Comment by dghlsakjg
3 hours ago
Scuba diving is a pretty risky activity on the scale of things that rich people do in their everyday life. Golf and cycling are a lot safer.
Scuba fatalities fall into a few buckets, the big two are inexperience/bad decision making, and older folks with health issues (underwater heart attacks/respiratory distress, basically).
As a former dive pro, an overweight 63 year old is someone that I would keep a very close eye on while diving.
The odds are pretty low, but there is a reason that many life insurance companies exclude scuba divers from their coverage.
That said, I'm happy to let him live as dangerously as he wants, he deserves it.
It's not that risky Scuba diving is about as dangerous as driving in terms of fatality per 100,000. The mitigation of this risk is different too. Theoretically if you do everything correct in scuba your chance of death is virtually zero which means that your risk profile decreases with experience. Driving does not enjoy the same luxury you could be a perfect driver and get obliterated by a semi-truck running a red light at any time.
The most common reason people die while on scuba is running out of air, if you always buddy and you have a bail-out cylinder that should be essentially impossible while rec diving
"but there is a reason that many life insurance companies exclude scuba divers from their coverage."
They will refuse to cover you outside of rec diving because of all the reasons I just stated
The stats you cited normalize for participants but NOT frequency. The average diver spends several hundred times less time diving than they do driving. Most certified divers dive once or less per year.
As I stated, the most common way to die diving is from a heart attack or other health incident according to DAN. Running out of air is a very uncommon cause of death in rec diving absent a primary factor like entanglement. So no, you are absolutely not reducing your chance to 0 by doing everything right. You are eliminating the chance of suffering a death from one of the things that doesn’t kill a lot of divers. An overweight old person is inherently high risk no matter how thorough their skills and preparation.
Double check your health insurance, many exclude rec diving as well.
Every single dive instructor has a story of seeing an old guy have a heart attack, myself included (he survived, barely). The only other death I know of where I worked was a young guy that had a heart attack.