I can not say I agree with your statement that most diving deaths are attributed to medical issues. I would say it is all a combination of: 1. Inadequate training- I’ve seen OWSI’s that I would not pass for my OW class. If the instructor themselves can not dive, then how can some unsuspecting student know how to dive? 2. The "dumbing/ watering down" of courses- Agencies tend to go with "Anyone can learn to dive". Since I am an affiliated instructor, I don’t get much say on who I teach & cringe when I have a junior,... In most cases (not all) 10-14 is a bit young & immature IMO. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the "family activity" thing,... but the maturity of the kid should be taken into consideration before signing them up & rarely is. The courses are also so worked down because of the busy schedules of the students,.... it is difficult to give them all the information they need. There are some that if they could earn their certifications in 1 hr, they would.... The instant gratification, thing. 3. Divers diving well beyond their training. I’ve seen 2 versions of this. First version is the ignorant diver who either does the dive, or blindly follows the dive leader into situations in which they do not belong, without a clue to what they are getting themselves into. They don’t know, what they don’t know. The second version is the diver that believes they don’t need any additional training or any stinking, money grubbing instructor to teach them how to do very advanced diving safely,... with the mentality of "the pioneers did it without training". True,... but how many of those pioneers are still around? Not many,... Most paid the ultimate price for developing that kind of diving. Why reinvent the wheel? I am not saying that there aren’t divers that could teach themselves,.... but it is generally very far & few in between. 4. Complacency- Yes, it does kill. As a cave diver, I found this past spring that I was becoming complacent with my dives. I got a wake- up call in April when we arrived at Ginnie Springs & found out that the night before, only an hour after we had left, that there was a fatality. That next morning, we arrived as some recovery team members brought out a scooter belonging to the deceased. For some reason, it struck me VERY hard,... I had to sit out a dive & collect myself. It made me really reflect on how I conducted my dives,... & I made adjustments to correct it. yes, I had done so many dives in Ginnie, that I had become too comfortable. That fatality, gave me the wake- up call I needed, before the unthinkable happened to me. 5. Medical, does happen, but not as often as other issues. 6. Other reasons for accidents in the water- improperly maintained equipment (rare, but it does happen). Inadequate equipment for the dives. I have seen tech divers that looked like they walked out of Fred Sandford’s junkyard, with stuff hanging everywhere, instead of being cleaned up & streamlined. I have seen some equipment "engineered" with so many potential failure points, it would make your head spin. Am I saying that every diver must have the newest, most expensive equipment out there? Absolutely not. But it should fit the complexity of the dive. Don’t bring a small claw hammer to a job that requires a 10 lb sledge hammer. Use the appropriate tools. To some degree in diving, there has to be some trial & error,.... but keep in mind, that in some kinds of diving the margin for error is very small. OK, OK, I’ll get off my soap box now. Anytime we lose a member of our diving community, for whatever reason, it is a loss. We need to investigate what happened & why it happened & learn the lessons about it.