We might stop diving

[freewillie]

Life is what I refer to as risk stratification. We are trying to take activities with a certain risk and try to lessen their individual risks. The real question is what is your tolerance for risk for any given activity?

Several people have mentioned driving. We all know that driving can result in bodily injury and death. That aspect of driving actually terrifies me and is all too apparent as my 15 yo daughter is starting her driver's education training this month. But I can't wrap her in bubble wrap and prevent her from going out and living her life. From my daughter's perspective she is correct in assuming I myself can be maimed or killed every time I drive. It is only an illusion that my own safe driving habits will keep me safe. They only keep me safe from myself but do not protect me from any other individual on the road from hitting me.

As for the health aspect, see your doctor. I would recommend a fasting lipid profile and a coronary calcium score to assess your risk of heart disease. Use of medications like aspirin and Lipitor is the best you can do to minimize your risk. You are correct in assuming that if you have a heart attack under water your odds of surviving are almost zero, but, if you have symptoms and surface your odds are better. In addition to cardiac screening and medications if appropriate regular diet and exercise with a healthy lifestyle is highly recommended whether you dive or not.

That being said, I absolutely refuse to ride a bicycle. As a doctor I see the effects of when rider meets car or when rider meets ground. As the only income earner in the family (my wife is a stay at home wife) I am unwilling to accept the financial fall out of becoming either temporarily disabled or worse permanently disabled. Although I've had desires to bike for exercise and even participate in triathlons I am just too freaked out by the possibility of an accident to get on a bike.

I enjoy diving too much to give it up at this point. Probably no different in risk than riding a bike but for me that's my own unique perspective. I'm going to keep diving (with my daughter to boot) and not ride but that is my own choice. I do hope to see you underwater too though.

 

[divad]

We might stop diving.

I’m not sure why I am writing this. But if you want to comment, please read it through, and be respectful.

We love diving! Yet the death of Quero really bothers me. I am her age. I “talked” with her on SB! Maybe she made some mistakes, did some things she shouldn’t have – yet who among us has not made mistakes? And it’s not just her – others have died – repeat: DIED, as in IT’S OVER – while diving. There was a Russian couple – experienced divers – both of whom died at Pt. Lobos a few months ago. I love diving! But I’m not ready to die, and there are plenty of great things to do in this world besides dive. (Like those things you do with dive buddies after you come out. Like hiking. Like observing wildlife – nature in any form. Like music. Like family. …. )

We might at least stop cold water diving. I do love it, though. I really enjoyed the dives I had recently with dive buddy Kim. Those were great days! Also quite a few with my wife, and the experiences have brought us closer together. That’s a plus. And being a diver has given me more motivation to stay in shape – that’s another big plus.

We talked about it. New rule: we need to have at least 10 feet visibility for all our dives. Period. We’re planning to at least take the GUE Primer course first, then decide. Maybe we’ll feel more comfortable then. But plenty of experienced divers have died – repeat: DIED!

Yeah, it could be that those deaths, maybe even Quero’s, were due to medical issues. But a medical issue on land is one thing – and a medical issue under 50 feet of water – that’s entirely different. Or maybe they were due to dive events that they couldn’t handle. We have certainly had our share of them (I have written about several on these boards). So when does one get enough experience that dive events don’t happen any more? Realistically, never – though their frequency should go down. Yet experienced divers still succumb, as we can see on SB every week.

The dive industry shares some of the blame. The industry as a whole continues to claim it’s a safe sport. But really, we do not know how safe diving is – in part because we don’t know how many dives have been taken. Not even that basic information is available. (I wonder why? The cynical part of me has an answer&#8230 At a minimum, LDS’s could count the number of fills as a pretty close approximation of the number of dives. Also, it is clear to me that the vast majority of dive operators operate in a “You should be OK” mode – no significant check on skills required for a dive. Too often, there is not realistic information about the skills required for a dive from the operator. We have certainly fell victim to this mentality on more than one occasion.

There is no data that tells us what the incremental risk of diving is. I can find my risk of a heart attack based on may age (5.2% over the next 10 years) but I cannot find the incremental risk of suffering death from the 5% chance because I am underwater (I suspect it is nearly 100%). And I cannot find the incremental risk of having a heart attack or other medical events due to the various challenges of the sport.

And, as has been well-documented on these boards, the certification requirements are in drastic need of repair. Good courses depend too much on the instructor, and the certifications awarded do not relate to the skills required for the dives offered by the industry (case in point: AOW). And usually, no one fails a cert course (except Fundies as far as I know). I am a teacher myself – I know what happens when you have a system where no one fails!

