Accident reports-Required reading? (long)

I just got through reading DAN's accident case reports for 2001 and had my eyes opened wide! It seems to me if these were required reading for new students, the casual ones might not go through with it, and the determined ones would take their training VERY seriously! The importance of a close, attentive buddy stood out as key factor in preventing deaths. Most of the diving deaths were from drowning! I thought, how could somebody drown with an air source on their back? In a large percentage of those deaths, the decedant was seperated from their buddy, or made a solo ascent. Either a cardiac event or an arterial-gas-embolism would cause the diver to drop their regulator and/or they would not get their BC inflated. If a buddy was within reach both these problems could be circumvented. I guess I'm lucky that my dive buddy is my wife, and if I'm not watching her, I can hold her hand and know that there's nothing wrong. If that wasn't the case, I'ld still want to be within reaching distance of my buddy at all times. If you can grab your buddy, you might prevent a runaway ascent or descent, as happened in a few of the deaths. If you ascend with your buddy, when you get to the surface and he's struggling, your there to fill his BC. The whole process of getting into recreational diving seems so casual until you find out the realities of diving accidents. I really think case reports should be "required reading"!

The BSAC reprorts make educational reading too:

http://www.bsac.org/techserv/increp02/intro.htm

It is unfortunate that buddy seperation seems to be such a contributing factor in scuba accidents. It suggest to me that divers should be better prepared to handle such situation. I've got to wonder where "buddy" ends and dependence starts.

Required or not I would love to access to all reports for reading

Ron

It is unfortunate that buddy seperation seems to be such a contributing factor in scuba accidents.

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It's true that buddy separation often figures on dive accident reports. On the other hand, we don't really know how many accidents are prevented or incidents not escalated to accidents by an attentive buddy, so the buddy system in itself seems very solid.

But you're absolutely right in that the best way to prevent accidents is having buddy teams where no one buddy develops a dependancy on the other, .i.e. where each diver is self-reliant. Unfortunately, even among highly trained divers, a dependancy situation might develop ...

I really think case reports should be "required reading"!

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I agree.

Of course, most agencies don't want to "scare off" OW students (some of which may already be apprehensive at the thought of diving) at the first stage, for commercial reasons. But I definitely think accident reports should be brought in at the Rescue/stress&rescue/CMAS** stage at the very latest ...

The snag with this, of course, is that divers who don't do any more courses from their OW on will miss out. And it's precisely the newbie divers with <20 dives who are overrepresented in all statistics ...

I do include a review of the report in my classes. I have a copy of the report out on a table in a binder for people to read. I don't try to scare students but I do try to tell them what I see as the truth which is that diving is pretty safe if your good at it and it's not so safe if you're lousy at it and do it anyway. If it scares them a little, good.

While sitting in a a class for my DM internship, one of the instructors had a copy of Scubadiving Mag. He read the story in that months issue about the diver that died and then asked the students what they thought went wrong and what the diver or buddy could/should have been differently if anything could. It was really a good interaction for the students and drove the point home with out scaring everyone out of diving. I think that was really cool and think it should be done for each class.

When I first read DAN and BSAC reports a few years ago, what caught my attention is that a lot of them occurred after the main portion of the dive, while at the safety stop. Lots of reports of one buddy surfacing from the safety stop, leaving the other to hang for a while, then the buddy never showing up. Several reports of buddies just disappearing while at safety stop.

While it may seem strange to others, I am in closest contact with my buddy and the rest of the group during the safety stop.

In most cases, there isn't much to see, and not much reason to swim around, so hanging close makes sense.

Why do peoples brains shut off when they get wet?

You would think brains would be waterproof