Waterford Garda dead - County Wexford, Ireland

[helodriver87]

I will take your advice and do some studying thanks

He's probably most well known for his involvement in the Wes Skiles case. He did some "testing" as an expert witness. It doesn't instill confidence in his methods or results. At the end of the day, he's selling rebreathers. He bills them as safer by attacking other manufacturers, but they're susceptible to the same inherent risks as most other units.

 

[Brad_Horn]

From my perspective, I would prefer to see truly independent examinations of product safety. Maybe, Deep Life is considered by some to be independent. Maybe not.

That would be excellent and despite a lot of very qualified folk calling for it very unlikely to ever happen, unfortunately. If manufacturers publish their testing and methodology it can be very enlightening however.

Other than someone checking what the download off the handset was it would appear that no actual accident analysis has been conducted in this example. By anyone.

As disclosure Deep Life did as an independent party test the JJ-BOV before it went through the CE process. It passed in CC mode but not OC mode. But I’d be very surprised if the diver was diving with one in this instance. Commented on because that’s the make of unit I understand to have been dived.

His sole motivation is to make every rebreather (but his, of course) look like a death trap. He sells the things, of course you're going to find exactly what you're looking for with his "analysis" of competitor's units. You can see some of his "testing" methods if you check out the currently active CCR Selection thread.

Mate, if you were interested you’d learn it wasn’t. Very hard to directly compare the performance of supposed underwater life support equipment for comparison if the majority are untested. And where some are tested it is interesting looking into that testing a little deeper. Especially when compared with the testing of OSEL’s units; which was only done to pass CE certification.

Feel free to sell me another CCR to dive on. All that I ask in your selection process is it has a minimum of 30% of the testing, such as WOB, hydrostatics, breathable volume and scrubber duration as required for EN14143 (and its technical file for audit) openly published and comparable. And that it has no obvious shortcomings to that standard or visually identifiable design issues to EN14143 or any other applicable ratified standard such as EN250 are present.
Cash waiting; with what you know, it shouldn’t be hard to spec me another rebreather to buy!

He's probably most well known for his involvement in the Wes Skiles case. He did some "testing" as an expert witness. It doesn't instill confidence in his methods or results. At the end of the day, he's selling rebreathers. He bills them as safer by attacking other manufacturers, but they're susceptible to the same inherent risks as most other units.

Thanks for bringing my name up. But I had zero direct involvement in that case or any! I was however surprised about the outcome of the accident analysis conducted by the expert witness. Whom didn’t even need the same unit as dived, just the same make/model, to identify a few minor design flaws like water blocked cells to start with. Which certainly did explain some odd things about the unit in question inclusive reports of Hyperoxia and why the divers using them were always reporting getting a lot of caustic water pooling in the scrubber (at the cells) which certainly weren’t the fault of the divers. Why that’s important for all rebreather divers is covered in DeepLife’s reporting on Oxygen Cells Deep Life Design Team: Selected Design Validation Reports for DL & Open Safety Equipment Ltd's Rebreathers

Is any of that relevant in this case. Possibly. But without accident analysis being conducted on the unit and reported on quite likely no one will ever know. Which is a shame.

 

[helodriver87]

That would be excellent and despite a lot of very qualified folk calling for it very unlikely to ever happen, unfortunately. If manufacturers publish their testing and methodology it can be very enlightening however.

Other than someone checking what the download off the handset was it would appear that no actual accident analysis has been conducted in this example. By anyone.

As disclosure Deep Life did as an independent party test the JJ-BOV before it went through the CE process. It passed in CC mode but not OC mode. But I’d be very surprised if the diver was diving with one in this instance. Commented on because that’s the make of unit I understand to have been dived.


Mate, if you were interested you’d learn it wasn’t. Very hard to directly compare the performance of supposed underwater life support equipment for comparison if the majority are untested. And where some are tested it is interesting looking into that testing a little deeper. Especially when compared with the testing of OSEL’s units; which was only done to pass CE certification.

Feel free to sell me another CCR to dive on. All that I ask in your selection process is it has a minimum of 30% of the testing, such as WOB, hydrostatics, breathable volume and scrubber duration as required for EN14143 (and its technical file for audit) openly published and comparable. And that it has no obvious shortcomings to that standard or visually identifiable design issues to EN14143 or any other applicable ratified standard such as EN250 are present.
Cash waiting; with what you know, it shouldn’t be hard to spec me another rebreather to buy!


Thanks for bringing my name up. But I had zero direct involvement in that case or any! I was however surprised about the outcome of the accident analysis conducted by the expert witness. Whom didn’t even need the same unit as dived, just the same make/model, to identify a few minor design flaws like water blocked cells to start with. Which certainly did explain some odd things about the unit in question inclusive reports of Hyperoxia and why the divers using them were always reporting getting a lot of caustic water pooling in the scrubber (at the cells) which certainly weren’t the fault of the divers. Why that’s important for all rebreather divers is covered in DeepLife’s reporting on Oxygen Cells Deep Life Design Team: Selected Design Validation Reports for DL & Open Safety Equipment Ltd's Rebreathers

Is any of that relevant in this case. Possibly. But without accident analysis being conducted on the unit and reported on quite likely no one will ever know. Which is a shame.

