How rebreathers kill people

[Ingemar Lundgren]

Found an interesting PDF from the organization Deep Life. It is worth a read and seems objective. http://www.deeplife.co.uk/files/How_Rebreathers_Kill_People.pdf

Are there any statistics available on rebreather accidents? Deep life claims 900 times greater chance of death per hour of use than Open Circuit SCUBA. Weather Deep life is objective or have there own agenda i can not say for sure but the PDF is never the less an interesting read.

[Deep6]

Interesting to note that despite numerous failures being caused by electronic systems, these guys keep suggesting more automatic methods of "safety".

I wonder if anybody has consulted the military for accident analysis on RBs? There are certainly enough dives being done on them worldwide to create a basis for some interesting statistics.

[Ingemar Lundgren]

Yeah that kind of goes against logic.

[EBT]

Unless you're in the business of designing and licensing designs for rebreathers/control electronics.

Did someone say "vested interest".

[Deep6]

Well, in that case I'd be positively surprised that "they" put together that slideshow! Talk about scaring divers away from CCR...

Another point I noticed was several situations where diver error (such as as forgetting to inflate BC, or ascending on a stuck SMB) was ignored in order to target equipment error.

Now, the equipment faults identified were probably genuine and should be addressed, but the slide show seemed to evaluate the diver's actions as far too "acceptable"... :cool:

[EBT]

think about it alex, when you're trying to promote your product, with all its bells and whistles.... you will of course argue that the whistles mitigate ANY diver stupidity.

Alex's (@ Deeplife) stuff is interesting, but you do need to read it with the above in mind.

[Deep6]

Copy that! Regardless, don't think I'll be jumping on the CCR bandwagon anytime soon... ;) We have enough issues with SCR units...

[saturation]

Found an interesting PDF from the organization Deep Life. It is worth a read and seems objective. http://www.deeplife.co.uk/files/How_Rebreathers_Kill_People.pdf

Are there any statistics available on rebreather accidents? Deep life claims 900 times greater chance of death per hour of use than Open Circuit SCUBA. Weather Deep life is objective or have there own agenda i can not say for sure but the PDF is never the less an interesting read.

You can find links to some rebreather stats on that pdf and reports at least from US DAN. If not, I have links at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/divingaccidents/

[Ingemar Lundgren]

It is the incident reports i found interesting, not the conclusions on how to make a rebreather safer. If you just have to use an eCCR they might be right though. The incidents illustrates quite well some of the dangers of CCR.