Number one cause of diving fatalities?

[Neilwood]

I know of a case where a highly experienced and skilled diver did indeed panic when he was at the very end of his rope. I am sure it can happen to anyone.

The studies indicate that other then health-related issues, there is an element of panic in the most important kind of fatalities, and it is all something I mentioned earlier. PADI's studies indicated that these fatalities occurred when divers failed to follow appropriate training when involved with an incident. To wit, a diver wold die of an embolism upon surfacing after a rapid ascent to the surface following an OOA incident. As a consequence, PADI made a number of changes to its OW training program, adding a lot of stuff. The purpose was to try to eliminate those failures.

Here are some highlights of the changes that were inspired by the joint DAN/PADI fatality study:

• There is a much stronger emphasis on practicing the buddy system, both in the pool and the open water.
• There is much greater emphasis on oral inflation, especially after ascending at the end of an OOA practice. (Some people have reached the surface after being OOA only to sink again because they did not remember how to orally inflate the BCD.)
• There is an emphasis on dropping weights at the surface in the case of a need for buoyancy--students must drop weights on the surfca and experience the increased buoyancy.
• There is an emphasis on monitoring gas levels while diving, both for yourself and for a buddy. On numerous occasions in both the pool and the open water, students are to respond to a request for their current air level, and they are expected to answer with reasonable accuracy when asked because they have only recently checked without being asked. Students are also supposed to ask their buddies for their gas levels on a number of occasions during the program.
• The course has a much greater emphasis than int he past on gas management. Students are supposed to plan a gas reserve and use strategies like the rule of thirds for planning a dive.
• Students are supposed to plan and execute the last dive of the course independently, with the instructor following along and only intervening if it becomes necessary.
• In the pool sessions, the second OOA practice scenario now ends with a rise to the surface and oral inflation; in the past students just swam for a while and then ended the drill.
• The pool sessions end with a mini-dive in which students plan and dive independently, with the instructor throwing problems at them, such as OOA.

I did my course last year and certainly remember all of these being in the course. Definitely think with hindsight that they will generate better divers at the end of the course. The problem is how to get divers to practise after the end of the course.

 

[CT-Rich]

I have been diving since I was in my teens, and except for the initial coarse, I have never asked my doctor if I was okay to dive. I suppose in the case of diabetes or COPD Imight ask about exercise in general, but would not think to ask about diving in particular.

In fairness, diving is somewhat different than jogging or biking. A runner under stress can stop at any point or slow down. A diver in the the water is in it until he is on shore or on deck. When you hit a current, surge or other stressor, you are in it until resolution. If you have a heart condition and rip current taking you away from the exit point, you don't get too many choices about taking a break. A nonfatal medical event could certainly lead OOA from rapid breath or drowning. A seizure on the kitchen floor would be much different from one on the surface waiting to climb the ladder or during a night dive...

 

[2airishuman]

Now, as someone who has written logic curricula, let me explain how it works. If you say something exists and others say it does not, the burden is on YOU to show that it does exist, not on them to show it does not. What are they going to show as evidence if they are correct?

All true as far as it goes.

But I'm not here to convince you of anything. I ordinarily only try to convince people of things when I am being paid to do so.

However, I will usually share a few words about what I think when people ask me, which is all I'm doing here.

 

[2airishuman]

The studies indicate that other then health-related issues, there is an element of panic in the most important kind of fatalities, and it is all something I mentioned earlier. PADI's studies indicated that these fatalities occurred when divers failed to follow appropriate training when involved with an incident. To wit, a diver wold die of an embolism upon surfacing after a rapid ascent to the surface following an OOA incident. As a consequence, PADI made a number of changes to its OW training program, adding a lot of stuff. The purpose was to try to eliminate those failures.

Here are some highlights of the changes that were inspired by the joint DAN/PADI fatality study:
...

I think this is an example of PADI at its best. They've identified accidents that could possibly be prevented by training changes without adding risk to the training process itself, and made those changes. I think they all make sense. Time will show us which ones help the most.

I don't think we'll see divers dropping weights without a considerable further change in emphasis not only in training but beyond. Mako will replace, for free, weights and belts purchased from them that were dropped in an emergency and could not be recovered. I think that's laudable. I'd like to see rental shops and retailers charging for replacement weights at cost to encourage divers to ditch them when appropriate. There are plenty of other places to make money. Training wise they'll have to get students to actually ditch weights and have them drop to the sea floor, which they aren't doing for the obvious practical reasons.

I think that there are two pieces to panic prevention. People can be conditioned to resist panic across a broad range of emergency situations, which is one focus of programs like Outward Bound and some parts of military and paramilitary training. The other side is to train responses to specific situations, which of course is what PADI is doing with the emphasis on oral inflation of the BC at the surface and so on.

One tricky piece is the skills where training and practice pose real hazards, like CESAs.

Another one is skills like navigation that are difficult to learn and that are perceived to have only an indirect contribution to accidents.

 

[Rich Keller]

13 Ways to Run Out of Air & How Not to

According to this article - "Even so, running out of breathing gas is the most common dive incident and the number one cause of diving fatalities."

