Now, you can also argue that a cardiac event that leads to a fatality is not a diving death, just as you can argue that a person who dies in a car crash after having a heart attack did not die in a car crash. It seems to be a silly distinction to me.
First of all, let me say that I find accident analysis not only fascinating, but crucial for people who want to become safer, better divers. So if some of you are dismissing my point because you think that I'm minimizing the risks of the sport, you are misreading me - my fault for not being clear.
HOWEVER
The usual annoying thing about A&I is that people say things like "don't speculate until the full report is available!". Which is foolish, because in virtually all cases (certainly most USA cases) no report is made public. So my response is that we can learn a lot by taking
what we do know and discussing how this might have lead to a fatality or injury.
In this case, the posts seem to have the reverse problem - very definitive "guesses" about what might have happened based on absolutely nothing. We have been presented with this information: A diver got in the water, appeared distressed without going under the surface, two other people jumped in to rescue him, the three of them got swept away by the current and were picked up by the coast guard. I read that as he never went under water, and we have absolutely no information to suggest otherwise.
Trust me, I am well aware of dry drowning, etc... And if you guys feel that it is helpful to go over all of the things that could cause a diver to die while on the surface, regardless of the actual information about the incident, that's certainly fine. But it's not an accident analysis of this event, it's just a free ranging discussion of scuba risks.
Don, I actually like the fact that you scour the news for theses stories that we otherwise would have missed - your posts have generated a lot of interesting discussions. But I'm a little taken aback that you responded to my skepticism that this was a diving death with a snotty "what's your problem" when ALL I SAID was "I'm not sure that it's correct to say that this was a diving death". Seriously, you are SO sure that it's a diving death that it's inappropriate for me to even mildly express doubts?? Did you feel that I "jumped" you with that post?
What I object to is labeling things as scuba deaths that aren't scuba deaths, because statistics have meaning and accident databases are important. So if you want to warn people about the risks of slipping with a tank on the dock, or being shot in a mugging for your underwater camera, or about your flight to Raja Amat crashing into the ocean, that's fine, but those aren't scuba deaths. If you have a heart attack at depth, it's a scuba death. If you have a heart attack hauling your doubles out of your truck, that's not a scuba death.
And if you are trying to improve automotive safety by studying car crashes, it's actually not a silly distinction to exclude people who have a heart attack while driving.
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