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The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

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Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#191

Post by ska »

whymauri wrote: post #172
ska wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not actually the people riding like lunatics that manage to kill themselves on motorcycles at high rates. There are a couple of high risk groups. One is young guys with a combination of inexperience and a desire to go fast(er than conditions/skills allow). Another is older guys, often who haven't ridden for years if ever, who get into trouble. Again inexperience is a big factor in both.

The older guys scare me more, especially on scenic drives like Blue Ridge. They can outright bully normal drivers (surrounding them to force them to go faster). Of course, these are the vast minority of motorcyclists, but it's still a recurrent issue.

One thing about places like the Blue Ridge is they are popular enough for tourism that they draw people from all over the country - including those who have never or rarely driven similar roads. That plus being crowded can be a perfect storm for stupid accidents.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#193

Post by hbrav »

Natsu wrote: post #183
Syonyk wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to comb the NTSB records - they're aggregated by various groups. A lot of them involve loss of control of some form or another - typically in instrument flight conditions, often enough by someone who either doesn't have an instrument rating or is badly out of practice. A VFR only pilot in the clouds has a lifespan measured in minutes. Running out of fuel for some reason is depressingly common - and whi…

Sometimes this just makes me think that every pilot needs some IRF experience and a fuel gauge that has an alarm that says 'land now, you moron' or such.

Small airfcraft fuel gauges are notoriously unreliable. If it's reading low, yes, be alarmed. But sometimes the float gets stuck, so if your estimate for how much fuel you should have burned puts your fuel lower, trust that.

At least in the UK, getting a private pilot's licence did involve a couple of hours of simulated IFR. Not enough to do anything complex. But enough to turn 180, and be able to follow detailed controller instructions.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#194

Post by spaetzleesser »

mxcrossb wrote: post #157
spaetzleesser wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“not even go through the most basic safety checks prior to diving” From my experience the dive operators in tourist spots often don’t want you to touch anything. Kind of makes sense because most tourists like myself only have a very vague recollection of the procedure.

How many of those tourists will die as a result of this? The data seems to suggest it’s vanishingly small.

I don’t know the stats but from what I read a lot of accidents are not tourists but more serious divers who go below 20-30 meters. I haven’t heard about people getting injured while on regular tourist dives.

Same with motorcycle riding or paragliding: it gets dangerous once you are beyond the beginner stage.

I really don’t know what could go wrong on the typical tourist dive if the dive master keeps an eye on people and you don’t panic.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#195

Post by bonzini »

Starwatcher2001 wrote: post #126
spaetzleesser wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“not even go through the most basic safety checks prior to diving” From my experience the dive operators in tourist spots often don’t want you to touch anything. Kind of makes sense because most tourists like myself only have a very vague recollection of the procedure.

If you really have only a vague recollection of basic safety checks you shouldn't be diving - seriously.

Absolutely, I am a somewhat experienced diver looking at certifications, but it's all too easy to forget things even if you have more than a vague recollection. Whenever I haven't dived for a couple years, I always ask an instructor to check on me while I prepare for the first dive, because I just don't trust myself.

A dive or two later I am okay with helping newly certified divers both on shore and on the boat, but on the first dive after some time you should never overestimate your memory.

Diving is safe if you know how to keep it safe.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#196

Post by dhimes »

JPKab wrote: post #117
maratc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no marine biologist but you can be certain that humans are not a regular diet of barracudas. Once, a 5-meter tiger shark came to me out of the blue and got too close, but as humans aren't a regular diet of tiger sharks either, it swam away.

I've met literally dozens of people who talk about their close brush with a barracuda while diving. They are a minimal threat but they look kind of scary so people always always think that they had a close call with one when the barracuda is just doing what they do which is checking out a human who might hand them a fish. It always makes me chuckle because I hear people tell their barracudas stories and they always s…

Barracudas can freak you out because they seem to be curious. They just hang out and watch you. The only time I've heard of someone getting bitten was on a YouTube sailing channel where the group was making fun of one of the crew for being the only known human to actually be bit by a barracuda. IIRC he was messing with it.

