives.

- 50% of the fatalities happened with people with less than 20 dives.

- Top 3 problems were: pre-existing health condition, poor buoyancy control, and rapid ascent or violent water movement.

- Equipment failure and marine life injuries are extremely rare. Not surprisingly, areas where divers notoriously cut corners, such as inadequate training or lax buddy practices, are far more likely to contribute to accidents. Forty percent of the fatalities took place during a period of buddy separation; 14 percent involved declared solo dives.

 

[nimoh]

I wish I would have seen this a week ago.

I recently had a discussion with someone that read an article that claimed "driving is the most dangerous activity that people do" and cited 500 traffic fatalities in Minnesota last year to support the claim.

There are 3,000,000 registered drivers in Minnesota, and along with a conservative estimate of an average of 1 drive per day, that makes 1,095,000,000 drives per year and a mortality rate of 0.45 deaths per million drives.

Not that this makes scuba diving the most dangerous activity in the world, my point is that statistics can be manipulated to show anything. Even with the statistics from DAN, I have pretty good buoyancy control now, and during the time when I was working on it, I did very conservative dives, so I don't think I was ever (or will be) subject to the risks outlined in this study. Similarly, I don't drink and drive, don't talk/text on my phone while driving, etc. so I don't think I am subject to the "on average" risks of driving either.

 

[FlyingSquid]

I wish I would have seen this a week ago.

I recently had a discussion with someone that read an article that claimed "driving is the most dangerous activity that people do" and cited 500 traffic fatalities in Minnesota last year to support the claim.

There are 3,000,000 registered drivers in Minnesota, and along with a conservative estimate of an average of 1 drive per day, that makes 1,095,000,000 drives per year and a mortality rate of 0.45 deaths per million drives.

Not that this makes scuba diving the most dangerous activity in the world, my point is that statistics can be manipulated to show anything. Even with the statistics from DAN, I have pretty good buoyancy control now, and during the time when I was working on it, I did very conservative dives, so I don't think I was ever (or will be) subject to the risks outlined in this study. Similarly, I don't drink and drive, don't talk/text on my phone while driving, etc. so I don't think I am subject to the "on average" risks of driving either.

I would add that depending on whether you calculate on a per mile, per hour, per instance or per one-year period basis (the last one depending on your dives/year and drives/year numbers), you can probably make diving and driving alternate in which seems to be less or more dangerous.

 

[peterbj7]

Amongst experienced divers I have always thought that the biggest killer is panic. "In an emergency it is the poorest learned skills that are forgotten first". It is remarkable how many people have drowned when they still had ample breathable gas - due to panic, they just "gave up".

 

[Scuba-dan]

Many of you might have seen this link:

- 50% of the fatalities happened with people with less than 20 dives.

- Top 3 problems were: pre-existing health condition, poor buoyancy control, and rapid ascent or violent water movement.

- Equipment failure and marine life injuries are extremely rare. Not surprisingly, areas where divers notoriously cut corners, such as inadequate training or lax buddy practices, are far more likely to contribute to accidents. Forty percent of the fatalities took place during a period of buddy separation; 14 percent involved declared solo dives.

Phew, I'm passed that 50% for the 20 dives or less. Now I gotta watch out for the other 50%.....

On a serious note, those are some great stats.

 

[theduckguru]

I realize that the number of dives over the period is a calculated guess, but 20 million dives a year seems very high. That equates to 55,000 people diving everyday, 365 days a year.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Hey duck, what estimated number would you come up with? Serious question, not intended as a challenge. For instance, I started out thinking of how many divers dive every day just on Kho Tao alone.

 

[FlyingSquid]

I realize that the numerber of dives over the period is a calculated guess, but 20 million dives a year seems very high. That equates to 55,000 people diving everyday, 365 days a year.

As I understood it's 200 million dives for the 10-year period, so yes, 20 million dives a year.

 

[nimoh]

I would add that depending on whether you calculate on a per mile, per hour, per instance or per one-year period basis (the last one depending on your dives/year and drives/year numbers), you can probably make diving and driving alternate in which seems to be less or more dangerous.

I agree. I merely used the drives/year estimate as a way to put the "500 traffic deaths in Minnesota" number into somewhat similar terms as the DAN stats.

Also the stats assume some randomness in fatalities. A diver greatly reduces the risks of diving by diving conservatively and within their limits, while an untrained diver going into caves greatly increases their risk. Averaging these out makes untrained cave diving seem much less risky since (I think) most divers dive safely.