[dghlsakjg]

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.

[vablings]

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

[dghlsakjg]

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 doing an activity that stresses your lungs and circulatory system in an unforgiving environment 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 besides old guy heart attacks where I worked was a young guy that had a heart attack.

[wtetzner]

I'm pretty sure just riding in a car is more dangerous.

[dghlsakjg]

Not when you normalize by time spent doing the activity.

If you normalize by incidents per participant, sure.

Keep in mind that the average recreational diver does one or fewer dive trips per year, with maybe 10 dives on a very dive intensive trip. A small population of divers are massively more active. Drivers on the other hand have the opposite distribution. A very active driver spends more time in their car in a week than even the most active recreational divers.