beester
Contributor
Heya Bluetrin and Esprise me... I agree with you (specially Esprise me)... you are right in some way.
I still believe it's very hard to quantify risk, and I also think that most people underestimate the chance of incident ("it will be alright").
There are just too many variables... in the end it's a matter of context. Put an OW/AOW diver 200 m in a cave and chances are good he will get out alright and spread the word on scubaboard that cavediving isn't that hard at all... ;-) but in 1% of his dives his light fails and he doesn't make it out because he has no backup light, procedure in place, he panicks and he dies. For the cave diver in 1% of his dives his light will also fail, but it's a non incident... he just deploys a backup light, signals his team members, gets sandwiched between his team members (safety) and they call the dive. It's not even mentioned in the post dive brief... it's not even an incident. Why? Because he and his buddies have the equipment, training, experience to make it a non issue.
So this group of cave divers, might go deeper in a cave (1Km in), and they don't have a light failure, but a complex failure (dropped stage without gas, plus limited visibility because of percolation), this still should be a non issue... but the risk indeed is higher.
I'm not able to quantify risk, I know how I plan my dives, with my buddies... but I am sure that if you put an inexperienced diver without training in a harsh environment, the 1% chance of incident will probably be a 50% chance of death when it happens... while for the experienced diver (in that environment) it probably won't be an issue.
Not sure if I make sense...
I still believe it's very hard to quantify risk, and I also think that most people underestimate the chance of incident ("it will be alright").
There are just too many variables... in the end it's a matter of context. Put an OW/AOW diver 200 m in a cave and chances are good he will get out alright and spread the word on scubaboard that cavediving isn't that hard at all... ;-) but in 1% of his dives his light fails and he doesn't make it out because he has no backup light, procedure in place, he panicks and he dies. For the cave diver in 1% of his dives his light will also fail, but it's a non incident... he just deploys a backup light, signals his team members, gets sandwiched between his team members (safety) and they call the dive. It's not even mentioned in the post dive brief... it's not even an incident. Why? Because he and his buddies have the equipment, training, experience to make it a non issue.
So this group of cave divers, might go deeper in a cave (1Km in), and they don't have a light failure, but a complex failure (dropped stage without gas, plus limited visibility because of percolation), this still should be a non issue... but the risk indeed is higher.
I'm not able to quantify risk, I know how I plan my dives, with my buddies... but I am sure that if you put an inexperienced diver without training in a harsh environment, the 1% chance of incident will probably be a 50% chance of death when it happens... while for the experienced diver (in that environment) it probably won't be an issue.
Not sure if I make sense...