Strongly considering solo diving - lets talk

[IndigoBlue]

Its actually quite a bit better than this.

About 100 people a year die diving. Therefore, all of the following activities are illegitimate events to expose yourself to if you are married or have children:

Needle Sticks 100
Fire Ants 100
'99 child in adult car belt 105
Flood 40-81 109
Candles 126
Tornado 40-81 128
Police Officers 2000 151
Lightning 40-81 188
Airline 200
Car Deer Collisions 211
Campylobacter(chicken) 200-1000
IllImm Mex-US Border '97 300
Bicycle Under 14 300
Childbirth 302
CJD brain disease 300-400
Heat related illness 318 Newsweek 8/13/01
Struck by trains 1999 530
CO Poisoning 594
General Aviation 600
Children under 4 cars 700
Recreational Boating 1996 714
Bicycle 1995 800
Railroad 1999 805
Child pedestrian[3] 1,100
Water borne disease 50- 1,200
Agriculture 1,300
CO Poisoning 1,500
Rec Boating 1973 1,754
Car Hit by SUV U Michigan 2,000
Motorcycle 2,500
Car Phone 2002 Harvard 2,500
Subcompact cars NHTSA 2-3,000
EPA Second Hand Smoke 3,000
Fire 4,500
Drowning 4,621
Teen car accidents 5,500
Pedestrian accidents 6,000
Occupational Injuries 6,200
Adverse Drug Reactions 7,000
Food Illness 9,000
Skin Cancers 9,733
Railroad 1917 10,000
Bladder Cancer 11,700
Falls 12,662
Shooting Murder 15,456
Diet related Cancer 16,000
Alchohol Driving 17,126
Influenza 20,000
AIDS 20,000
Radon (EPA high) 20,000
Lukemia 21,000
Suicide 1994[2] (#9) 31,142
Prostate Cancer 40,000
Breast Cancer 44,560
Motor Vehicle 50,000
Lukemia & Related 56,000
Colon Cancer 60,000
Mass Smallpox Vacc 71,250
Unintended Injuries (#5) 87,000
Medical Mistakes 98,000
Alchohol Related 100,000
Adverse Drug Reactions 106,000 JAMA '98
Trauma 125,000
Medical Negligence est 150,000
Lung Cancer 158,700
Diabetes related 169,000
Influenza/pneumonia (#6) 200,000
Obesity (#2?)[1] 300,000
Tobacco related (#1?) 500,000
Cancer (#2) 500,000
Diseases of heart (#1) 733,834

(Source for the list: http://www.arthurhu.com/index/health/death.htm)

I bet that IB participates in at least one of these activities that is willful; some examples include:

Obesity, tobacco use, alcohol use, bicycle riding, driving (someone may be drunk), falls (climb any ladders this holiday season), going to the beach (skin cancer), sushi eating (food illness), walking across the street (pedestrian accidents), living in a house (fire), using a car phone in your car, driving a car (again, this time because a SUV hit you), boating (duh), having gas appliances in the home (CO poisoning), living near water (flood), making more kids with said spouse (childbirth) and living in Florida (fire ants)

Hypocrisy pizzes me off, and what IB is displaying is the worst kind of it, in that its not even based on a reasonable analysis of the facts.

Genesis with his/her excellent post supra has now become the 4th most impressive member of Scubaboard, behind only BRW, Dr Vikingo, and DrDeco; in my view. And probably occupies that 4th position in a tie with UnclePug and PipeDope.

I do not dispute that there are things I currently do that are more dangerous than solo diving. Driving an automobile is certainly one of them. My point regarding solo diving is simply that it is an unnecessary weevil. And if you have people who love you, you have no business solo diving.

And if no one loves you, then who cares what you do, no matter how stupid?

 

[IndigoBlue]

May actively try to kill you.

They may suck down all their gas and then take yours.
They may get themselves into all sorts of weird situations and you are *OBLIGATED* to do your best to help them.

The way to dive with a 'bad' buddy is as an instructor. This way you know that you are making the dive safer for the 'bad' buddy but they are NOT making the dive safer for you.
...

You are of course right again, Michael. There are major hazards of buddy diving. There are ways to prepare for those contingencies, of course.

1) Always reserve enough gas in your tank to be able to extract yourself AND your buddy from your MOD to the surface with a 3 min safety stop. In the worst of circumstances you could always omit the safety stop. But having the gas reserve is the main thing.

