It’s still miles better than Cabs, I can’t believe this even has to be argued! When was the last time anyone here defending cabs/shitting on Uber actually took a cab somewhere?
The few times I had to/decided to take a taxi, I got absolutely ripped off. And with an Uber, even if it’s expensive, you at least know before hand how much you’re paying. You can decline if you think it’s too much. Good luck trying that with taxis.
You seem to be completely missing the point I was making, I just don’t know if it’s because you are just looking to argue or what.
I have talked to cave divers. All of them said these cave diving deaths were 100% human error.
I never said it’s not dangerous. Ever. I specifically said it is dangerous. Which is why you do need training, like I also mentioned… But if you are trained and have the proper equipment, then (depending on the cave) it’s not as dangerous as people make it out. The cave which lead to this conversation specifically, is also not that dangerous as far as cave diving goes. It’s “only” at 60 meters, only has 3 chambers, does not seem to have tight places you had to squeeze into. The divers who recuvered the bodies have been in caves that were 150+ meters deep, hundreds of meters long, with tight openings. But these victims went with no training, no guide line, and one tank of air. That is suicide.
Is driving a truck on a busy highway dangerous? Sure, there’s many blocks of steel weighting tons and wheezing by at very fast speeds, and it’s a more difficult vehicle to control. And there are accidents and roads deaths everyday. But if you have the training and take caution it’s relatively fine. What the cave divers here did is the equivalent of driving a heavy truck in a highway, but with no driver’s license, the truck hasn’t passed inspection, and they’re not wearing a seat belt. If someone does that, and then someone else comes along trying to use it as an excuse to talk about how dangerous it is, that would be sensationalism and fear mongering.
It is not viable for cave exploration, much less body recovery.
Salt water already makes communication hard enough at that depth I think, the rock layers make it harder. The subs also cannot get everywhere a person can. A person can drag themselves through tight holes if needed, the drone cannot. Finally, body retrieval. The bodies are bloated and decomposing in salt water. How would you attach the drone to them, much less get the bodies out of the cave without risking rubbing them on the harsh and shredding rocks of the cave? The way divers do it, is by putting them in a body bag before taking them out.
I don’t know much about rescue procedures like that. In cave diving you do always have a guide line, but that’s so you have a way to find the exit if you can’t see anything, but it’s not used to pull anyone. What your saying seems different, but I don’t know about it.
It’s hard to find hard data for cave diving, but you can make some estimates. I talked a bit more about this in another comment, but a high estimate I got is 0.16 deaths per each cave dive. For free diving there’s several places I found saying there’s 1 death for each 500 recreational free dives, so 0.2 deaths per dive.
Cave divers have multiplies of everything because they know redundancy is important, and they have protocols to deal with different problems. In free diving you just hold your breath and try to estimate how much time you have. If you mess up you pass out and probably drown.
To be clear, I’m not saying cave diving is without risk. I myself have no interest in it because caves are boring to me, and so it’s not worth the risk which does exist. I just don’t like the over the top fear mongering I see whenever there is a story like this.
I’m on a phone so it’s not convenient, but the first study I found showed like 3 cave diving deaths in 2007 (most recent year they showed), although the trend seemed to be for it to get lower. Still, this year we are at 6 already just from this incident, so let’s purposely overestimate and say 6 per year. As for the total number of dives, there are extremely famous caves all around the world that get year round activity. It’s hard to find hard data, but if we play it conservatively we can estimate and say 10 per day, that’s like 3650 per year. So 6/3650 -> 0.16 divers die in each cave dive.
There might be unreported deaths, but there’s also a lot of unreported dives in caves people don’t really know of and in remote areas. This dive might have gone unreported if not for the deaths (it was illegal for them to be there at that depth). And it’s important to remember, if early reports are accurate, these people were clearly not qualified to be diving at 50m, much less in a cave.
Now free diving: Number of fatalities in 2007 was 42, and the number seems to have increased slightly (52 in 2017). Data is easier to find for some reason, and plenty resources seem to indicate that the rate of death in recreational free divers is 1/500, so 0.2 deaths per each dive.
So despite inflated number for cave diving deaths, and low estimate of cave dives in a year, free diving is still more deadly.
It’s not too hard to figure out why. It’s still scuba. When cave diving you can recover from mistakes. You have information on how much air you have left, and multiple of everything you need as redundancy, and so you can sort any problems you have. There are drills you do in case you lose the guide line, for example. In free diving you are just going by feeling. If you miscalculate how much air there is in your lungs and how long it will take you to resurface, you’ll pass out and probably drown.
To be clear, I’m not saying cave diving is without risk. I myself have no interest in it because caves are boring to me, and so it’s not worth the risk which does exist. I just don’t like the over the top fear mongering I see whenever there is a story like this.
Right, there are a lot of accidents and deaths, but it’s still unlikely to happen. Both things are true. And a lot of those deaths are from unqualified people who dived into a cave anyway. It’s sort of like saying “flying a plane is dangerous, I’ve seen a lot of videos about crashes and people dying - people were not made to fly”. As long as the pilot has proper training and the equipment is in proper condition, it’s not really that dangerous.
There are a lot more deaths caused by free diving (even in percentile), for example, but those stories aren’t as interesting and don’t make for good videos, so they don’t get talked about much.
It depends on what you mean by dangerous. Of course it is by definition a dangerous sport, but if you have the proper training, you prepare properly, and you don’t go being your skill or what you planned for, the chances of death are actually not high.
Like, rock climbing is dangerous. If you go scale a huge mountain with no training or proper gear you’ll die. But with training and proper gear and planning you should be fine.
Plan for your level, and dive the plan. Like I said in the other comment, most deaths are from people who didn’t have the training.
I’m a diver but not that qualified, and far from an expert, but the fact that five (supposedly experienced) divers died, and now even a rescue diver has died, tells me this is in big part to do with the location itself rather than failure in the divers part.
I don’t remember the names, but some caves have water currents pulling in, and others pushing out. Out are the safest ones because it’s easier to get out. In are the most dangerous, because you might be going further than you realize and to come back you have to swim against the current - you won’t have enough air to make it back. That said, usually even experienced cave divers stay far from those caves, precisely because they know how dangerous they are. Also, if you are diving in a foreign place, you should really go with a dive guide who knows the area. AFAIK, there was no guide.
So even then, there was probably some type of mess up on the driver’s side. Because it seems they should not have been performing that dive, much less with no dive guide.
And statistically, the majority of victims of cave diving deaths were people who are not certified cave divers.
I’m saying all this because I’ve seen so many people talk about how dangerous it is, but statistically if you are qualified it’s safer than free diving. But no one complaints about that being dangerous.
EDIT: I should also mention I could not read the article, I got paywalled. I’m having to go just by the title.
Social Democrats. Like in Portugal, don’t let the name trick you. Just as North Korea is also not a Republic or Democratic.
They were not capable of taking Ukraine in 3 days, but they still tried unfortunately. More important than what they can do, is what they think they can do. And more than that, is what they might want to/see as benefitial to do, whether it might succeed or not. And by “they” in this case, I really just mean Putin.