Jelly fish, OTOH, suck.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#197

Post by Syonyk »

hbrav wrote: post #193
Natsu wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes this just makes me think that every pilot needs some IRF experience and a fuel gauge that has an alarm that says 'land now, you moron' or such.

Small airfcraft fuel gauges are notoriously unreliable. If it's reading low, yes, be alarmed. But sometimes the float gets stuck, so if your estimate for how much fuel you should have burned puts your fuel lower, trust that. At least in the UK, getting a private pilot's licence did involve a couple of hours of simulated IFR. Not enough to do anything complex. But enough to turn 180, and be able to follow detailed con…

In the US, you need a couple hours of simulated instrument time as well. One difference in the US is that you can legally fly VFR at night - even if it may be unwise in a lot of areas. A lot of countries (I believe the UK is one of them?) require an instrument ticket for flying at night.

If you're up over, say, Iowa at night? Tons of farms, flat, lights everywhere? It's fine. Pretty, you can still see stuff, and short of an invisible power line for an off airport landing, it's almost like flying during the day.

Out in Idaho, in the mountains? You're pretty dumb to fly VFR at night. There's no light anywhere, lots of hard rock, and plenty of clouds that like to appear with no warning.

But, yes, fuel gauges suck. The problem is that even if you put something like a fuel totalizer in, you still only know how much has gone into the engine, not how much is left in the wings. I understand a loose or missing fuel cap will drain a Cessna's wing tank in about 10-15 minutes.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#198

Post by mjevans »

s_dev wrote: post #142
ethbr0 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First class of dive course at CWRU: Older Navy diver instructor walks in "So I know each of you is coming into this class with different levels of experience. What we're going to do first is a short test on your proficiency for 20 minutes. It will be graded on completeness, not correctness. You are not expected to know all the answers. I'm just interested in gauging what you know. Be aware, there are a lot of questio…

Other versions of this test include the last question being "Don't answer any questions". The habit the teacher was trying to impart was "read the whole paper" first before answering any questions -- particularly if there are multiple choice questions.

One of my middle school teachers gave that sheet out to the class. I was that one kid that took it seriously, but had no prior-example knowledge to even bother reading ahead.

The test with the bail-out at the start sounds logically fine. The test I was given was just a cruel trick from a trusted source of tests / knowledge provision.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#199

Post by pengaru »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #166
s_dev wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other versions of this test include the last question being "Don't answer any questions". The habit the teacher was trying to impart was "read the whole paper" first before answering any questions -- particularly if there are multiple choice questions.

This is an irrational party(professor) trick that wastes everyone's time. An argument could be made for "read the (short) instructions at the start". An argument cannot be made for this. There is often very little value to skimming the entire question set before the exam.

It's been a very long time since I had to do any tests, but back in my school days, with multiple-choice tests, I evolved a method of quickly answering everything I was confident to know 100% throughout the entire test in a first pass, reserving the rest for subsequent increasingly slower passes.

What tended to occur was the earlier fast passes at the very least warmed up the cache upstairs, and some previously unclear questions became obvious. Then for the remaining questions, they often had dependencies with other questions and their answers, which I could use to deduce probably correct answers.

This was obscenely effective. To the extent that I would ace tests in classes I barely attended and never turned in homework for, in some cases culminating in teachers publicly accusing me of cheating on the exams. Though some of that was also due to switching from private to public school where I had already learned the material in the previous years.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#200

Post by dllthomas »

henshao wrote: post #181
throw1234651234 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an irrational party(professor) trick that wastes everyone's time. An argument could be made for "read the (short) instructions at the start". An argument cannot be made for this. There is often very little value to skimming the entire question set before the exam.

I don't know about you, but for my tests on a curve where I might not be able to answer all the questions, doing the quick skim to answer the low hanging fruit before getting to the harder problems is a good way to make sure you don't run out of time and lose out.

Also, content of later questions can be useful earlier, and getting some background brain cells working on the hard stuff while you churn through the easy stuff could be worthwhile.

It's a good lesson, but it's a lesson about taking tests not about the material. I can see arguments for and against including that in any given class.

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