2) Always dive with a buddy who is about your size and strength. If your buddy is smaller than you, that is not a problem for you, however. But it could become a problem for your buddy.

3) Always check your SPG about every 5 mins and your buddy's as well.

4) Never follow a (bad) buddy into a hazardous area. Wait at a safe location for as long as is safe for your buddy to return. If your buddy does not return, return to the beach or boat and report your buddy missing.

5) Make sure you take a basic rescue class and a CPR/First aid class, so that you are able to perform when your buddy needs it.

6) Know thy buddy. And if thy buddy is a bad buddy, get thee a new buddy.

 

[divad]

Oops. Accidental weevil.

 

[divad]

My point regarding solo diving is simply that it is an unnecessary weevil. [/QUOTE]


Why do you believe that its an "unnecessary weevil?"

 

[Hobbs]

Its actually quite a bit better than this.

About 100 people a year die diving. Therefore, all of the following activities are illegitimate events to expose yourself to if you are married or have children:

.........................
BIIIIG LIST OF WHAT PPL ARE DYING OF HERE
.........................

Hypocrisy pizzes me off, and what IB is displaying is the worst kind of it, in that its not even based on a reasonable analysis of the facts.

I realy dont want to dissagre with you here Genesis, but you can NOT calculate risk this way....

the simplified way to calculate risk is by a formula

RISK = X / Y
X = the "chance" of something happening, and this is the real bugger to calculate, since here we can add many many variables.

Y = the exposiure of X ie how many times / how long

so for example (the numbers are invented and has nothing to do with reality)
IF 1 000 000 PPL went skydiving and in average they skydive 5 times per day
and there are 2 ppl / day´have to use the backup...

X = 1 000 000 X average number of jumps (5) = total number of jumps made
out of this amount there are divided by number of incidents (2) ppl having to deply their backup.... = 1 in 2 500 000

so what are the risks of you if you jump 1 time that you will be one of them that has to use the backup ?

Y = 1

then the risk is = 1 in 2 500 000

the bugger is that no matter what we do we will not have all the data needed to do a proper check.
and this is the easy but not 100% correct way to calculate the risk ...

so sorry that list is as usefull as an armchair since it doesnt show more than so many died, but not how much exposiure they have had...
nonetheless interesting, but still...

and yes I solodive !
because I want to, no more no less.

if someone wants to be "safe" under water.. dont dive go by a ROV and see how much feeling there is in that.
but then again how many havent injured themselves on the ROV ???

just my 2cents worth

 

[Genesis]

You don't have the denominator for any of those other activities too.

For example, how often are YOU in a car? Some people, not often. Others, all the time. Still others, (literally) 10-12 hours in a day (I lived several years like that as an IC.)

So what is the denominator? Hmmmmm.....

That's just one example, but its appropriate.

We do not, for example, know how many dives are done in a year. We have some concept of how many people are certified worldwide, but even this is not a good number statistically, since many people drop out (although certified) and many more dive without certification at all.

What we can confidently say though is that if we take ALL deaths, the numbers per year (or per some other period) come out to some number for each given cause. That we have a "hard" number for.

For diving, its about 100 per year, and has been for the last several years. While it varies a bit from year to year, there is no clear trend in either direction. DAN is probably the most concise source of information on dive injuries and fatalities, but certainly they miss SOME incidents.

 

[Hobbs]

I totally agree upon that we can not know a lot of the different factors, or even how they relate to a specific accident type..

but in the end we atleast need the exposure and chance to calculate risk
and even then its highly aproximative...

let me take an example..
in sweden we have aprox 5 dead divers / year
in UK they have aprox 55 dead divers / year

according to how everyone seems to calculate here, the english divers are 11 times worse divers than swedish...
the fact that they most likely do somewhere around 11 times as many dives in the UK is totally lost...

 

[Genesis]

That's an assumption! (that the UK folks dive 11x more than the Swedes)

Whether it is borne out by the facts is simply not known.

 

[Hobbs]

you flatter me *smiles*
but yes of course we can say that swedes dive 11X safer than the uk divers....

;-)

 

[domino22]

got a good buddy you are lucky. you two should click and know what each other will do and understand each persons way oy handling problems.go on a trip alone dive alone you will be safer.do not like to be hooked up with a unkown. dive a redundant system and save your own butt...