The Scuba death rate...

[lamont]

I hate to be on the other side of this, but ...

This would have to be settled on an exposure basis. Using your figures of 1 in 10,000 "active divers" die each year and using the 1.46 deaths per 100,000,000 miles driving (2004), then a comparable figure might be obtained by converting both into time exposure. You can pick your own assumptions, but if 24 dives per year is the average "active diver" and if 45 minutes is average dive time, and 30 miles per hr is average driving speed, then diving has about a 12.5x higher risk of death per hr of exposure. You could get other values with other assumptions, but I couldn't justify anything lower than 5x.

But, I think you can cut those odds by practices that minimize the chance that you become part of the numerator.

On the flip side, you can cut your risk of a scuba death by driving like a maniac on the way to the divesite.

I don't accept your argument that risk-per-activity is the important metric. I'm going to get in my car and drive a whole lot more than I'm going to dive. On any given week I'll drive to/from work 10 times, plus probably another 10 trips at a minimum (to/from the divesite, to/from the diveshop, other errands, etc) while I'll dive maybe twice. That's an order of magnitude more exposures to driving than to diving at least.

 

[UWSojourner]

I don't accept your argument that risk-per-activity is the important metric. I'm going to get in my car and drive a whole lot more than I'm going to dive. On any given week I'll drive to/from work 10 times, plus probably another 10 trips at a minimum (to/from the divesite, to/from the diveshop, other errands, etc) while I'll dive maybe twice. That's an order of magnitude more exposures to driving than to diving at least.

Ok. That's fine.

But your argument is essentially that SCUBA is absolutely safe for those that don't dive, and driving a vehicle is absolutely safe for those that are never in a car. :huh: I don't think anyone is arguing with that.

 

[lamont]

Ok. That's fine.

But your argument is essentially that SCUBA is absolutely safe for those that don't dive, and driving a vehicle is absolutely safe for those that are never in a car. :huh: I don't think anyone is arguing with that.

I'm arguing that 100 dives a year over a career of diving (which is quite far from not diving) is less of a risk than all the driving that I'll do in my lifetime. Fatalities per hour and fatalities per exposure are not useful metrics unless you know the total hours or total exposures in a lifetime. The deaths-per-participant-per year statistics are also much better at answering the question of relative safety than deaths-per-hour.

 

[UWSojourner]

I'm arguing that 100 dives a year over a career of diving (which is quite far from not diving) is less of a risk than all the driving that I'll do in my lifetime.

Well, just assume that my guestimate of 12.5x more risk per unit of exposure is correct. Then 100 dives per year is roughly 75hrs of exposure (45 min per dive) and is equivalent to about 938hrs of exposure is a car. So if you spend more than roughly 24min each day driving, then I agree.

The deaths-per-participant-per year statistics are also much better at answering the question of relative safety than deaths-per-hour.

There is a reason why your car insurance company asks you how many miles you drive per year. Its because they don't agree with your assessment of risk.

 

[lamont]

Well, just assume that my guestimate of 12.5x more risk per unit of exposure is correct. Then 100 dives per year is roughly 75hrs of exposure (45 min per dive) and is equivalent to about 938hrs of exposure is a car. So if you spend more than roughly 24min each day driving, then I agree.

most divers will dive less than 100 dives a year and drive more than 24 mins a day.

also, since a lot of divers who get injured or killed are inexperienced, pooling all divers may be inaccurate to determine the risk to a particular given diver -- at least half of all divers should have less risk-per-hour than that figure. also, specifically when the DAN incident report lists cases like a guy who was falling-down drunk and went diving under a pier to retreive his cellphone and died, that suggests there may be a few incidents compiled in that number which I'd exclude for anyone with a basic level of responsibility.

There is a reason why your car insurance company asks you how many miles you drive per year. Its because they don't agree with your assessment of risk.

I am not arguing that its completely irrelevant. You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding what I'm saying at this point.

 

[UWSojourner]

also, since a lot of divers who get injured or killed are inexperienced, pooling all divers may be inaccurate to determine the risk to a particular given diver

I am wholeheartedly in agreement with you on this one. That was sort of my point in my first post on this topic.

Divers CAN do things to reduce their risk as you note above. In my judgment we are better off focusing on that then saying "the sport if safe" or "the sport is safer than driving."

 

[ArcticDiver]

DAN has the best accident reporting and their annual report is free to DAN members. The most recent report had about 100 fatalities a year, about 1000 incidents. The rate has been declining while number of divers has increased. Most injuries were caused by ascending too quickly, or medical issues under water of people over 40.

