Diving Safety: Any interest?

[Pliny]

Safety in general: Some people don’t like to talk about it for a variety of reasons. Some people think it tends to limit their freedom to do what they want. I think they are thinking actually about “safety rules” when they feel that way. Some people think safety is just for new people and they are experienced and know enough to not need it. Perhaps they are relating to “safety training” or basic training rather than safety in and of itself. Diving is risky. We deal with safety one way or another every time we dive. How we manage the risk is the real heart of the issue. The subject of safety as it relates to free diving and scuba diving has been of interest to me for the 40 some years I have been diving. I happened to work as a professional safety specialist most of my life, but that was industrial safety, and only on a couple of occasions was I called on to analyze a diving accident or assess a commercial diving operation's safety program. But enough about me. Is anyone here interested in starting a thread regarding safety? Some questions that might be addressed could be:
1. Has anyone done a systems analysis of diving?
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_safety"]System safety - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
2. What is the fatality rate and the accident rate for free diving/scuba diving (per 100,000 hours)
3. How do those rates compare with other sports and occupations?
4. What is the most frequent proximate cause of skin/scuba diving accidents?
5. Is there a trend in diving accidents over the years (you would have to adjust for popularity, that is the number of people doing it).
6. How could equipment be better engineered to prevent accidents?
7. How could training be improved to prevent accidents?
8. Are accidents being properly investigated? What are the problems with investigating diving accidents?
9. What agencies claim to have a vested interest in diving safety, and are they doing an adequate job?
10. Should the federal government be involved in training or licensing divers? (Don’t kill the messenger, I’m just asking a simple question).

 

[trux]

Hello Pliny. I do not think people don't like to speak about safety here on DB. Quite oppositely - it is being discussed frequently, and there is even an entire subforum dedicated to safety related topics in freediving. And not only there - the safety is a topic pretty much present in most other freediving threads too. As for scuba, frankly told, scuba related topics are not so frequent here on DB, so scuba related posts are rather rare.

And the safety in freediving an scuba diving are entirely different beasts, witch much more differences than common points. I am afraid they need to be studies separately.

To your questions:

1. Has anyone done a systems analysis of diving?
I am pretty sure that it was done for scuba and/or technical diving, but less sure about freediving. I have around 50 safety related documents listed at documents safety @ APNEA.cz, but they mostly speak about individual physiological aspects. I know though that DAN had done some work in this field, so you may try contacting them.

2. What is the fatality rate and the accident rate for free diving/scuba diving (per 100,000 hours)
3. How do those rates compare with other sports and occupations?
4. What is the most frequent proximate cause of skin/scuba diving accidents?
DAN would be the best place to post you questions. Also federations like CMAS or FFESSM use to collect and analyse this type of information, and may have some statistics. In contrary, I do not think AIDA currently has any program for tracking accidents. And generally, even the data of DAN, CMAS or other organisations are rather limited, because they usually manage to get to them only if they are somehow directly involved, which is rarely the case - big majority of freediving/snorkeling/spearfishing accidents happens with no involvement of the federations, or the diving insurance agencies.


5. Is there a trend in diving accidents over the years (you would have to adjust for popularity, that is the number of people doing it).
Again, only the above mentioned organizations could give you some answer based on their limited data

6. How could equipment be better engineered to prevent accidents?
You can find discussion about some safety-related equipment in the safety subforum, or in the equipment subforum. There are indeed plenty of topics: the safety vest, counter-balance systems, buys and flags, etc.

7. How could training be improved to prevent accidents?
That's addressed in most courses, and directives for instructors. And certainly it can be improved further, but the main problem are not trained and certified freedivers, but freedivers, snorkelers, and spearfishers who never did any course. I addressed the topic at the end of this thread: http://forums.deeperblue.com/safety/68233-freediving-death.html?highlight=blame, and think that the information about safe diving needs to get to the masses - in schools, swimming course, scuba-diving courses, in mass media, and in fiction. I find that freediving federations are not sufficiently proactive in this field.

8. Are accidents being properly investigated? What are the problems with investigating diving accidents?
Some do other don't. Depends on the country and many other factors. Scuba accidents are mostly investigate relatively properly due to involvement of DAN, or other diving insurances or federations. Snorkeling, spearfishing, or freediving death are often investigated just like common drownings.

