Thal, you need to go work in a big city ER for a few consecutive weekends.
People who go to college are a selected group. People who go to HIGH SCHOOL are a selected group.
The people who get mentioned in Darwin awards aren't Phi Beta Kappa. And the people who say, "Look, ma, no hands!" are everywhere.
The young man who died here in Puget Sound a couple of years ago, doing a 200 foot bounce dive on a single Al80, knew better. The guy who swam into Vortex knew better. The woman who died in Peacock doing visual jumps absolutely knew better.
I don't care how good a class you teach, and I don't care how hard you try to find all the dingbats and weed them out, there will be people who will dive without taking your class, or there will be people who will nod in all the right places, and once you aren't looking over their shoulder, they'll do as they please.
Does this mean that I don't think better education is a good thing? Of course not! I have spent probably hundreds of hours of my time, typing answers to questions and sending people to quality links, and help folks find good diving classes and good instructors where they are. But the people I'm helping are people who want to be helped. For everyone I've interacted with who has wanted any of what I have to offer, there's someone else on this board who has defended solo diving with 20 dives, or deep diving on small tanks, or some other type of behavior that the vast majority of us immediately jump on and try to talk them out of.
Human beings come in a spectrum, and some are smart and some are careful and some are not very bright and some are wildly irresponsible. I'm sorry, but nothing done with the scuba educational establishment is going to change that fact.
People who go to college are a selected group. People who go to HIGH SCHOOL are a selected group.
The people who get mentioned in Darwin awards aren't Phi Beta Kappa. And the people who say, "Look, ma, no hands!" are everywhere.
The young man who died here in Puget Sound a couple of years ago, doing a 200 foot bounce dive on a single Al80, knew better. The guy who swam into Vortex knew better. The woman who died in Peacock doing visual jumps absolutely knew better.
I don't care how good a class you teach, and I don't care how hard you try to find all the dingbats and weed them out, there will be people who will dive without taking your class, or there will be people who will nod in all the right places, and once you aren't looking over their shoulder, they'll do as they please.
Does this mean that I don't think better education is a good thing? Of course not! I have spent probably hundreds of hours of my time, typing answers to questions and sending people to quality links, and help folks find good diving classes and good instructors where they are. But the people I'm helping are people who want to be helped. For everyone I've interacted with who has wanted any of what I have to offer, there's someone else on this board who has defended solo diving with 20 dives, or deep diving on small tanks, or some other type of behavior that the vast majority of us immediately jump on and try to talk them out of.
Human beings come in a spectrum, and some are smart and some are careful and some are not very bright and some are wildly irresponsible. I'm sorry, but nothing done with the scuba educational establishment is going to change that fact.