If we stop diving, we won’t be the first ones to take this decision. Many divers have noticed that lots of folks dive for a while, then stop. Has the industry ever tried to find out why? I think I know some of the reasons…

If we stop just cold water diving, then it places warm water diving into the “vacation only” paradigm – maybe that’s more dangerous. We would have to commit to doing refresher courses. Also, we might go back to using jacket BC’s, as (I know this is heresy here) jacket BC’s are easier for once-in-a-while divers.

Maybe we’re just not the type of people for diving. We sure tried – we bought nearly all of our own equipment. We took several training courses. We did a number of pool dives to develop our skills. I’m OK with mechanical things, but it’s not my favorite thing to be doing in my free time. Emily is much less interested in taking care of the equipment. And physically, we’re OK, but neither of us is really the athlete type. Meaning that maybe we have more “events” than the average “good diver” simply because our mind-body coordination isn’t anything special (one way or the other). We are probably more prone to panic than the average “good diver”. Age plays into that, too. We’re not 35 any more. I am being honest about my limitations.

Maybe, instead of diving, I’ll take up the euphonium. I love diving! I would miss it. But for how long?

These are my thoughts. If you reply, please be respectful. There are a lot of insults flying about on SB – one reason I don’t post much any more.

Thanks for reading this far.

- Bill

You should stop diving.

 

[lamont]

Assuming there was no underlying medical problem, the last one was the real killer.

All the others can be handled.

Having enough gas, gives enough time to remove any equipment required in order to obtain positive buoyancy.
Having a good buddy would have provided assistance.

When you don't have either, the "safe zone" gets smaller really quickly.

With enough time or assistance, the rest of the stuff becomes things to complain about while having lunch.

flots.

I disagree, they're part of an entire accident chain and it can all be addressed.

Given my background with GUE/DIR I could say "just don't dive solo" but the weighting failure needs to be addressed, its also particularly stupid to add complicated dive gear to to your kit without reducing the complexity elsewhere (and this is one that it close to my heart right now as I could throw a video camera on my new scooter mount and take that and my CCR on a dive, but I don't really have enough experience with either to do both of those at the same time right now, with the scooter in the mix, so it really needs to be *either* the scooter with vid system and learning that *OR* it needs to be the CCR and learning that). Diving overweighted with too small of a wing and unable to maintain positive buoyancy is also completely unsafe and it undermines the training that we all had in OW1 on how to orally inflate to establish positive buoyancy. The problems here all add up, and you can't single out any one or other as "the" cause. If I went solo diving and ran myself out of gas, I could CESA and orally inflate and be completely fine -- that's an emergency that we're actually all trained to handle. I agree that its MUCH better to avoid it, but I certainly have the ability to handle it.

All of these are wrong:

- It was the solo diving, if she'd just stuck with her buddy she would be alive
- It was the travel wing, if she'd had a 40# wing she would be alive
- It was going back down when she was low on gas, if she's just stayed on the surface she would be alive
- It was the weight belt, if she would have just dropped that should would be alive
- It was being overweighted at the start, if she would have been able to establish positive bouyancy she would still be alive
- It was the complexity of a new drysuit, with photography and solo divng, if she would have toned it back should would still be alive

Those are all equally correct and equally very wrong statements. None of them are any better than any other.

(at least assuming we have the facts of the accident roughly correct...)

---------- Post added October 18th, 2013 at 08:20 PM ----------

"I'm scared before every dive I make ...that's normal. Not being scared, now that's scary." Jill Heinerth quoted in The Six Skills (Steve Lewis).

I've been 60 minutes or 3,000 feet back into a cave at thirds and turn pressure and thought to myself "if we spend twice as long getting out of this cave as we did getting in, I'm dead, that's odd..."

Never really been scared, though...

IMO, diving should not be scary, if it is, you're doing it wrong... You need more training, need to pull back on the aggressiveness, need to get your head screwed on correctly or something...

 

[Tigerman]

If I was scared before going diving, I really would reconsider what Im doing. If its irrational fear, thats when you need to get that head srewd on correctly, if its rational fear now THATS scary..

 

[tracydr]

You should stop diving.

I'm actually really afraid of driving. I fractured C-7 in a car accident when somebody else was driving in Phoenix and if it was up to me, I'd never drive in this stupid city again, or any other large city. Unfortunately, I need to live, at least for awhile longer, in this large city. Hoping to move to a rural area and when I do, I plan to do my best to avoid driving in a metropolitan area as much as possible.
I wish I could stop driving or even riding in a car. Is it even possible?
Now,I can understand avoiding something that is a sport that you do just for fun, when it becomes unfun. That's why I got rid of my one horse, he became unfun to ride. But too bad we can't avoid scary things like riding the subway to work or driving on scary highways.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I gotta chuckle whenever I hear folks in the USA talking about how dangerous it is to drive here. I used to think that ... then I started traveling to other parts of the world, and that's when I learned to appreciate how orderly and well-behaved our drivers here in the USA really are by comparison.