9. What agencies claim to have a vested interest in diving safety, and are they doing an adequate job?
Insurance agencies like DAN or AXA, freediving federations like AIDA, CMAS, FFESSM or others, manufacturers like the society of Terry Maas who develops the freediving safety vest, local authorities who enforce safe practices at pool trainings (like many do in France), and certainly some others

10. Should the federal government be involved in training or licensing divers? (Don’t kill the messenger, I’m just asking a simple question).
Indeed in France it is so - all higher level instructor licenses are issued under rather strict rules under national laws, and they receive a diploma from the state. Only state approved instructors may practice the activity professionally or commercially. It certainly has both positive and negative sides, but if you look at it purely from the point of view of safety, the positives may prevail (which is not the case from other angles, of course).

 

[Pliny]

Good response Trux. Thanks. I'll take some additional time to read and digest what you have said. For now this is my first reaction so some of it.
Your Apnea.cz site is most edifying. I haven't kept up with the literature for a while. (I happen to live near the Navy Undersea Warfare Library at Keyport WA and used to volunteer there).
DAN, and the Univ. of Rhode Is. before that, had previously avoided accident rates. I wrote them a letter a few years ago pointing that out, and since then (probably NOT due to my letter) they have done some limited, but interesting work in that area.
You are correct in pointing out that dive insurance companies have an interest in accident rates because the underwriters need more than a rough idea of accident rates to set premiums.
There is a very important and fundamental difference between industrial safety and recreational safety. You can force employees to do training, follow procedures, work in a safe environment and even fire the inept ones. Perhaps that is obvious, but that difference limits what you can do with recreational safety in a free society. Something I have wrestled with.
It is interesting that France has laws governing licencing of dive instructors. It is a ticklish subject because for many the freedom diving offers is its most pleasing attraction. So you have to deal with some pretty tough issues in the phylosophy of law when you try to decide if laws concerning diving would serve us well. With every law there is something gained and something lost. So you have to ask, "what gives us the greatest utility?"
inside.msj.edu/academics/faculty/whiter/UTILITY.htm

 

[Pliny]

I see my link didn't work. "Google" or "Wikipedia" the term "Principle of Utility" if you are interested in the definition/explanation. It may be a bit esoteric for this discussion.

 

[trux]

BTW, you can see some of the documents from DAN listed here:
DAN Divers Alert Network : Medical Research : Publications
There are also other documents from other authors, but Mr. Pollock seems to be the main person for the freediving safety. I do not have them listed in my database, because they are not available online. And I do not quite understand why, because when you ask for some, DAN will send it to you by email. I received some of them in such way. I'll have to ask them whether they do not want to change their policy - it does not make a lot of sense. It would be in their own interest if the information was available to the community.


So for example the following documents are quite interesting:

• Breath-hold diving: performance and safety
• Breath-hold diving: workshop proceedings of the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society/Divers Alert Net
• DAN breath-hold incident database : 2004-2005 records
• Development of the DAN breath-hold incident database
• DAN begins reporting on incident collection of breath-holding diving
• Learning from breath-hold diving incidents
• Results of Divers Alert Network diving incident report survey

 

[npollock]

All DAN reports are now available for download at no charge. The breath-hold diving workshop proceedings includes the two articles that follow it:

• Breath-hold diving: workshop proceedings of the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society/Divers Alert Net
  • DAN breath-hold incident database : 2004-2005 records
  • Development of the DAN breath-hold incident database

I have attached a PDF of the first article you listed. It was a review paper published in Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine (but the journal does not hold copyright on individual articles).

Pollock NW. Breath-hold diving: performance and safety. Diving Hyperb Med. 2008; 38(2): 79-86.

Two of the final three items on your list were published in the lay literature. Copyright rules tend to make such items a little more difficult to access although I expect this to continue to evolve to more open access. Those that appeared in Alert Diver can certainly be requested on an individual basis. I am not sure about the Spearfishing article.

Pollock NW. Learning from breath-hold diving incidents. Spearfishing. 2005; Fall: 14-7.

Pollock NW. DAN begins reporting on incident collection of breath-holding diving. Alert Diver. 2005; May/June: 50-3.

I have lost track of the last item on your list:

• Results of Divers Alert Network diving incident report survey

The DAN annual report has included sections on breath-hold diving incidents since 2005 (again available for free download from the DAN website). The greatest challenge in studying incidents is limited resources and limited detail available after the fact. We have an online reporting system that will soon be fully active that will help us collect detail from non-fatal events for which more details should be available and illuminating.

 

[trux]

Welcome to Deeper Blue, Neal! Glad you peeked in, and hope you can feed us with some more data, and information, or answer our questions, time to time. I wonder how you managed to locate this discussion here on DB so fast (within a few hours after posting your name), and appreciate you gave us some more links and the document.

