How Dangerous is Scuba Diving?

[RAWalker]

My analogy of the danger or safety of diving goes like this:

It kind of like crossing big city streets.
You get trained with rules on how to do it.
You practice it with trusted experienced people.
Special conditions may require special equipment and/or training.
With enough experience and training you may do it solo.
varying conditions change the risk such as weather, visibility, traffic and distance.
You can follow all the rules and luck still has a bit to do with whether you ever have a problem.

I'm sure we I could add more to this but I'd hope you get the idea.
You could die doing either but the idea is to manage the risk and enjoy the adventure.

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

You might find this paper by Drew Richardson interesting as it quotes numbers published by the National Safety Council in 1991:

Richardson, D. An assessment of risk for recreational dive instructors at work. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 1996 Volume 26 Number 2. RRR ID: 6291

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Only as dangerous as bowling; I like that paper Gene!

 

[Mike Boswell]

The data is impossible to get because it doesn't exist.

There is no way to know how many people do how many dives and there is no mandatory accident reporting and no central repository for accident reports. This makes the actual risk impossible to calculate.

Terry

Agreed. No one has the raw data, and even if they did, there are a lot of details which make diving accidents difficult to categorize. For example, many "diving accidents" are actually due to heart failure and other medical problems. The DAN 2008 Report takes some pains to point out that fitness, obesity, and medical issues are a significant factor in diver incidents.

No one has mentioned DAN's data, but in addition to keeping track of annual dive fatalities (US and Canada), they also are conducting an extensive study on recreational diving, where volunteers upload their dive computer data directly to DAN. Is this a worthwhile endeavor, and can we draw any conclusions about dive safety from this data?

 

[Thalassamania]

The data uploads let DAN look at many dive schedules that don't result in bends. That can be valuable.

 

[inked59]

Recreational Scuba Diving is no more or less dangerous than any other sport as long as the diver is well trained and stays within the constructs of that training. There are just as many fatalities and injuries in Snow Skiing, Snow Boarding, Water Skiing, Football, Hockey, Surfing, etc. Some may not be as widely publicized as others.

Plan your dive and dive your plan!!

 

[Diver0001]

Only as dangerous as bowling; I like that paper Gene!

It's completely pointless to compare *rates* of accidents between two different activities.

Let's take a hypothetical example for illustration:

Suppose that the rate of injury in bowling were twice as high as the rate of injury in motorcycling;

Suppose further that 80% of motorcycle injuries are serious (fractures of major bones and organ damage), debilitating (paralysis or brain damage) or fatal;

And suppose finally that 80% of bowling accidents were pulled hamstrings, sprained ankles and broken toes/fingers .....

What would comparing the rates of accidents actually tell you about the *relative* safety of these two sports? If you looked at the rates then you'd think bowling were more dangerous than motorcycling, but if you include the *nature* of the injuries, then it's clear that bowling is "safer" than motorcycling.

Same goes for diving. Bowling injuries may include some heart attacks but generally they do not cause serious barotraumas, to (nearly) drown, to suffer severe, debilitating or fatal neurological damage from DCS or embolisms or to get your legs chopped up (or off) by a propeller.

Just comparing rates of incidents is cheap and misleading marketing.

That's not to say that I think diving is overly dangerous. I'd much rather have my kids diving than riding motorcycles but the point should still be made.

R..

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

But I've had more injuries in bowling than scuba (if you count Wii), and all I said was I like that paper?

Was that similar to a Spanish Inquisition?

 

[Herk_Man]

What I like about diving, compared to other sports and activities, is this. In most other activities like driving, bike riding, etc. you are always subject to injury or death based on the action of others with whom you have no prior association. In diving you should be diving with a buddy who is well trained and who has prebriefed the dive with you so that you work as a team to enhance the safety of your dive. With the exception of equipment malfunction or the ever-dreaded attack from some creature of the deep, there just isn't much that can happen that is unexpected or that your training has not prepared you to handle.

So diving is an activity with very few situations that can occur that you don't have control over or haven't dealt with previously in a controlled environment.

I think it has risks but I think the risks are more known than other activities and I think they are very minimal if you are not a world-class idiot.

 

[boulderjohn]

There is another problem interpreting statistics of this nature that has not been mentioned here. I tried to explain this in another thread and people had a lot of trouble understanding it, so I will give it another go.

Let's say that 10% of a certain number of activities result in an injury. That does not mean that each participant necessarily has a 10% chance of injury, and it especially does not mean you have a 100% chance if you participate 10 times.

That is because participating in an activity is not the equivalent of tossing a coin. It is not solely or even largely dependent upon chance. It is more closely related to the way the individual participates in the activity.

Let's take skiing, for example. If you go to a typical ski area in Colorado, you will see a wide variety of skiers. You will see many skiing slowly and carefully down easy, well-groomed slopes. You will see some highly skilled daredevils skiing at high speeds through steep glades of trees or jumping off cliffs. You will see weaker but reckless skiers careening well beyond their abilities at high speeds on icy slopes. If we group all the resulting injuries together we will get a percentage, but it would be wrong to assume that the risk is the same for all groups. It is hard to imagine how some skiers could ever get an injury, but it is also hard to see how some skiers get through the day intact.

There is a similar variety in diving. Many, perhaps most, divers dive only at shallow depths in calm, warm water destinations, well within the no decompression limits. Other highly skilled dives push the limits of the sport in deep caves, wrecks, etc. Another group of weaker but reckless divers break all the safe diving rules as they push beyond their limits. Another group is older divers in poor physical condition, the group DAN annually shows to be the group most represented in fatalities.

Whatever the statistics are for the group as a whole, each individual should realistically look at his or her age, physical condition, skill level, and diving habits to get a more realistic estimate of risk.