An Open Letter of Personal Perspective to the Diving Industry by NetDoc

[Omisson]

Had an asthma attack been a contributing factor in this incident, would the agency have paid $800K to settle?

The "if ...., he's be alive today" has other possible interesting variations. Does anyone really believe this is the first time the instructor had violated standards in this manner? Had there been a more effective agency program to curtail such violations, that instructor may have been removed before this tragedy had a chance to happen.

This shows you know absolutely nothing about actuarial practice. Or complex litigation. Or the history of scuba related lawsuits. Not shocking though.

An agency settling to avoid a judgment is generally good business sense. Beyond saving litigation costs which could exceed $250k for an extended trial with competing experts....

Especially when it could set a dangerous precedent - especially when the victim is a child who may garner sympathy more than reason from a jury.

 

[tursiops]

awap has made up his mind based on what he very much wants to believe. It is a waste of time to confuse him with facts.

 

[redacted]

This shows you know absolutely nothing about actuarial practice. Or complex litigation. Or the history of scuba related lawsuits. Not shocking though.

An agency settling to avoid a judgment is generally good business sense. Beyond saving litigation costs which could exceed $250k for an extended trial with competing experts....

Especially when it could set a dangerous precedent - especially when the victim is a child who may garner sympathy more than reason from a jury.

You are correct, I have very little knowledge of those things. But I do know that the right response is not to simply budget enough $$$ to pay off these annoying legal problems when an accident happens. The right answer is to work to reduce them.

 

[tursiops]

You are correct, I have very little knowledge of those things. But I do know that the right response is not to simply budget enough $$$ to pay off these annoying legal problems when an accident happens. The right answer is to work to reduce them.

Not necessarily. It really does come down to cost-benefits. Take automobile accidents at intersections....why don't we build a hospital at every intersection so we can better address the injuries? Well, we do other things instead....traffic lights, drivers licenses, speed limits, ambulances, all being ways to reduce the death rate at lesser cost.

Risk management does not start by saying "Our goal is zero injuries and deaths." You can't get there. You can't get really close without enormous expense. Look at the cost of NASA; have they been without accidents? Scuba is remarkably safe, just look at the statistics....but it is not risk-free. Neither is getting on an airplane to go diving. Do you accept that risk?

I understand your frustration with the status quo, but I do not accept your clear conclusion that PADI is automatically wrong in all that it does, and that if you could just see the damn standards or questionaire then all would be better. How would you use that info if you had it? You've given no appearance of being able to do anything except complain and point fingers. If I had the info you want, I'd be unlikely to provide it.

 

[redacted]

Not necessarily. It really does come down to cost-benefits. Take automobile accidents at intersections....why don't we build a hospital at every intersection so we can better address the injuries? Well, we do other things instead....traffic lights, drivers licenses, speed limits, ambulances, all being ways to reduce the death rate at lesser cost.

Risk management does not start by saying "Our goal is zero injuries and deaths." You can't get there. You can't get really close without enormous expense. Look at the cost of NASA; have they been without accidents? Scuba is remarkably safe, just look at the statistics....but it is not risk-free. Neither is getting on an airplane to go diving. Do you accept that risk?

I understand your frustration with the status quo, but I do not accept your clear conclusion that PADI is automatically wrong in all that it does, and that if you could just see the damn standards or questionaire then all would be better. How would you use that info if you had it? You've given no appearance of being able to do anything except complain and point fingers. If I had the info you want, I'd be unlikely to provide it.

You do understand you are talking peoples lives that are being lost UNNECESSARILY.

I do understand risk management. When you have unacceptable risks (unnecessary death is in that category) even with very low probabilities of occurrence, they earn a high priority for management.

I'm not saying PADI is wrong. I don't really know what they are doing. But I am really shocked at the attitude of some of the instructors on this board. The avoidable death of a student should not be acceptable collateral damage while you make a few extra bucks on the side.

There is no doubt in my mind that more can be done. But there seems to be little interest.

 

[tursiops]

The avoidable death of a student should not be acceptable collateral damage while you make a few extra bucks on the side.

