Four common causes of accidents for less experienced divers

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2airishuman

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I've been reading through accidents and incidents. Sobering stuff. I would like to hold up several common causes and suggest strategies for risk reduction.

1) Known minor equipment problems that are not fully remediated before the dive.

The leaky O-ring, the rental BCD that is too tight, the power inflator that doesn't work, the mask that keeps fogging, the reg that breathes a little hard. These comparatively minor items often serve as the metaphorical match that lights the forest fire.

Rental gear and inexperienced divers go together. The statistics appear to tell us that the dives after OWD certification and before dive 20 are the most dangerous, with dives after a long period of inactivity also being risky. These are the two profiles of the diver who rents gear. I wonder how much rented gear contributes to accidents. Maybe diving would be a safer activity if people purchased their gear before their OWD class, so that they would have access to familiar, properly fitting gear, in good condition, for the relatively risky period of inexperience.

The decision to dive broken gear is usually made at the dive site under circumstances when the alternative is to thumb the dive after time and money have been invested. Given the psychology and social and economic pressures of the real world, maybe having spares, tools, and knowledge for minor repairs is a safety item. This could especially be a factor for shore dives where no DM is present.

Checking out gear early when repairs can still be made isn't emphasized much in training. Maybe people should assemble and try on everything in your living room or hotel room if there is any doubt. Maybe new divers should be more picky about rental gear. Better to be "that guy" making a scene in the dive shop because the power inflator buttons stick or the XL BCD doesn't fit your 3XL body, than to end up dead.

2) Grossly overweighted divers who cannot control buoyancy and sink.

This is common enough accident pattern that I think training and gear configuration should emphasize being able to dump weight incrementally when the correct amount of weight is not known with reasonable certainty before the dive.

3) Drysuits.

Reading through accident and near-miss reports, loss of buoyancy control by beginners while drysuit diving would appear common. Switching from a familiar drysuit to an unfamiliar one, insufficient instruction, and poor fit contribute. I think the only reason we don't see more of this is that most inexperienced divers stick to warm water.

4) Economic pressure to proceed with a dive when weather, current, and visibility are unfavorable.

Particularly on the DM, who should have the most site-specific knowledge, but who will not remain a DM for very long by thumbing dives before they start. Not sure how to solve this.
 
I would change your first category to task loading. An experienced diver doesn't die due to task loading, because he knows what to do with the leaky o-ring, can dive any crappy rental gear, and has buoyancy control without looking at his depth gauge. The inexperienced or rusty diver, OTOH, has all they can do to not tumble down the wall. Add anything else to that, like checking the air supply, they are completely outdone and start to flop and twitch.

I would also add a 5th problem, running out of air. It has to do with task loading, above, but still deserves it's own category. Running out of air is the fastest way to die on scuba, IMO.
 
I would also add a 5th problem, running out of air. It has to do with task loading, above, but still deserves it's own category. Running out of air is the fastest way to die on scuba, IMO.

And I believe, according to DAN, it's far and away the #1 cause of dive accidents.
 
I think a lot of the incidents come down to attitude and complacency.

Attitude - the "it won't happen to me" or "I don't need to practise my skills" attitudes are quite common. Proper planning prevents p^&% poor performance is a statement a lot of divers could do with learning. How many people (outwith this forum where people collectively have a greater understanding of diving as a whole) practise their basic OW skills on a regular basis? This also ties in with the failure to check the equipment properly.

Complacency ties in with the above - people getting further and further away from safe practise just because "I have done this before and I was fine". It works perfectly until it doesn't! Skipping steps in pre-dive checks is one aspect that can come back to haunt later
 
I've been reading through accidents and incidents. Sobering stuff. I would like to hold up several common causes and suggest strategies for risk reduction.

1) Known minor equipment problems that are not fully remediated before the dive.

The leaky O-ring, the rental BCD that is too tight, the power inflator that doesn't work, the mask that keeps fogging, the reg that breathes a little hard. These comparatively minor items often serve as the metaphorical match that lights the forest fire.

Rental gear and inexperienced divers go together. The statistics appear to tell us that the dives after OWD certification and before dive 20 are the most dangerous, with dives after a long period of inactivity also being risky. These are the two profiles of the diver who rents gear. I wonder how much rented gear contributes to accidents. Maybe diving would be a safer activity if people purchased their gear before their OWD class, so that they would have access to familiar, properly fitting gear, in good condition, for the relatively risky period of inexperience.

