Solo diving accidents?

[Diver0001]

We all have read the stories of the person whose car runs off the road without being seen and that person is trapped and unable to summons help and is found hours or days later. If it happened to me I would have to deal with it alone. If I am not found and die in my car am I any less dead than if I were solo diving and got trapped. The point is I accept the general risk in both activities but unless the risk of a particular event happening is known how can risk management help me in any and all circumstances.

Captain

Well.....understanding the risk and accepting it are certainly important keys for deciding for yourself if you should be doing something or not.

Scott started off asking for information about estimating his risk. What I hoped to communicate in this thread is that although the *chance* of something happening doesn't probably change much with solo diving the *consequences* should something happen could be exacerbated by being alone. That's not to suggest that you can't accept that risk. We all play the chance/consequence game every day. It's part of life.

As far as mitigating the risk (in answer to your question about how risk managment can help you) there are two basic approaches. Either eliminate the *chance* element or soften the *consequence* element. The buddy system looks to mitigating the *consequences* by putting you in the water with a potential rescuer on every dive. The solo diver's motto is to eliminate the *chance* element with equipment and procedures so that we never have to deal with "consequence".

So in getting back to what Scott was on about, he (we) should look at the range of things that have a reasonable *chance* of happening (which can be found in the DAN report) and either look for reasonable ways to eliminate the chance or soften the conseqence. The key here, I think is to keep it pragmatic or you'll take all the fun out of diving.

A perfect illustration of what I mean is taking a bail-out bottle. What bail-out source does is effectively eliminate (barring the bizarre) the *chance* that you'll run out of air. And I think if you (or Scott) were to go through the list of things that you see on the DAN report and think of strageties to either mitigate the chance or the consequence. The remaining items are things you need to accept if you are going to solo.

For myself, for example, if I encur a deco obligation solo I want a big enough reserve of back-gas to deco out with *either* my deco gas *or* my backgas. Normally your buddy carries this reserve but since the *consequence* of a lost deco gas isn't something I'm willing to accept I eliminate the chance. What Dorsetboy said in his post about having O2 on hand is his way of softening the consequences.... Either one is a risk management technique for the same risk.

And like this you can go through a whole list of things and decide for yourself what you accept and what you don't and what you feel is possible and/or necessary to do about it.

So.....This is a big load of theory and I hope I didn't put you to sleep with it. Is it any clearer now?

R..

 

[scottfiji]

Well.....understanding the risk and accepting it are certainly important keys for deciding for yourself if you should be doing something or not.

(removed for space purposes)

So.....This is a big load of theory and I hope I didn't put you to sleep with it. Is it any clearer now?

R..

Diver0001, I read through your post, and I think you have summed up exactly how I feel. We have to eliminate, mitagate, or deal. I solo dive every week, so I'm always thinking about these items. I love reading the DAN accident reports, it helps me make my choices better. I guess I thought of this thread as a "supplement" to the DAN report, stories of accidents that happened specifically to solo divers. It's always good to get some extra statistics to help everyone with their choices.

Thanks everyone for great ideas so far on risk management, for example (half joking, half serious) - don't dive solo on air deeper than 200ft, bring O2 with you, don't dive where huge waves can break your legs on rocks, don't drive alone on roads where there is a high incidence of people running their cars of the road.

Oh, and I almost forgot - keep myself in good shape to lessen the chance of a heart attack when I am alone.

Funny - a good friend of mine dives solo deep all the time, he has over 1000 dives. The only problem he ever had was getting bent when diving with a buddy, his buddy had air trapped in his dry suit, starting going up, my friend tried to pull him down, but it took both of them to the surface. Those dangerous buddies!

Scott

 

[scubapro5]

I had a buddy that alternated dive weekends. When we would dive together, we would hit the local shipwrecks, or go for lobsters. The other weekend he would make deep dives that were well beyond my comfort zone. He tried talking me into making these dives with him, but I plan to live forever, so diving between 300-400 feet on air is not high on my list of fun things to do. One day he didn't come back from a planned dive to 300 feet at Farnsworth Bank off the backside of Catalina Island. His dive plan was to enter the water first, make the dive, then pass his buddy on the way up. On his last dive he went second and his buddy saw him around 270 feet heading down. He was never found. We "discussed" his dive practices for years, but although he was a very nice guy, he was extremely stubborn. He always said since he got away with it for so long he didn't believe it was unsafe.

Hi Max are you telling us that your friend was on straight air and was not even diving Trimix?

I have no plans to dive that deep either.

 

[ArcticDiver]

Sure, no problem.

I've read through a lot of DAN accident reports (e.g - death, DCS), but most of those reports seem to be new divers, people who lost their buddies, heart attacks, etc. Solo divers to me seem in general to be more prepared, and more comfortable in the water; in fact I don't remember reading any accident reports regarding people who decided before hand to dive solo, but I'm sure they happen.

Anyways, I could theorize all day what could happen to a solo diver (smash head on a rock, get caught in a net and drown, run out of air), but I wanted to know what the most common accidents actually are with people who dive solo. It just helps me make proper risk assessment. Since I dive solo alot, I want to know what to be cautious about, based on actual incidents. I think its a good way to learn.

OK, it looks like you just want a general idea based on anecdotes and not a serious analytical study. That this Board can do. With no centralized accident reporting and analysis there can be no serious analytical studies.

Been a lot of good information posted. I agree with most of it. To me it can all be summed up in two phrases: Mental Attitude and Willing to Accept the Worst That Can Happen.

When I go off the road system here in Alaska where there is no one around for many miles, or when I dive I do my best to figure out the worst that can happen. If I can accept that then everything else is a piece of cake. Then my mental attitude is one of confidence and problem solving. No shaky knees or mental distractions to make things dangerous.

Can I be seriously hurt? Sure can and I have been. Can I die? Sure can, but not yet. But, as the old advertisement says: You can die of Rock Climbing, Falling off a Cliff, getting lost in a swamp: Or you can die of boredom and fat sitting in your Lazy Boy. Take your choice.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Hi Max are you telling us that your friend was on straight air and was not even diving Trimix?

I have no plans to dive that deep either.

Yeah, he was Trimix certified and made about 40-50 mixed gas dives per year. Unfortunately, he made 200 dives per year and couldn't afford trimix for all of them. That never stopped him from diving deep. His deepest dive on air was 400'.

 

[scubapro5]

Yeah, he was Trimix certified and made about 40-50 mixed gas dives per year. Unfortunately, he made 200 dives per year and couldn't afford trimix for all of them. That never stopped him from diving deep. His deepest dive on air was 400'.

Wow! thanks for the response.

Do you want to do some Palawan and/or Canyon dives off my boat next week or when you have time?

 

[Justin Hughes]

Well I have been diving for 20 years and in that time I bet I have made 90% of my dives solo. That is approx. 65 dives per year. I really do not call solo diving risky. There are more divers who die when diving with a buddy or in a group.

I did get angled in a gill net while diving in 20 meters. Suddenly I realize I am tangled / trapped in a darn gill net. I kept calm, and used my surgical scissors to cut myself loose which took approx. 10 minutes. This could have happened with a buddy, again I state how many divers have their buddies within 9 meters of them?

 

[Superlyte27]

I’ve had three seriously close calls in my life diving caves. Two of those were with one of the greatest cave divers in the world. In both of those incidents, neither buddy was even remotely aware I was in trouble until nearly 15 minutes later.

You can’t rely on a buddy. Any buddy, even one of the best divers in the world.

 

[jadairiii]

Is this a record? 17 years, 8 months, 10 days between posts.