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.
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.