Stats on diver fatalities

[merxlin]

From a presentation by the LA County Coroners office to our dive club:

There are 2 million "active" divers in the U.S. (I believe that stat came from DAN).
There are 100 diver deaths in the U.S. per year, and 5-10 in L.A. County (includes Catalina). There were 3 in the last month or so, 2 of which were on rebreathers. About 40% of the nationwide deaths are directly attributed to medical conditions (pre-existing or otherwise) such as heart attack, seizure, etc. 35-40% of the remainder were influenced by a medical condition or issue, such as someone surfacing too quickly because of chest pain (heart condition) doesn't die from the heart condition, but from the ascent. That leaves 20 due to diver error, equipment failure, or undetermined causes. If "active" means 1 dive per year, that's 20 deaths per 2 million dives (minimum).

Just some statistics from a reliable source.

 

[Walter]

Those stats are a joke. No one knows how many active divers are in the US or anyplace else.

 

[Gary D.]

We talk to people all the time that say they are "Divers". But in reality they haven't made a dive in years, made a couple after getting the card several years ago or make a dive or two a year.

You can't compair them to those who make say 10 to 1000 dives a year. So where is the line between active and non-active?

We had a guy apply for the team who said he has been a diver for over 20 years. He had his AWO, Rescue and a few wall papering cards, which I would rather not have to deal with. A 20+ year diver? I don't think so, he only had slightly over 20 dives yet he considered himself an active diver.

I'm with Walter on this one. The cards don't have a big brother stripe on the back that has to be run on every fill, dive or activity. Everything is just someones estimate.

Gary D.

 

[merxlin]

We talk to people all the time that say they are "Divers". But in reality they haven't made a dive in years, made a couple after getting the card several years ago or make a dive or two a year.

You can't compare them to those who make say 10 to 1000 dives a year. So where is the line between active and non-active?I'm with Walter on this one. The cards don't have a big brother stripe on the back that has to be run on every fill, dive or activity. Everything is just someones estimate.

Gary D.

I agree, however if in fact the stat came from DAN, its not a random guess. They have a pretty solid data base to work from. I'll try to see for sure how they arrived at that stat. Even if the number is 2 million dives a year, the mortality rate is quite low.

I'm not trying to promote any point of view with this, but I believe we are subjected to a lot of statistics about our sport from questionable if not unidentifiable sources. This is one source that I believe is pretty accurate as they 1) have no direct connection with the sport and 2) have a fairly high concentration of divers in the SoCal area, so see a higher than average number of incidents.

Thank goodness I didn't say it was a stat from PADI. Walter would have had a hemorrhage.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Thank goodness I didn't say it was a stat from PADI. Walter would have had a hemorrhage.

He wouldn't have been the only one...

 

[jiveturkey]

You often hear about heart attacks when it comes to diver deaths. I wonder if this is a symptom of diving or if it really reflects the age of the average diver. I'd doubt it if too many 25 year olds are dying of heart attacks while diving. Then again, it could be an embolism thing and just gets misdiagnosed.

 

[Walter]

I agree, however if in fact the stat came from DAN, its not a random guess.

Yes, it is.

They have a pretty solid data base to work from.

No, they don't.

I'll try to see for sure how they arrived at that stat.

Please do.

Thank goodness I didn't say it was a stat from PADI. Walter would have had a hemorrhage.

No, merely a longer laugh.

 

[Charlie99]

Just like in many other areas, we don't have the ability to individually count each and every diver. OTOH, just like in a lot of other things in life, we can make reasonable estimates.

DAN has reasonably good info on scuba fatalities. In the US + US divers overseas the number has been decreasing over the last couple of decades, even with an increasing number of divers. Roughly 100 per year.

DEMA collects some info on scuba divers. Initial OW certifications run about 180,000 per year, just counting PADI, SSI, NAUI, and SDI, the 4 organizations which provide info to DEMA.

The DEMA website also has some surveys done by the sporting goods manufacturers association. The latest one posted is for 1999. Their estimate (methods are explained in the report) is that about 2.3 million people in the USA went diving at least once in 1999. The average number of days diving was 11, for an estmated total of around 27 million dives (and probably more since many divers do more than 1 dive on the days they do go diving). Sports Participation Survey, 1999

While this is not an exact figure, it gives a general idea of activity levels. The report also has quite a bit of other info such as breakouts by gender for total number of divers, and dives per year; and of course, since it is an equipment marketing study, breakout by income levels.

 

[Walter]

While this is not an exact figure, it gives a general idea of activity levels.

It's not an exact figure, it's an inflated WAG.

 

[Charlie99]

It's not an exact figure, it's an inflated WAG.

But probably better numbers than what I've used to make many multi-million dollar business decisions.