Lessons from avation

[Tollie]

Hi,

There was a fascinating article in today’s NTTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/business/01safety.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp concerning a 10 year program designed to reduce fatal airline crashes. The program has been successful. Some of the elements in the program involve pooling data on accidents from all of the airlines, a comprehensive look at precursors to accident and now an examination of safe uneventful flights.

The analog in diving would be a pooling of incident reports maintained by the dive agencies and DAN; an independent look at accident precursors and last a study of dive profiles and practices for uneventful dives. I believe that DAN is actually carrying out a study of the latter.

 

[z3r0c00l]

I would agree that DAN reports, while helpful and potentially the best we have, are not as comprehensive as one would want. The real question is, can we get so many people (millions of divers, and so many of them vacation resort divers only) and so many organizations to work together? Will people willingly and openly report accidents? What about minor incidents, do skin bends get reported (or even detected) as often, or make the news as much as fatal dives? Could the hobby be exposed to greater regulations if findings call for it? Will wrecks and caves be shut down when it becomes clear how deadly they are?

The best we can do right now is take what we get from dan, and look to forums like this for information. I already see trends, but as a scientist I know that they are not concrete - I see the trend that most people die due to panic and heart attacks. The latter, I would argue is not often caused by the dive. But what are the trends really? If we remove heart attacks, do older divers still die more often? It always seems like top end technical divers are at great risk as well, but is this really the case? Do divers who spend much time past 100 meters really die at what seems like a huge rate? Or is it just more obvious when a person dies, so you ignore dives that go well?

Ahh so many questions! The best bet is to take care of your self, we all can agree that very little in diving is just "dumb luck". I think you make your own odds each time you dive.