The nontechnical causes of diving accidents: Can U.S. Navy divers learn from other industries?
Date
2007Author
O'Connor, Paul
Metadata
Show full item recordUsage
This item's downloads: 508 (view details)
Recommended Citation
O'Connor, P. (2007) 'The nontechnical causes of diving accidents: Can U.S. Navy divers learn from other industries?'. Journal Of The Undersea And Hyperbaric Medical Society, 34 (1):51-59.
Abstract
Although U.S. Navy diving is remarkably safe, because of the high-risk environment in which military divers work, accidents and mishaps do occur. Failures in leadership and situation awareness (particularly in risk and time assessment) were found to be the two most common causes of fatal and nonfatal U.S. Navy diving accidents and near misses. Responses to an attitude survey showed that junior divers want to ask questions, but senior divers do not desire to be questioned. In other high reliability industries (e.g. aviation, medicine) methods have been developed to identify, analyze and mitigate human error. The relevance of these techniques for U.S. Navy diving are discussed.