No teaching experience in scuba--although I work as an elementary school teacher. I know every student is different, and I'm sure there are people that need way more than 3 days. I'm just speaking to the opinion that 3 day courses are, in of themselves, unsatisfactory and dangerous. They clearly work for some people, is all I'm saying. There are millions of ill-experienced divers out there, and yet the scuba death rate is still insanely low (1 in 211,864 according to DAN).
There is virtually no one that keeps accurate statistics for the SCUBA industry, never mind gives them to anyone else. PADI, as an example, gives a number that certify each year, but does not specificy which certification. So anyone giving, say a death rate, has to make their best guess, it may be close but not because of accurate data. Say that number was taken a few years back, I know two divers that made one dive after certification, had a problem at depth, bolted, and will never dive again, so they are certified divers that did not die diving.
The next question would be how many, if any, of the divers in that statistic took a three day class.
You see the major problem with getting a handle on the industry is that, although all the individual players may keep good records, none of them make the data available. That is their choice, but anyone who gives statistics on the industry have to make a lot of assumptions rather than using good data.
The deaths in SCUBA are low, but there is no way of telling why. On the top of the front end statics, when a diver dies there is no one in the industry that finds and follows up each diver fatality to determines the cause, so some may never make it into that end of the equation.
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There are millions of ill-experienced divers out there," some quit diving, some dive with DM's, some get better at diving, and no one knows or tracks which is which.
Bob
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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
Mark Twain