Did you check the other years?
Now that
Foxfish mentions it, it would be interesting to look at the picture over several years to smooth out statistical variations a little bit.
So, going back to 2008 we can see that the numbers agree even less with
Foxfish's scaremongering. I didn't go further back than 2008, since the categories were somewhat different previous to 2008, and in some of the reports the ascent related incidents weren't broken down to single issues. Here are the hard numbers:
BSAC reported incidents and fatalities, grand total over the last six years (2008-2013):
Total number of fatalities: 83, of which 43 with non-BSAC members.
Involving (but not necessarily directly caused by):
Buddy separation: 39 (47%)
Non-diving medical: 21 (25%)
Group of three: 17 (20%)
Rebreather: 8 (9.6%)
Solo diving: 7 (8.4%)
Deeper than 50m: 6 (7.2%)
OOG (not including hard overhead): 6 (7.2%)
Rapid ascent: 5 (6.0%)
Lack of buoyancy: 3 (3.6%)
No info: 2 (2.4%)
Dry suit malfunction/mis-use: 2 (2.4%)
Hard overhead (cave or wreck penetration): 2 (2.4%)
Tank valve turned off before entering water: 1 (1.2%)
Total number of incidents: 2056, of which:
DCI related: 618 (30%)
Ascent related: 323 (16%), of which:
Dry suit malfunction/mis-use: 34 (1.7%)
To summarize: Of the 83 UK fatalities the last six years, more than half were with non-BSAC members. Nearly half of the fatalities involved buddy separation and a quarter of them had non-diving-related medical issues.
2 fatalities were dry suit related, while
6 (i.e. three times as many) were OOG related and 7 were solo diving related.
Of the 2056 incidents,
less than two percent were dry suit related, while roughly three times as many were caused by "simply poor buoyancy control".
Dry suits are really, really dangerous, aren't they?
Edited to add:
While
Foxfish doesn't
formally lie (yes, 34 incidents can be given as "dozens", and there
were two fatalities involving dry suits during the last six years), the way he presents his numbers gives a totally skewed impression of the reality. 34 incidents, that's right. Thirty-four out of
more than two thousand. Two fatalities, that's right, too. Two out of
more than eighty.
In my book, this is a dishonest discussion technique.