Diver Safety/Preparedness – An Informal Study

[vladimir]

Unfortunately, it seems that no one considers the current rate of ~100 deaths/year to be a problem, and given market & business pressures, I'm afraid that "extra" people will have to die for several years before there is enough attention to recognize a problem and prompt a meaningful correction within the Industry to stabilize and restore balance. What's particularly disconcerting is that we may have already passed this "Houston, We Have A Problem" tipping point, but we are unable to recognize it because due to the downturn in the Economy which has certainly reduced the number of dives done per year: we need to remember that our "100 deaths/year" is a raw number that doesn't have the contextual insight of an actual incidence rate. Once again, not knowing exactly how many dives/year are actually performed limits our ability to assess what's really going on.


-hh

Your post makes a lot of sense to me. Society and individual actors have to do a cost-benefit analysis of some sort. At what cost do you prevent the last 100 deaths? In this age of rampant morbid obesity, does the 100-hour course make the difference, or does it just deter the unfit? If the unfit don't scuba dive, do they then die on their couches with a joystick in one hand and a nacho in the other?

There may be a benefit to getting those extra divers out there--those who wouldn't have passed the swim test for my YMCA course in 1975. Not just to the dive industry, which I couldn't care less about, but to those individuals. We can not roll things back to the way they were when scuba was an adventurous activity that atttracted active people, but, as you suggest, maybe it should be stressed more that the one-week open-water certification is only good for following a divemaster around in bathtub-like conditions. That may have the additional effect of moving more divers to the "elite" training that was once the norm.

 

[boulderjohn]

that their reporting sample had been scrubbed to remove all fatalities incurred by "Professionals" (eg, Commercial, DMs and Instructors)...this makes it a logical subset of all accidents and not directly comparable to prior studies/reports. DAN might have also excluded all Tech diving in an attempt to make their studies a more pure examination of "recreational diving", but I can't recall offhand if this was true or false memory.

It is indeed another false memory. If you read through the descriptions of the actual fatalities, you will see that instructors, DMs, and technical divers are very well represented in those fatalities. They would form a very sizable subset of the total.

 

[endurodog]

Again HH I really enjoyed your insights, as well as other posters in this thread. The "safety" issues is actually very complicated with issues such as training, longer shorter, more directed towards issues really encountered, equipment, types of dives, number of divers, types of accidents, accountablity of DM's and dive operators, LDS's, health issues of an aging and out of shape society and many others I'm sure I'm not listing. HH you touch on many of those highlighting what a complicated issue it is and how each issue it self has different sides. I have not seen other posters do it as in depth as you.

 

[-hh]

It is indeed another false memory.

It might be, but I'd really be willing to "Bet the Ranch" on this particular one not being the case, at least for one or more years of the DAN reports.

If you read through the descriptions of the actual fatalities, you will see that instructors, DMs, and technical divers are very well represented in those fatalities. They would form a very sizable subset of the total.

I do agree that Pros were in some of their annual reports. My point here is more that I used to read each annual report cover to cover, and every page of their analysis and all of their caveats...and in one of those years I came across this "No Pros" caveat in the fine print. FWIW, it might have been a "No Pros while on Duty" kind of caveat, which is narrower...and would allow a Pro on a non-working dive to still end up in the report.

Now this is recollection is bugging me and I'm going to have to dig out the stepladder to get to that box with this stuff in it. Hard part will be in finding the hours to re-read them without the wife noticing that my list of weekend chores isn't getting done.


-hh

 

[Thalassamania]

I do not recall what DAN did in all years, at the NAUDC we separated out commercial and other occupational cases.

 

[Tardigrade]

The big change I've noticed that I didn't see mentioned in this thread are the textbooks. Oh, the material covered is sound, given in bite sized chunks. I have issue with the questions that are asked at chapter's end.

In recent SSI Openwater 1, SSI Drysuit and SDI Solo texts read in the past 2 years, most of the questions simply are fill in the blank, regurgitation style. The student only has to flip back to find the identical sentence in the chapter and copy it. Easy McPeasy. The assessments are really low level, and don't match the rigor required to scuba safely.

This is a strategy used in special education for students who have trouble decoding meaning from their reading. It's meant to be used less and less as the student gains mastery and develops skills like drawing conclusions.

I was certified back in '79, and no longer have my old PADI text book. But I loved diving, and really absorbed the reading material (yeah, I said it).

My favorite textbook? John Reseck, Jr.s "Scuba Safe and Simple". Hysterical. Favorite chapter? "Skills, Tricks and Sneaky Things", or perhaps "The No No's that Live in the Sea".

 

[Edward3c]

The biggest issue we've encountered, and it applies to all diving incident reports, is knowing a representative number of incidents have been captured in the first place. It is only in the last few years BSAC have been fortunate enough to get the UK Coast Guard and chamber operators to pass on diver related incidents. However, there are still incidents not reported as they don’t involve a BSAC member or the individual doesn’t want to own-up, or they are treated in a hospital’s chamber.

We can’t use insurance companies (eg DAN) as, in the UK, treatment comes under the National Health Service and is effectively free.

Regards