Quiz - Rescue Diver - Common Cause of Diver Emergencies

[Pedro Burrito]

Spoiler: Answer

b. poor judgment

The quote from the Rescue Divers Manual:

The most common cause of diver emergencies is poor judgment. The majority of diver accidents are actually preventable; you can trace most of them back to a poor decision that begins a series of events that culminates in trouble. Remember that planning a dive is a risk assessment; the divers considering the potential hazards and how to handle them. Failure to use good judgment in determining potential hazards or in response to identified hazards sets the stage for emergencies.

Poor judgment includes participating in an activity beyond a diver's training or experience, like entering a cave without cave diver certification. Poor decisions during a dive, such as disregarding a rising current or continuing a dive with what seems like a trivial equipment malfunction, can also lead to an emergency. Before a dive, it's poor judgment to skip equipment safety checks or basic dive planning, both of which help prevent accidents.

 

[boulderjohn]

I used to read the annual DAN report on fatalities every year, paying careful attention to the descriptions of the individual fatalities. About a decade ago (after this question was written), PADI and DAN did a joint study which came to a conclusion that looked pretty obvious to me after years of reading. I haven't read the reports since, assuming things will remain the same. Now, there is a difference between fatalities and emergencies in general, since many emergency are not fatal. We have no way of knowing how many emergencies were survived, since few of them are reported, but if we look to those fatality reports and the joint DAN/PADI study, we can see a pattern.

The biggest cause of fatalities, by far, is a medical event, usually involving the heart. That was not one of the answer choices, and it is possible that, in terms of the language of this question, the fact that it is the leading cause of fatalities may not make it a leading cause of emergencies, since there are probably a lot more survived emergencies than survived underwater heart attacks.

Equipment problems are not at all common; in fact, I would call them rare.

Although dive planning does fall under the poor judgment category, it really isn't a common cause of emergencies. You may wish people planned dives better, but you don't read a lot of cases in which that caused a problem. (I can see the argument that poor planning could be involved in what follows, but it really isn't a leading reason for it.)

This question's language uses the word emergency. I once took part in a workshop that differentiated between incidents and emergencies. According to the workshop, when something goes wrong underwater, it is an incident. When you don't respond to it properly, it becomes an emergency. By that definition, the overwhelming majority of dive emergencies would be due to poor judgment. In the DAN/PADI study, that is definitely true for what they identified as the most common preventable cause of a fatality: an air embolism, usually associated with a panicked, breath-holding ascent to the surface following an OOA incident.

Look at that train of events. It starts with an incident: a diver running out of air. That involves poor judgment from the start. A huge part of OW training involves choices of what to do if the diver runs out of air, and none of those choices include a panicked bolt to the surface, so the diver responded to the incident with another poor judgment. OW classes further teach divers to exhale all the way if they find themselves going to the surface, so the diver again showed poor judgment.

But that same study showed cases in which divers who were out of the air did reach the surface alive but were unable to stay there because they could not fill their BCDs because they had empty cylinders. They could have orally inflated as they were taught, so that is poor judgment. They could have dropped their weights as they were taught, so that is poor judgment. The hidden poor judgment is that they were overweighted. In the standard weight check, a diver with a full cylinder should float motionless at eye level while holding a normal breath. Even with a few pounds added to compensate for loss of air, a properly weighted diver with an empty cylinder should be able to stay at the surface with minimal effort.)

So if we don't count medical problems, yes, poor judgment is the leading cause of emergencies. Arguably, it is the only cause of emergencies.

 

[Scared Silly]

Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from poor judgement.

 

[tursiops]

Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from poor judgement.

LOL see post #14

 

[rhwestfall]

Scars are tattoos with a back-story...

 

[rhwestfall]

If I can't be an example, at least let me be a warning....

 

[abnfrog]

love that "scars are a tattoo with a back story " .....going to steal it