The first time I went to Taiwan I considered renting a car. My friends who were from there told me I don't want to do that ... take public transit, or hire a taxi. I said "I lived in Boston for 23 years ... can't be worse than that". They said "you can't imagine". They were right ... I couldn't imagine ... I ended up giving the taxi driver a big tip for getting me to my destination alive ... :shocked2:

And then I went to Indonesia ... ... getting from the airport to the hotel was definitely the most dangerous part of our recent dive trip there ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[drrich2]

"I'm scared before every dive I make ...that's normal. Not being scared, now that's scary." Jill Heinerth quoted in The Six Skills (Steve Lewis).

IMO, diving should not be scary, if it is, you're doing it wrong... You need more training, need to pull back on the aggressiveness, need to get your head screwed on correctly or something...

If I was scared before going diving, I really would reconsider what Im doing. If its irrational fear, thats when you need to get that head srewd on correctly, if its rational fear now THATS scary..

I think people's ideas about fear, 'scary' and confronting potentially anxiety-provoking situations, even fairly familiar ones, reflect personality and philosophy. I imagine a confident, assertive type A personality will give a different report than a cautious, risk-avoidant 'look before you leap' type B person might.

Here's my experience. When I dive, I expect to go very deep by non-scuba standards (from 20 to just over 100 feet deep; that can be a long ways from the surface if you're OOA for some reason), depending on varied pieces of gear that can fail. On really deep dives, bolting for the surface can be dangerous. On most any dives, if I get into some sudden surprising and potentially dangerous situation and 'freak out' (panic) for whatever reason, I can die (just like I can driving down the highway listening to the radio).

Once in the water, in order to sink, I need to deliberately exhale as I sink several feet underwater. If I turned my air on earlier, then off & forgot to turn it back on, my gauge could say I've got pressure, and I may even have taken a breath to test it, but now realize I'm not getting air, and I've just exhaled, can't inflate my BCD and I'm sinking...

Which can be dealt with, but has to be dealt with, fast, and can be rather miserable for a few moments.

Overcoming natural instincts (to take a deep breath to go underwater, and enter an environment I'm not designed for), and to deliberately embark on a fairly lengthy foray into an alien environment I know can be fatal, does give me some anticipatory anxiety. Basically, low-grade fear.

I use that to help guide me to pay attention to pre-dive checks, make sure my air is turned on, mentally anticipate scenarios such as the above and plan what I might do in response (e.g.: stabilize depth with finning, grasp bottom of tank with left hand & push up, reach over back with right hand & turn air on; or ditch weights and swim up; failing that, could take off gear and swim up, abandoning BCD, reg. & weights), breath off my reg. & octo., etc...

It's not the kind of fear that has me wringing my hands and dreading the dive; diving is fun for me and I enjoy it! It's more of a justified respect that I'm doing something I am to take seriously, and if I do, then I should be fine.

Richard.

 

[dive_turkey]

I agree completely with the above statement. I experience a degree of fear before every dive, even in the pools. When I was a flight medic, I experienced fear before every flight. That fear, at that level is a very productive emotion that keeps my head level and forces me to check my gear and perform my safety/buddy checks.

Fear is a very healthy emotion in diving, in combat, and in life. It keeps people alive. Irrational fears are dangerous and should be dealt with appropriately.

 

[drbill]

I said "I lived in Boston for 23 years ... can't be worse than that". They said "you can't imagine". They were right ... I couldn't imagine ... I ended up giving the taxi driver a big tip for getting me to my destination alive ...

I, too, lived in Boston and wouldn't drive there (thankful for the MTA)... but the drivers in some parts of the world make Bostonians model drivers. I had a very scary ride through southern Thailand and northern Malaysia that I was sure I wouldn't survive!

 

[flots am]

Given my background with GUE/DIR I could say "just don't dive solo" but the weighting failure needs to be addressed, its also particularly stupid to add complicated dive gear to to your kit without reducing the complexity elsewhere

People underestimate complexity all the time. A drysuit, while not complex at first look, has a number of behaviours that are non-intuitive, like venting when you just start feeling light, not when you notice you're "going up" and adding air as you descend, because movement is extremely difficult and limited when shrink wrapped.

BC lift is another one, especially on this board, I see people all the time calculating their requirements and buying a wing that's exactly just as much as they need, without ever thinking they might need more in an emergency, or realizing that the stated lift capacity is often not really available.