The DAN publication has to be viewed with a very critical eye. First of all it does not include all incidents and accidents. Second, any analysis is superficial at best as there is usually no trained investigator at the accident/incident scene to gather facts and interpret them. Third, no one positively knows how many actual divers there are, or how freqently they dive.

In fact a counter argument can be made about increase in scuba diver numbers. It has been reported in several places, including SB I think, that the scuba industry is experiencing stagnant, or declining sales and that certified diver production is not up to historical standards. If true that would mean there are less divers and the accident rate is going up; assuming accident information is even a rough approximation.

And then there is the matter of causality. Since no one knows positively what causes DCS and we've all seen people take underwater actions that, by the algorithms should have caused an accident but didn't, and have seen the exact reverse of people taking "undeserved" DCS hits, who is to say that a particular act caused DCS?

 

[verybaddiver]

think another thing youve got to consider is
~60% of diver related incidents/deaths are caused by divers with <20 dives behind them. Diving simply gets safer the more compotent the diver is.
Also the YBOD is called "yellow box of death" for a reason :>.

http://www.btinternet.com/~madmole/DiverMole/DMDanger.htm

 

[Thalassamania]

I'm arguing that 100 dives a year over a career of diving (which is quite far from not diving) is less of a risk than all the driving that I'll do in my lifetime. Fatalities per hour and fatalities per exposure are not useful metrics unless you know the total hours or total exposures in a lifetime. The deaths-per-participant-per year statistics are also much better at answering the question of relative safety than deaths-per-hour.

The real problem is that we're not dealing with a random event. Over the course of ten years I think that the death rate per dive of 1000 divers each of whom makes 100 dives a year will be far less that death rate of 10,000 divers each of whom makes 10 dives over the course of 10 years.

For that matter I'd bet that at the end of ten years there are more 100 dive per year folks standing than there are 10 dives per year folks. So there's something in the level of activity and the kind of training and lumping all divers into the lumpin divers in nonsensical.

You as a "recreational diver" stand a one in 10,000 chance of getting bent on a given dive, while I as a research diver stand a 1 in 100,000 chance. What accounts for that difference?

You as a "recreational diver" stand a finite change of dieing during training, as I research diver my chance of having that happen is indistinguishable from zero. The same situation obtains for diving itself.

So just lumping all dives and all divers together, in order to compare it to bocce ball is an interesting, but rather useless exercise. If you want to get at the truth concerning diving safety you need to slice divers up by the practices that their piece of the community subscribe to.

There 's one thing I can tell you though, and we have a data set of many millions of logged dives that confirms it: if you learn the way I teach and if you dive the way my community dives, statistically, there's zero chance of you dieing while diving.



See ... if don't listen to me (there’s a chance) you're 'gonna DIE!

 

[nereas]

The best part of this website, by far, is indeed the Accidents and Incidents forum. The whole idea being, of course, to learn in advance from the mistakes of others.

Scuba deaths in the USA run about 80 per year, or thereabouts, as I recall. That is slightly more than one per week. I suppose that your instructor did not go into that. If he/she had, then the whole class might become really afraid, and then you actually might have been more likely to have a panic situation. I suppose that is the reason for painting the rosy picture of scuba diving that some instructors portray.

Whenever I read about a new diving fatality, I try to take in all the details of the incident, such as weather, sea state, location, type of equipment, circumstances of the fatality, buddy situation, personal factors, etc.

Then I put myself into the picture, and see what if anything I would have done differently, or else what I would have done the same, and then I consider what should have been done to prevent the problem.

Recently, for example, a CCR diver died on the West Coast USA. It was covered in CDNN. I have never been comfortable with the thought of CCRs. This particular incident simply reinforced that notion. End of my analysis.

I love open circuit tank diving, with all sorts of tank configurations. (I have not yet tried sound-mounted tanks, but I may eventually.) So I pay really close attention to all of the open circuit tank diving accidents, with a view to learn from the reports.

Now that you are certified and getting more experienced, you will probably start to do the same.

Here are some rules that I use, to keep you out of trouble:

1) Keep your gear properly maintained;
2) Stay in shape for scuba season;
3) Be careful about buddy selection;
4) Check out the NOAA forecast before your trip;
5) Drive carefully; traffic can be just as dangerous as a bad scuba trip;
6) Check out the ocean/sea/lake before you gear up;
7) Don't overdive the optimum depth of your air/nitrox/trimix gas;
8) Check your SPG regularly and turn back when you need to;
9) Bring a signalling device with you on a boat dive;
10) Stay out of caves or wrecks that you are not trained for.