I always was under the impression it was medical issue - as the number one cause of fatalities...

Am I missing something?

If you believe the accident reports here you would think that 100% of fatalities were medical issues. Most of these reports are exactly the same. You get an initial report with very few facts and there is never any follow up on what really happened after that. Some people begin to speculate about what might of happened until someone comes along to say they knew the diver. He had lots of certifications and the best gear money could buy so it must have been medical. Everyone then agrees and the discussion ends with everyone going away thinking this could never happen to them. The number one cause in my opinion is ignorance on the part of a diver who is positive that they know everything there is to know about diving. I have been diving for 47 years, 10 of those years I worked as a commercial diver and I don't know everything. What are the odds that you do?

 

[boulderjohn]

Hypothesis 1: People that are not cleared to dive do not take DAN insurance and hence will not contact DAN

People who die in dive accidents do not contact anyone. There is no reason to contact DAN and provide them with your medical information unless you are asking them about a current condition, and anyone can do that, member or not. The DAN statistics on fatalities are complied through independent investigation and do not have anything to do with DAN membership. The first set (from the 10970s) are actually taken from a different unrelated series of studies that are no longer being conducted. We used to have a ScubaBoard participant who regularly argued that the DAN studies were not as complete as the studies of this other organization,which he claimed contradicted the DAN studies. He kept repeating it until someone pointed out that the DAN studies INCLUDED the studies of this other organization in their totals.

Hypothesis 2: People that are not cleared to dive but still want to, will lie to the dive operator, and the dive operator is not happy to report accidents when the diver apparently was not cleared to dive
...Everything else is bound to have unknown effectiveness.

In other words, we don't know a lot of the details of these accidents. That is correct.

If you read the DAN fatality reports (and I have read MOST of them carefully), you will see that they explain the limitations on their ability to determine causes of the accidents. They report what they know. The individual reports are listed in categories, such as coronary events. The ones where they don't know much are listed as such.

The absence of data is not data. You cannot conclude from the fact that DAN does not know if fatalities had a certain characteristic that those fatalities did have that characteristic. You cannot then say you must be right because people can;t prove you that your wrong. If you claim that 90% of the fatalities were actually a hidden alien species with an aversion to water, it is up to you to prove it--you can't tell me it is up to me to prove they weren't, because that cannot be done.

 

[kelpqwest]

The two most common known factors in deaths during scuba diving are 1. running out of air (causing other emergencies) 2. Too much weight.
Many people don't watch their air. They may be looking at their computer much more.
The weight issue is taught incorrectly by almost all instructors.
Sinking feet first is not correct, rather being neutral at the surface with no inflation in your BC.
40% of known deaths the diver had too much weight. 90% he didn't ditch his weights.
Since you must surface to live, you would think being at least neutral at the surface would make sense to most people.
Another source of problems is simply being too close and bumping into your buddy, having your mask knocked off or your regulator knocked out of your mouth. This has caused panic and death in divers also.
My comment to other divers about weights is: "It's called scuba diving, not scuba sinking."

 

[boulderjohn]

There are a couple of flaws with this response.

40% of known deaths the diver had too much weight.

I have no idea where you got that number, but I would guess that more than 40% of divers who do not have a problem also have too much weight. In fact, I would guess it would be closer to 80%. Association and cause are two different things--100% of the divers who died were wearing fins; that does not mean wearing fins causes fatalities.

90% he didn't ditch his weights.

This has been discussed in the past. People have sudden heart attacks and die do not drop weights. I once went through two years of the DAN reports, reading every description of every death, and each year I found a small percentage of cases--about 10%--n which dropping weights MIGHT have made a difference. That would have been true whether the diver was correctly weighted or not.

Another source of problems is simply being too close and bumping into your buddy, having your mask knocked off or your regulator knocked out of your mouth. This has caused panic and death in divers also.

I don't recall ever reading a single description of such an incident in any of the many DAN fatality reports I read. Can you cite a few such cases?

My comment to other divers about weights is: "It's called scuba diving, not scuba sinking."

You do have to get below the surface to be diving--the word "diving" actually does include the idea of sinking. Otherwise we call it "snorkeling." Neural buoyancy after sinking is supposed to be an important part of instruction.

 

[tridacna]

[QUOTE="2airishuman, post: 7708821, member: 470361 I'd like to see rental shops and retailers charging for replacement weights at cost to encourage divers to ditch them when appropriate. There are plenty of other places to make money. [/QUOTE]

Is this a serious comment are just a troll? I'd like REI to give me a new backpack after I dump mine on a hike because it was hurting me. C'mon, are you suggesting that divers would prefer death rather than lose their weights? I was in a lost boat situation several months ago, dumped my weights and took flak from some here for doing that. Not sure why a shop needs to reimburse for that. I suspect that Bernie might say that too.

 

[2airishuman]

It's a serious comment.

We're not teaching divers to dump their weights.

We're teaching divers to keep their weights because they might damage the coral and will be charged $100 or something by the rental shop to replace them.