The biggest safety problem in diving?

[stadler_cj]

What's the biggest safety problem for divers? I'm most interested in answering this question for commercial and military divers, since the military will likely fund research that the rest of the community will benefit from.

 

[texdiveguy]

What's the biggest safety problem for divers?

#1 Complacency

 

[Alshoua-Diver]

Inproper Training.

 

[BEM]

My opinion:

for equipment:

1. abuse by user;
2. lack of service;
3. not used properly (i.e. using a non-cold water certified reg on an ice dive);


for divers:

1. complacency (i.e. diving beyond their training and limits);
2. ignorance ( i.e. getting into a situation such as hitting fire coral or surfacing in boat traffic);
3. not physicall fit for diving (i.e. heart problems);
4. using wrong or insufficient gear (i.e. small smb on a distant, choppy dive site);
4. dork (most the above - bad buddy and a danger to all around)

non-divers:

1. boaters ( not recognizing dive flags)
2. legislators (not enforcing boater safety and education - regarding SCUBA divers)

dive shops:

1. inexperienced staff ( make bad or dangerous repairs or servicing on dive gear)
2. selling their products, even if it isn't proper or correct.

 

[DocVikingo]

I'm most interested in answering this question for commercial and military divers, ....

Hi stadler_cj,

That's too bad, because relative to the number of recreational divers there are very, very few commercial and military divers who regularly participate here.

I agree with the previous posters that complacency and improper training are extremely serious issues.

Perhaps obliquely related to those topics is diving with medical conditions, either known or as yet undiagnosed, that can pose a threat to safe scuba, e.g., patent foramen ovale (PFO), coronary artery disease (CAD), obesity.

Best of luck in obtaining funding.

Regards,

DocVikingo

 

[stadler_cj]

To dig a bit deeper, what kinds of accidents/injury are caused by complacency and ignorance?

 

[stadler_cj]

Among those causes, what do you guys think is the most common injury/cause of injury?

 

[leapfrog]

What's the biggest safety problem for divers? I'm most interested in answering this question for commercial and military divers, since the military will likely fund research that the rest of the community will benefit from.

Hi Chris. Could you be more specific about what kind of dangers you mean exactly? As you can see most of the guys are giving you some good responses already. I assume that when you are talking about military diving you mean "combat diving" as opposed to "deep diving or saturation diving" done by Navy divers? One of the most dangerous things in military combat diving is central nervous system oxygen toxicity. This is due to the use of Closed Circuit Rebreathers using 100% oxygen. High exercise rates under water increase the diver's chance of having an oxygen convulsion (so it's done nice and easy). Of course combat divers can easily slip into the danger zone between 1.4 and 1.6 ATM whilst trying to avoid detection from the surface (that's why it's done at night) so again the oxygen convulsion danger is there also.

 

[Alshoua-Diver]

kneeling on Fire Coral

 

[stadler_cj]

Leapfrog: Good question.

At Iowa, we're looking for problems to solve. We have a lot of unused technical capability, so we're going after military funding to put it to work. The more I can understand about the challenges to divers, the more insightful I'll be on projects.

Regarding rebreather diving; does a standard SCUBA setup (open-circuit) give you a higher level of oxygen when you need it? In other words, can you do more physical work (a higher burning of calories-per-minute - a higher rate of metabolism) using an open-circuit SCUBA setup?