The decision to dive broken gear is usually made at the dive site under circumstances when the alternative is to thumb the dive after time and money have been invested. Given the psychology and social and economic pressures of the real world, maybe having spares, tools, and knowledge for minor repairs is a safety item. This could especially be a factor for shore dives where no DM is present.

Checking out gear early when repairs can still be made isn't emphasized much in training. Maybe people should assemble and try on everything in your living room or hotel room if there is any doubt. Maybe new divers should be more picky about rental gear. Better to be "that guy" making a scene in the dive shop because the power inflator buttons stick or the XL BCD doesn't fit your 3XL body, than to end up dead.

2) Grossly overweighted divers who cannot control buoyancy and sink.

This is common enough accident pattern that I think training and gear configuration should emphasize being able to dump weight incrementally when the correct amount of weight is not known with reasonable certainty before the dive.

3) Drysuits.

Reading through accident and near-miss reports, loss of buoyancy control by beginners while drysuit diving would appear common. Switching from a familiar drysuit to an unfamiliar one, insufficient instruction, and poor fit contribute. I think the only reason we don't see more of this is that most inexperienced divers stick to warm water.

4) Economic pressure to proceed with a dive when weather, current, and visibility are unfavorable.

Particularly on the DM, who should have the most site-specific knowledge, but who will not remain a DM for very long by thumbing dives before they start. Not sure how to solve this.

The premise that reasonable weight requirements before a dive can not be readily determined is false.
 
I second that running out of air or low on air is the number one problem, and stems from not paying attention to tank pressure or underestimating the amount needed to complete the dive.
 
noted and..good reading.
 
I would call it very simply, with the statement that these are new divers (less than 20-30 dives) :

1) BUOYANCY: This can be everything, from too much weight, not being able to use the bcd correctly, drysuit, lack of awareness.
2) NOT CALLING A DIVE: Covering the whole scope:
- because of equipment: Could be a blown O-ring, but mostly it's not being able to cope with small stuff (the mask that doesn't fit well and keeps flooding)
- because they do not recognize they need to call the dive, because it's going to cause issues (not calling the dive until you are already hypothermic, not recognising current, etc)
- because of peer pressure: I'll make a sexist remark here. Women are better beginning divers than men, because they don't make this mistake. They will call out when feeling uncomfortable about a buddy, a specific dive, a specific circumstance.
3) TRUST ME DIVES: (could also be under 2).

Intermediate divers: Not putting any number of dives on this, everybody can be an intermediate diver or beginning diver if the circumstances, environment or equipment is new to you.
1) RUNNING OUT OF AIR/GAS: nuf said... This does not happen to the really new divers, they tend to watch their manometer like a hawk, because their biggest fear is running out of air (their biggest fear should be uncontroled ascend). It does happen to complacent divers with some notches on their belt.
2) COMPLACENCY: You've done 50-200 dives (or you've done 1000 dives but start out with that brand new eCCR) and you think you are THE MAN. A living diving god. So you start acting like it, you go beyond your training, getting new TECH equipment... diving deep, doing crazy stuff.
3) BUOYANCY: doesn't change.

ADVANCED DIVERS:
1) COMPLACENCY
2) DEVIANCE OF NORMALISATION
3) BUOYANCY/RUNNING OUT OF GAS
 
Originally Posted by Wookie
I would also add a 5th problem, running out of air. It has to do with task loading, above, but still deserves it's own category. Running out of air is the fastest way to die on scuba, IMO.

And I believe, according to DAN, it's far and away the #1 cause of dive accidents.

I would say the accident was well on it's way when the diver quit checking his SPG, and the LOA or OOA are just the result. Dealing with task loading is as important a skill as dealing with OOA, as it can prevent the latter.


Bob
 
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There was a time when I went through a lot of the "Near Misses" threads, I gravitated to those since they had a lot more first-hand accounts and complete than the rest of the accidents/incidents forum which relies mainly on news reports. A common theme I noticed in the near misses was buddy seperation. When I say buddy seperation I don't mean losing the buddy entirely, just that once a problem developed, the buddy was either too far away, unaware, or otherwise task-loaded to render aid. To me it suggests that smaller problems seem to become 'accidents' more frequently when there's no buddy around to help. I'll point out too that the near-miss reports I was reading at the time were mainly focused on recreational diving, not tech or solo dives.
 
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