The Scuba death rate...

[ArcticDiver]

Actually, marriage is a very dangerous sport. Most men I know who got married, eventually died.

As John lay dying his wife Jane was wiping his brow with a kind and gentle hand.

"Jane", said John, "Since I've not much longer to live I would like to clear my concience by confessing I did you wrong"

"Jane, I had an affair with a girl at the office" "I'm sorry, but I just was too weak to break it off".

As she was wiping his brow, Jane looked at John with a comforting expression on her face and said: "That's OK John. I know. That's why I poisoned you".

 

[ItsBruce]

I love statistics ... I'm reminded of the fellow who drowned in water that was, on average, 2 feet deep.

(No disrespect Andy)

 

[LI Diver]

Has anybody compiled data on diving conditions or depth versus number of fatalities? Just from reading posts in the accident and incidents forum I usually see high currents,rough sea's, bad vis,rebreathers or thrill seeking depths. I don't recall seeing so and so was diving on a near perfect day and doing a 25' shallow reef dive at popular dive site and expired. Any thoughts?? Am I totally off base here??

 

[MikeFerrara]

DAN catagorizes them by depth, age, sex, length of time since certification, number of dives in the last year, certification level and whatever else. Most accidents seem to happen on dives that are the depth that most divers are diving on most dives...in other words, I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that there is a correlation between depth and accidents.

 

[LI Diver]

Hey Mike, I just perused the dan stats but as you said most incidents happen in the most popular categories which tells us pretty much nothing since the more dives the more likely it is to happen. (although <30fsw had very few) I would like to see something like: of the total amount of dives at this depth (estimated of course) there were x amount of incidents/fatalities.

 

[ArcticDiver]

Hey Mike, I just perused the dan stats but as you said most incidents happen in the most popular categories which tells us pretty much nothing since the more dives the more likely it is to happen. (although <30fsw had very few) I would like to see something like: of the total amount of dives at this depth (estimated of course) there were x amount of incidents/fatalities.

If you want this data and want it to be reliable you need to advocate obilgatory incident and accident reporting, investigation and analysis.

THE fundamental problem with what we have today is that it is not complete or comprehensive. Some, we think, reasonable estimates can be made. But, that is what they are, estimates.

 

[SNorman]

I understand, as I mentioned in my post, that using statistics, diving can be said to be a safe sport.

I simply wasnt prepared, after training, to see an internet forum that consistantly reported deaths every other week to 1 month.

For example, I ride a motorcycle every day to work. I frequent a few motorcycle forums. I know how dangerous it can be, and that people die riding in significant numbers (4008 deaths in 2004 nationwide). Despite this, one can read motorcycle forums without ever being aware of this because there just isnt the same amount of reporting by the riders themselves, as there is within the diving community.

I think reporting these deaths is a good thing and I wish it happened more on the motorcycle forums.

It is still surprising and somewhat scary to see so often. For some, I think it will make them gun shy, for others, I think it will make them train and prepare better.

I used to ride motorcycles and actually hearing of crashes and deaths was not too uncommon on message boards I went to.

But also, the people on those boards are usually full of youthful ignorance and just simply don't want to learn from other's mistakes. They want to believe their friend crashed because of the car that pulled out, or the oil in the road, or the turn was just too sharp, etc. etc. instead of saying he crashed because he was going too damn fast, and everybody should slow down.

I like how accidents are analyzed on this board. The more information the better.

 

[H2Andy]

I love statistics ... I'm reminded of the fellow who drowned in water that was, on average, 2 feet deep.

(No disrespect Andy)

andy=moi? no disrespect at all !

but ... all it takes is one millimiter of water to drown, given the right circumstances

 

[MikeFerrara]

Hey Mike, I just perused the dan stats but as you said most incidents happen in the most popular categories which tells us pretty much nothing since the more dives the more likely it is to happen. (although <30fsw had very few) I would like to see something like: of the total amount of dives at this depth (estimated of course) there were x amount of incidents/fatalities.

That's just it. There isn't any denominator. They don't know how many active divers there are and they don't know how many dives are being done let alone how many dives that fit a specific description (depth or whatever). We can figure out how many divers are getting certified each year but we know that all those divers don't keep diving. The dive sites just don't get more crowded, the number of shops and resorts aren't doubling every year ect.

The things that stick out to me in the DAN report are the things we have some control over. A significan't percentage of dives that result in injury or death involve buoyancy conrtrol problems and/or rapid ascent...skills and panic. Divers with good skills just don't get in trouble as often, assuming they also excersize good judgement. We don't have the data to turn those inferences into probability calculations but it seems close enough to common sense. It's easy to believe that good divers have less trouble while diving.

 

[Thalassamania]

What we really need to know is how many tanks were filled each year, that would give us a rather good, though abstrated, value for diving effort each year.