@chillyinCanada
That double entendre made my night. However, it still doesn't change the fact that none of your scenarios are inherently dangerous in and of themselves, or relevant to cave diving. The simple act of being in the woods without training or equipment is not deadly, however the simple act of cave diving is deadly by its very nature. Imagine the woods being in the middle of winter at -40 in a blizzard. That would be a better correlation, as it requires both training and equipment to survive. If you have neither, if you're outside in the woods at -40 in a blizzard, you will die. While scuba diving might be a stroll in the woods, cave diving is surviving the blizzard because you think snowflakes are pretty.
I'm not a say no kind of guy. I love saying yes, I love investigating things, I love finding answers. However, I am a cave diver, by our very nature we are experts on how not to die while cave diving. That's all cave training is, how not to die. Every exit in training your cave instructor is trying to kill you in any untold number of ways. There are bad cave divers, there are stupid cave divers, but there are no cave divers that don't know how to not die in caves. As such, cave diving accident analysis is generally very easy. It all comes down to not following the rules of cave diving. Often times that is all very apparent, in which case analysis is quick and easy. This is one of those times. Sometimes it's not so apparent, those require much more effort to understand. This is NOT one of those times.
When an open water diver goes into the cave, they are absolutely breaking the cardinal rules of cave diving. What more needs to be analyzed? The why doesn't matter, that part is obvious, they were untrained and unequipped. Why did they lose their buddy? Because they weren't following the rules. Why did they run out of gas? Because they weren't following the rules. Why did they get lost? Because they weren't following the rules. It doesn't matter how many rules they break, and it doesn't matter why they broke the rules. They broke the rules and it got them dead. The fact of the matter is, when an open water diver goes into the cave and dies (non-medically related), analysis is very brief, and quite often even the most cursory analysis is more than adequate. We don't need to bring in CSI.
@Bob DBF
I agree wholeheartedly with almost everything you said, made all of those points myself earlier. The only one I disagree with is John R's ill-conceived attempt at analysis being relevant. We already have the tools, we already have the procedure, we already have the education, we already have the solution. The solution has existed for years. A Blueprint for Survival laid the solution out years ago and the solution has only gotten better since. A cave diver understands this, because he's been drilled with all of that since before he went into the overhead. The thing that's so frustrating is that we cave divers have been saying this FOR YEARS and people still disregard it. We know why these accidents happen, and the only way to prevent them is either through proper training, which takes a boat load of work and time and effort which most divers are unwilling to do, or prevent them by removing access to those unqualified. Since we can't put a grate over every cave, spring, siphon, and sinkhole that someone wants to dive, we're stuck with the reaper signs and the warnings and the recommendations delivered by instructors. No amount of flow charts will fix that. You can show a million powerpoint slides to an open water diver and they are still going to make poor choices.
As for "just say no," what is your solution? We tell children that they are not allowed to drive until they have had proper training. Should we revisit that procedure? We tell people not to fly airplanes until they've had proper training. Should we change that as well? In both scenarios there have been people that have bucked that trend and succeeded. There are also people who have ignored that and perished. The same happens in cave diving. The same happens with any inherently risky activity. I think your drug argument is pretty specious.
What we don't have is a willingness to personally remove ourselves from the situation when it is required. We believe we can abdicate our responsibility to someone else. We've already given the operators a safe way to run their carnival, but despite this they continue to do the opposite. And as long as that happens, people will continue to die. Because unless it results in some form of legislated regulation, the carnival operator will always chase the money. PADI has, by multiple orders of magnitude, greater reach than any certifying agency in the world. In every PADI course they discuss the dangers inherent in diving in the overhead environment. If their reach cannot convince someone that it is their own responsibility to take heed of their training and call foul when someone wants them to do something dangerous, no amount of irrelevant analysis is going to change that.
C'mon
@Jack Hammer, who's more complacent, the cave diver that looks at the evidence and makes an accurate assessment without needing to call in the FBI crime lab, or the OW diver who swims into the cave zone? You act like we haven't looked at the evidence, we have, we just know we don't need a whole flow chart to make a well-informed judgement.
This next part isn't directed at you but people in general...
What is all comes down to is if you were a cave diver, you would understand. If you're not a cave diver, you don't know what you don't know, and therefore less likely understand. As cave diver we get frustrated because we understand all of this stuff already. We're more than happy to answer questions and explain, but don't argue with us. Because what you're really saying is "kiss my ass, I don't need to know, I know better than you."