Glad DAN now offers the documents for free download. Can you please tell us where we can do so? The library listings show no download links. I'll be very happy to add them to my database of freediving related documents.

Thank you!

 

[npollock]

I have keyword flags set up that are sometimes timely.

You can find workshop proceedings from the DAN homepage (DAN Divers Alert Network). Select 'Medical Research' and 'Publications' to see the list of those available beneath the search options.

I was surprised today to find that the link to the breath-hold proceedings was not active. I have asked for this to be resolved.

DAN annual reports can be accessed directly from the DAN homepage. Scroll down and click on the annual report cover on the left. There is a sign-in procedure to download the PDF but no charge.

 

[yakfisher]

I read everything I can about safety and want to learn but please don't put the government in charge of my recreation. The government can regulate things where you would endanger others (like flying a plane0. If I am doing something where I am only dangerous to myself then let me do it.

I would like to see the equipment industry voluntarily give basic safety info to people. For example when I bought my suit and fins at a shop I wasn't told anything about freedive safety. It's my responsibility to learn but it would have been nice for the dealer to offer some info.

 

[apneaboy]

I think rather than discussing freediving as a single sport maybe it could be broken down into its various segments

Spearing
Constant weight
Static
No-limits

etc etc

Also competition dives

Each will probably have different results and be more realistic as some will have a higher risk than others (no-limits for example)

Once statistical clusters are analysed the numbers are then useable.

I would suggest that nearly all freediving deaths were solo divers (or those with inadequate safety at least) or no-limits.

In the UK the BSAC deliver a very detailed annual report on scuba / skin diver incidents with breakdowns of quals / depths / equipment (rebreathers for example) etc, i'll find a link later

 

[fcallagy]

Yak Dan usually have a good annual report also. We can endanger others especially if we dive in bad weather as rescue services may have to put to see to rescue us thereby endangering them. I don't think other than maybe a printed sheet along with the product how you can be educated in a shop and if so where do you draw the line kids fins etc.
Also once you advise people how do you know they ahve taken enough on board or you have advised them enough? Also should you buy a wetsuit for surfing do you need advise on this etc where do you stop?

 

[mermaidgirl]

All DAN reports are now available for download at no charge. The breath-hold diving workshop proceedings includes the two articles that follow it:

• Breath-hold diving: workshop proceedings of the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society/Divers Alert Net
  • DAN breath-hold incident database : 2004-2005 records
  • Development of the DAN breath-hold incident database

I have attached a PDF of the first article you listed. It was a review paper published in Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine (but the journal does not hold copyright on individual articles).

Pollock NW. Breath-hold diving: performance and safety. Diving Hyperb Med. 2008; 38(2): 79-86.

Two of the final three items on your list were published in the lay literature. Copyright rules tend to make such items a little more difficult to access although I expect this to continue to evolve to more open access. Those that appeared in Alert Diver can certainly be requested on an individual basis. I am not sure about the Spearfishing article.

Pollock NW. Learning from breath-hold diving incidents. Spearfishing. 2005; Fall: 14-7.

Pollock NW. DAN begins reporting on incident collection of breath-holding diving. Alert Diver. 2005; May/June: 50-3.

I have lost track of the last item on your list:

• Results of Divers Alert Network diving incident report survey

The DAN annual report has included sections on breath-hold diving incidents since 2005 (again available for free download from the DAN website). The greatest challenge in studying incidents is limited resources and limited detail available after the fact. We have an online reporting system that will soon be fully active that will help us collect detail from non-fatal events for which more details should be available and illuminating.

Hi Neal!
It's Carla from the Cayman Comp.one of your test "victims" --uh, I mean subjects. Any news on your bubble research?
Looking forward to hearing from you and the DAN reports

 

[trux]

I read everything I can about safety and want to learn but please don't put the government in charge of my recreation. The government can regulate things where you would endanger others (like flying a plane0. If I am doing something where I am only dangerous to myself then let me do it.

I do not think that anyone suggested that freediving should be regulated in any such way. But regulation of the education system by laws and standards has a lot of sense. I'd find it justified if people who teach others how to freedive, had to meet certain standards defined by an official body. As I wrote in France it is already partially that case - professional instructors have to pass state certification. It is certainly not perfect, but I think it is much better and safer than if any daredevil who never studied anything about freediving physiology or safety, could self-proclaim himself a freediving guru and start teaching others freediving in a hazardous way.

And in some countries (especially around the Med), governments are already involved in the freediving regulation in other ways too. For example the use of a buoy with a dive flag is mandatory in many countries. And I find it justified. If now only boat pilots learned how to respect them.