The Scuba death rate...

[JahJahwarrior]

Remember--we don't have a forum for people who are alive and well. We only have one for accidents. It's sort of like looking at a computer forum. You don't ever see posts "wow I'v ehad this computer for 3 years and Is tilllove it and it's great!" you only see "my computer broke after 3 years and I hate it." It's biased. We areon't going to all get up and post "I'm a-okay today!"

 

[Thalassamania]

Yes, it's very hard to prove a negative.

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

The best part of this website, by far, is the Accidents and Incidents forum. There is nothing here that makes me more involved, and gets me thinking more, than that forum.

If this is really what interests you, might I also suggest the Diving Accidents Yahoo Group and the accident reports on the International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery web site.

With the passing of John McAniff, we added several of the 'National Underwater Accident Data Center' fatality reports to the Rubicon Research Repository in the 'Accident and Fatality Analysis' community. We also have several of the DAN Reports and we are scanning the older reports for them now. If you are really into fatality analysis, we have a presentation by Dr. Jim Caruso on "The Pathologist’s Approach to SCUBA Diving Deaths". This was presented to clinical pathologists so it is pretty graphic. (RRR ID: 3933) There are also a few other reports that we have managed to dig up in that community.

Also:
Bennett PB, Moon RE (eds). Diving Accident Management. 41st Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical
Society Workshop. UHMS Publication Number 78(DIVACC)12-1-90. Bethesda: Undersea and
Hyperbaric Medical Society; 1990; 369 pages.

As for a "death rate", the problem in calculation of this number is the same as a calculation of DCS rates. There is no denominator... The only attempt to answer this question I can think of is DAN's Project Dive Exploration. Others have commented so I'll leave this alone.

Enjoy the search!

EDIT: We still need the missing McAniff reports so if anyone has some we could borrow for this, PLEASE PM me.

 

[Gombessa]

Considering the Accidents forum reports incidents all over the world (Egypt, Canada, US, just to name the most recent that have popped up), I'd get the impression that scuba diving is statistically safer than sleeping in your bed!

On the other hand, the forum rarely sees "minor" accidents, meaning ones that aren't caused by sharks or end in death/20+ hours in the deco chamber, since lesser events rarely make it past the local news. Same as with anything else in the media.

 

[Cacia]

There is no denominator

It really is tricky to interpret the numbers.

For the OP, I can say that reading the accident forums can play with your mind and make you a little paranoid...which for me is a good thing, to a point. You have to know when to stop though. If it starts to affect your enjoyment..and you are not changing anything based on what you are reading, then it is counterproductive.

The bike forums are filled with cyclist deaths too. I had to give that a break. I read it for a while to see what the vulnerabilities and realities are are.

The truth is, if you are commuting on a motorcycle (JB does) then worrying about his diving close enough to his buddy at 70-80 feet probably is a waste of my time.

PADI has done a big diservice by the marketing line about diving being safer than bowling, or whatever they say based on injury rates as opposed to deaths.
Kind of slippery.

 

[ArcticDiver]

This comes up every once in awhile. When it does people swap their biases and guesses. They point to this "fact" or that "statistic". But the real fact is that no body knows just how safe, or dangerous scuba is.

No one knows because there is no industry wide obligatory reporting and analysis of incidents and accidents. There are spotty requirements by local governments, that may, or may not, be applicable to the industry as a whole.

The result is that different people and businesses portray scuba safety in different ways depending on what is in their best interests. That they are generalizing with very few facts is not always readily apparent.

Want to know how safe scuba is? Establish obligatory incident and accident reporting and analysis on an industry wide basis. Until then we can only guess.

BUT, a person can reasonably guess that except for those very few who to appease their own sense of self-worth, or their need for an adrenaline fix venture into into the fringes of the physiological envelope scuba is extremely safe.

 

[Dash]

For the OP, I can say that reading the accident forums can play with your mind and make you a little paranoid...which for me is a good thing, to a point. You have to know when to stop though. If it starts to affect your enjoyment..and you are not changing anything based on what you are reading, then it is counterproductive.

Absolutely. Although I am affected by what I read, it only serves to make me realize that the training I have received, is not nearly enough to prepare me for what Mr. Murphy can do when he shows up as my buddy...

I am very satisfied with the risk level of diving overall, and I dont dive paranoid (what little of it I have done). I simply have this emotional reaction as a new diver when I see the next death in the A&I forum, before my analytical side kicks in and starts fooling with the numbers, as others have done in this thread.

There was a guy in my class who I have lost touch with, and I used to implore him to find this website and read it. I did this because I felt that his confidence was shooting up too high every dive he made. Id see him and he would recount how even before our AOW course he went to 100fsw with some friends. He believed the actual act of diving, made him less susceptible to anything that could go wrong, as opposed to the analyzing or practicing of diving. I know this, from long history, to be wrong.

That is what the A&I forum does for me, introduces me to the things I need to consider. It was just a shock to a new diver not expecting it.

 

[ArcticDiver]

Absolutely. Although I am affected by what I read, it only serves to make me realize that the training I have received, is not nearly enough to prepare me for what Mr. Murphy can do when he shows up as my buddy...

If you really want to have your mind messed with study DCS. Read the various arguments concerning the various algorithms that are currently in fashion. It was summarized for me in a Navy pub that commented that no one KNOWS what causes DCS. So, everything we do is a best guess based on some research and some experimentation.

(There is a difference between DCS and DCI(a form of barotrauma).

 

[lazyturtle]

Yes, diving accidents/incidents are extremely downplayed, hush-hushed etc. This forum is quite unique. Very little (good or bad) escapes the board.

WHAT?????? When someone dies while diving here we have full coverage on the nightly news (complete with wildly inaccurate statements: the divers oxygen tank (showing a picture of a SCUBA unit) was taken by the HPD for examination....). Diver deaths may not be CNN material, but they always make it into the newspaper or on local TV. I suppose I don't really hear about skiers dying, so it must be something that doesn't progress beyond the local level....

The death rate in diving is low. The reason you notice so many posts about people dying while diving on this board is because this board is discussing...diving. How many people die worldwide in a day? I have no idea but I'm sure that it's a staggeringly large number. Some of those would have to be divers.
Even when you consider that most deaths while diving are attributed to something else (heart attack, stroke, etc) the numbers are low.
People die. All the time. If each diving location has 1 or 2 deaths a year, that adds up to quite a large number, enough so that someone could talk story about a death every day. Here in Hawaii, where thousands of people dive in a year, only a few die (in a year).

 

[Bob Vincent]

1 in 10,000 and that includes medical problems. Not much at all. The only thing we as divers like to keep informed about all things diving. Just think when you opened your local newspaper and it had every accident that happened yesterday, end the US then on to world wide. Starting to get a picture? It looks major but we are talking big areas.