Scuba Diving: One of the most dangerous activities in the world?

[Thalassamania]

Here's a link to someone who claims membership in the NSDA:

 

[gcbryan]

I don't think the standard of journalism is very high for most local reporting. They must know that they don't know anything about the subject (scuba) but they get a few "fact" and then write the story.

This type of reporting isn't limited to scuba. No local reporting is accurate on any subject unless it's the local art festival, weather, traffic, etc.

I think scuba is rather low in danger in the list of activities that you could do. Anything is dangerous if you don't use your brain and that accounts for many deaths in many different activities.

When you remove that aspect from diving I think it's probably one of the safer things I've done.

I think local reports should just preface every story with "I'm not a diver, pilot, climber...so read my story with a large grain of salt"!

 

[belairbrian]

SCUBA diving with that instructor would be dangerous. Did you notice she had an "oxygen" tank.

gees, you would think an instructor would help here get her facts straight.

Think she even realizes the diving these guys do is totally different from recreational diving.

How many of you want to go diving in a muddy fishing pond?

On behalf of Alabama I apologize.

 

[mk706]

I suppose that my opinions should have been clearer up front. I quickly grew frustrated last night after initially laughing while watching this on the news. Aside from the poor production quality and reporter's ill-fitting wetsuit the complete lack of research and knowledge of the subject is laughable.

The worst part is that we have several high quality dive shops in the local area. Undoubtedly any of which would have provided the reporter with lessons and factual information.

 

[LBHeyman]

In the military, if you dive in your off time you have to fill out a special high risk activities form for the base. Or at least we had to in the AF.

 

[elmer fudd]

An interesting comparison is between scuba diving and hill/mountain climbing.

As has probably been pointed out elsewhere on this forum, a unique study was performed in British Columbia in response to a cluster of deaths. I won't go into details, here is a link to a summary of the study and on that same page there's link to the full PDF. In summary: the incidence of death was determined to be 2 per 100,000 dives and incidence of DCI 10 per 100,000 dives.

I am from Slovenia, where mountaineering and hill climbing is considered a national sport. They say that if you haven't been to Triglav, the highest mountain at 2864m, you aren't a Slovenian (to which I reply: so what ). Each year quite a few people die in the mountans. I was always interested in comparison between mountaineering and scuba, as far as the safety is concerned and this "article" and video prompted me do do a more thorough search. Eventually I found a B.Sc. work that describes the work of the mountain rescue service and also includes statistics.

The text is in Slovene - not of much use to you, so here's a resumee. Between 1995 and 2004 inclusive (a 10 year period) there were on average (per year): 232 interventions by the rescue service, 255 people rescued, 126 people injured and 30 deaths.

Of course, the problem, as in scuba, is finding the total number of people in the mountains, but the small size of Slovenia makes this a bit easier. The data in the work suggests that on average there are a 500,000 tourists per year arriving in the towns on or near mountains and an average of 100,000 overnight stays in mountain lodges and cabins. But these two figures don't include the people that come out just for a day. It is estimated that in years with good weather, light winter (so the snow thaws early) there are around 3 million visitors each year.

With this (maximum) estimate, the figures are then (per 100,000 visitors, to make them comparable to the BC study): at least 9 people rescued, at least 4 people injured and at least 1 person dead.

So in all, one can conclude that scuba diving is at most a factor of 2, not orders of magnitude more dangerous than mountain/hill climbing.

What's interesting, of course, is the difference in perception, since mountaineering is a socially accepted (almost required) activity and a lot of people do it. I can anticipate that during any future debates about the safety of diving, when I whip up these figures, people will start saying: but that's because some mountaineers aren't prepared physically and mentally, they do not know what they're getting into, they disregard safety rules... Which is of course exacly the same in scuba diving!

Of course in both sports there are situations where the odds are just against you and no ammount of preparation can save you. If you ask me, the chances of having a heart attack are much higher in the mountains, where you have to exert yourself.

But the perception is that scuba is dangerous in itself. And it will probably take some time (if ever) before this changes.

That's interesting, because here in the Pacific Northwest, I'd say the attitudes are reversed. We have some pretty imposing mountains here and I think that most people would consider scaling Mt. Rainier to be far more dangerous than a dive in Puget Sound.

 

[Thalassamania]

The facts with respect to football, baseball and auto racing:

FOOTBALL: There were three fatalities directly related to football during the 2005 football season. Two were associated with high school football and one with professional football. In 2005 there were 12 indirect fatalities. Eight were associated with high school football, two with college football, one youth league, and one professional football.

BASEBALL & SOFTBALL: Between 1973 and 1995, 88 baseball deaths were reported and of these deaths 68 were due to ball impact injuries.

AUTO RACING: From 1990 through July of 2002, at least 287 people died in U.S. auto racing, including 29 spectator deaths. Head and neck injuries killed at least half the drivers in those numbers.

I have a major problem with the word "safe" as in "diving is a safe activity." Safe means, "without risk." We should not be trying to make diving "safe." We should be bending our efforts toward minimizing the risk.

Sounds like the same thing no? NO! It's a glass half full/half empty question. As long as we continue to use the "S" word we are deceiving folks and lulling them into a stupor. When we talk about minimizing or reducing risk, folks have an entirely different attitude.

For the approximately 1,800,000 football participants in 2005, the rate of direct fatalities was 0.17 per 100,000 participants. To reach that level of risk there would have to be more than 52 million active divers in the US.

Play with the numbers a little more. There are a little less than 22 player hours per game with about 100 player hours at the field, so each player averages .25 hours per game (more or less) and about 15 practice hours per week. So lets round down to make it more dangerous and say that each player is exposed to the risks of football for about ten hours per week and 100 hours per season. So for 180 million risk exposure hours there were three fatalities. Carrying this over to diving, to have the same level of risk there would have to have been over five billion diver hours spent underwater (or more than 20 hours underwater for every person in the United States), not likely.

Draw your own conclusions.

 

[SC_Hoaty]

Draw your own conclusions.

Without extensive analysis, my conclusion:
Being an Auto Race spectator is just a little bit less risky than playing football.

Corollary: Diving is more fun than being killed watching an auto race.

 

[pafindr]

I noticed they disabled their comment section

 

[D_B]

I noticed they disabled their comment section

Yeah, I cant see the 5 comments left there, nothing happens when I click on them.

But that does not mean we can not leave one
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PS, that does not mean they deserve hate mail, just a comment on your disappointment, and why