I stand corrected. I'm mixing up my ****** "testing" and "expert" opinions then. Rest of the point stands though. It's a ploy to sell rebreathers by disparaging the competition. Which I assume is why you plug your stuff incessantly.

Getting back to the original post, there are a number of ways to get an O2 spike in the loop. Preliminary indications are that this registered on the unit's PO2 monitoring since we know it occurred. Without knowing more, I think it's fair to cautiously assume that the unit "failed as designed" for lack of a better term and that the diver, for whatever reason, was unable to respond appropriately. That may be as much as we'll ever know.

 

[skippy311]

Very sad to hear. RIP

 

[KenGordon]

If you have information that contradicts the deeplife data you should link it.

Previously their deaths on CCR list included a young woman who died in in a 10m Kent lake doing her open water course.

If you search for the apocalypse, Brad, etc on here, TDF, rebreather world etc you will find that they are not at all credible. You will find long arguments about CO2 measurements between them and a proper expert revealing the degree of nonsense they sprout.

It seems a fair conclusion to say that they try to blacken the reputation of all other manufacturers in an attempt to sell their products. Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

 

[Celt]

Previously their deaths on CCR list included a young women who died in in a 10m Kent lake doing her open water course.

If you search for the apocalypse, Brad, etc on here, TDF, rebreather world etc you will find that they are not at all credible. You will find long arguments about CO2 measurements between them and a proper expert revealing the degree of nonsense they sprout.

It seems a fair conclusion to say that they try to blacken the reputation of all other manufacturers in an attempt to sell their products. Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

You can argue the credibility of the deeplife data till your blue in the face but the facts are there has been 3 deaths within 20 miles of where I’m living on ccr in as many years and all we’re experienced divers.

 

[KenGordon]

You can argue the credibility of the deeplife data till your blue in the face but the facts are there has been 3 deaths within 20 miles of where I’m living on ccr in as many years and all we’re experienced divers.

So how many deaths altogether? What sort of depth profiles? They have a different balance of safety. I feel a lot more secure on CCR at depth than on a twinset, but the position is different doing a 20m bumble with a novice buddy,

Given the report of alarms, if it was JJ whose Shearwater alarms are visual, the diver likely failed to notice them or responded inappropriately. If you plan a dive properly all CCR failures are manageable.

 

[Celt]

Given the report of alarms, if it was JJ whose Shearwater alarms are visual, the diver likely failed to notice them or responded inappropriately. If you plan a dive properly all CCR failures are manageable.

It’s a joke blaming the user when a piece of equipment fails when in fact it’s a manufacturing fault and an insult to people’s intelligence to say he didn’t see the alarm. The only logical reason for a BOV on the mouth piece is you actually don’t have time to bail out which is what happened in this case.

 

[helodriver87]

It’s a joke blaming the user when a piece of equipment fails when in fact it’s a manufacturing fault and an insult to people’s intelligence to say he didn’t see the alarm. The only logical reason for a BOV on the mouth piece is you actually don’t have time to bail out which is what happened in this case.

If a pilot fails to notice a low engine oil pressure indication and loses an engine/crashes as a result, the accident investigation board will find that the causal factors were mechanical failure exacerbated by human error.

Fact is, we know he had the high PO2 alarm because it registered on the handset. So the information was there. You also don't tox instantly. It's not unheard of for people to swim around at double the max safe limit for quite awhile before toxing. It's not instantaneous. The reality is, he likely had time to recognize what was happening and failed to react for some unknown reason. There's no other conclusion to draw without more info. The unit failed in a way that the diver should have recognized and been able to correct. Mechanical failure exacerbated by human error. It's easy to blame the machine, but that hides training and proficiency deficiencies in a lot of cases.

If a diver failed to respond to a free-flowing first stage and ran out of gas, we would rightfully blame the diver in most cases. Because the expectation is that gear will eventually fail and it's the diver's responsibility to respond appropriately to a logical extent. There's nothing here that indicates to me this was outside of what a trained rebreather diver should be able to manage. Maybe it was, but there's no reason to think that, given what's known.

 

[KenGordon]

It’s a joke blaming the user when a piece of equipment fails when in fact it’s a manufacturing fault and an insult to people’s intelligence to say he didn’t see the alarm. The only logical reason for a BOV on the mouth piece is you actually don’t have time to bail out which is what happened in this case.

Martin Parker will show you a ppO2 trace of a toxing CCR diver where the ppO2 went past 2.55 bar (were the level clips) for some time before the diver toxed. That diver was manually adding O2 when out of dil. If the diver here had high ppO2 AND (as reported) the machine noticed then that is a situation you train for. If all three cells limited at the same level and the machine pumped him a 100% loop then yes, blame the machine, but 1) he ought to notice the wild buoyancy, 2) the solenoid makes a noise, 3) he’d have had to be very unlucky or running out of date cells.

People have been dying on CCR for more than twenty years. The various ways are well explored and training and processes take that into account. If someone dies because they have a freeflow on a twinset but fail to shutdown do you blame the regulator?