Feb 19 2017 Cozumel diving fatality

[BertStevens]

I really don't know the numbers for either one, but I know of no records of any bowlers drowning, hit by props, lost & uncovered, etc. There may be some fatal cardiac events and broken bones in alleys, but bowling didn't likely cause many. No one is getting out of life alive, but all things considered - scuba is a potentially dangerous sport than we try to manage safely.

As to your offered examples...

1 out of every 211,864 dives ending in a fatality: I don't know how true that is even. Maybe?

• 1 out of every 5,555 of registered drivers in the US died in car accidents in 2008 Yeah, but apples & oranges. How many fatalities per car trip?

• 1 out of every 7692 pregnant women died from pregnancy complications in 2004 Ok, yeah, that one is dangerous. I don't ever want to be pregnant.

• 1 out of every 116,666 skydives ended in a fatality in 2000 Yeah, dangerous.

• 1 out of every 126,626 marathon runners died of sudden cardiac arrest while running a marathon between 1975-2003 How many per 100,000 runs?

The 1 out of 211,864 came from DAN according to the quoted site.

My point is not that diving isn't dangerous, but that our sport is safe when compared to some others. Everything has risk. It's how you manage those risk that matter. Isn't that why we read these forums? To learn?

Just remember, the number one contributing factor in death is birth.

 

[DandyDon]

The 1 out of 211,864 came from DAN according to the quoted site.

Ok, thanks. Those are reasonably safe numbers I think, but nowhere close to bowling or golf, boring as those are to me - but when people die on those, the sport had little to do with it.

My point is not that diving isn't dangerous, but that our sport is safe when compared to some others.

To some adventure sports, ok - safer than jumping out of planes or cliffs.

 

[Freewillow]

I am with Dandydon on this BertStevens. To try to prove your point with the wrong set of numbers is not the way to go .

When you are comparing the numbers of deaths per dive to the number of divers death in a car accident, you are not comparing pears with apple but mosquitos with elephants.

 

[BertStevens]

Ok, maybe you'll like this one better from Scuba Diving – What Are the Risks? | Gen Re

 

[RayfromTX]

Yet another great response that I'm deleting prior to posting. I will say however that I plan to do at least 2,000 dives. I will be careful so that my odds of dieing that way are not 1 in 100. Others that do not respect the risks keep it from being as safe as say canoeing but as long as we can't breathe water, it will never be as safe as bowling.

 

[RayfromTX]

Ok, maybe you'll like this one better from Scuba Diving – What Are the Risks? | Gen Re

View attachment 398647

The link is worth reading. It is written for insurance underwriters and it is their business to understand risky activities. Diving with underlying poor health issues is the number one risk factor in diving mortality by a large margin. Thanks for posting. Having studied the numbers presented in the text of the article I'd like to say "Scuba diving is a dangerous activity that can be made relatively safe or deadly simply by the seriousness or the nonchalance of the participants."

 

[Bob DBF]

Having studied the numbers presented in the text of the article I'd like to say "Scuba diving is a dangerous activity that can be made relatively safe or deadly simply by the seriousness or the nonchalance of the participants."

Did you read the part of the article that said the number of fatalities could be off by 30% or more. Also, not mentioned in the article, there is no tracking of how many divers there are, and no tracking of how many dives are done each year. The numbers are not as impressive once you see that all are a guess based on what little information is collected.



Bob

 

[pepperbelly]

Bob I read that 70% of statistics are made up on the spot.

 

[KenGordon]

The GenRe piece is mostly a regurgitation of the 2010 DAN Fatalities papers. Read those. It is longer. You could also do with reading the BSAC incident reports themselves - quite a lot of what is being quoted comes from a summary of the previous few years of those reports presented in 2010.

These days the attention in UK diving is focusing on older, less fit divers with likely health concerns. The average age of the fatalities was 53. From the 2016 report:

• At the time of writing there has been no confirmation that any of the reported fatalities were from medically related problems. However, there is a strong indication that medical factors could be implicated in at least 8 of these incidents and two of the remainder have insufficient information to make that assessment. Notably, in the view of the authors, there seem to be indicators that immersion pulmonary oedema (IPO) may a contributory factor in many of these fatalities.
  
  The incident reports are always interesting to read.
  

 

[scubadada]

...These days the attention in UK diving is focusing on older, less fit divers with likely health concerns. The average age of the fatalities was 53. From the 2016 report:

• At the time of writing there has been no confirmation that any of the reported fatalities were from medically related problems. However, there is a strong indication that medical factors could be implicated in at least 8 of these incidents and two of the remainder have insufficient information to make that assessment. Notably, in the view of the authors, there seem to be indicators that immersion pulmonary oedema (IPO) may a contributory factor in many of these fatalities.
  
  The incident reports are always interesting to read.

An average age of 53 is not very old