You see this as a fact. I see this as your personal conclusion, based on your partial understanding of only parts of the issue.
Do you really think ANY of the instructors on here are happy to see this, or any, kid die?
Do you really think ANY of the training agencies are happy to see this, or any, kid die?

 

[The Chairman]

It was not perfect but it worked fairly well.

That's what we have currently among all the agencies and their hammers don't cost $250,000.00. The only way to make it "perfect" is to stop Scuba all together. As long as humans are involved, there will be human error. Somehow, you're thinking that perfect should be attainable and that's just not the case. Why hold the Scuba Industry to a higher standard than the one you spoke of?

PADI has made changes over the years and even recently to provide better and safer instruction. It's not like they aren't evolving their systems. The same can be said of SDI, SSI, NASE and the rest. I just heard that SSI is now requiring all skills to be done mid water. They're now following in NASE's and then PADI's footsteps. SDI is claiming that they've required this all along, but I have yet to meet an SDI instructor who knew that standard existed. I just dug out my old SDI instructor manual and will be reading it to see if that's true or not.

The avoidable death of a student should not be acceptable collateral damage while you make a few extra bucks on the side.

You should work for OSHA. They love to strain the gnat and swallow the camel. Here's what they've done to our noble cowboys:

​

You can appeal to our emotions with statements like "We're dealing with human lives here!", but in reality if the standards were followed and the camp had done due diligence, then this senseless death could have been avoided. We don't need "big brother agency" in our lives to prevent these accidents. We need responsible instructors and the facilities who hire them to hold them accountable. When they screw up, they should be purged.

 

[demed]

You are correct, I have very little knowledge of those things. But I do know that the right response is not to simply budget enough $$$ to pay off these annoying legal problems when an accident happens. The right answer is to work to reduce them.

don't want to sound harsh, but you don't understand anything about court cases, or our the civil court system works - people who have been exonerated by criminal courts (a pretty high standard or bar if you ask me) have found themselves liable for millions or billions in civil case, where the bar is low and the jury in most cases sides with the plaintiff at the expense of the "deep pocketed" defendant.
a civil court case is defined by any attorney as a roll of dice, a proceeding where facts bear no relevance to the outcome. any business does itself a favor by settling a case before going in front of a jury.

---------- Post added December 21st, 2014 at 07:38 PM ----------

You do understand you are talking peoples lives that are being lost UNNECESSARILY.

I do understand risk management. When you have unacceptable risks (unnecessary death is in that category) even with very low probabilities of occurrence, they earn a high priority for management.

I'm not saying PADI is wrong. I don't really know what they are doing. But I am really shocked at the attitude of some of the instructors on this board. The avoidable death of a student should not be acceptable collateral damage while you make a few extra bucks on the side.

There is no doubt in my mind that more can be done. But there seems to be little interest.

You are insulting every single instructor on this board and your words are simply unacceptable - you do not understand what you are blabbering about and trolling for your own amusement.

Not a single instructor contemplates collateral damage - not even the imbecile whose bad judgement calls have led to the death of the child at the center of this thread.

you want to troll and keep living in your own alternate reality? do so, but elsewhere,

---------- Post added December 21st, 2014 at 07:43 PM ----------

CEO's Proposal: Our primary concern needs to be profit. All else is secondary. The truth is, even in light of the standards violation complaints and reports we receive, there are very, very few embarrassing accidents. Therefor, we can maximize profit by simply expelling instructors, we do have an excess, when there is an obvious violation just to COA. And we need to continue to make sure our established standards will provide us adequate protection and point the finger at instructors rather than us. That way, when things do go wrong, we can expect to be protected enough that it will not be difficult to simply settle out of court. The annual cost of such an approach should be less than $250K annually. The alternative, a credible inspection program, would cost more than that and still leave us with potential liabilities if and when we have another accident. It is just good business.

Please go troll elsewhere

---------- Post added December 21st, 2014 at 07:54 PM ----------

My career was in the military. We had proficiency tests, annual evaluations, frequent planned and unplanned inspections, and up or out promotions. It was not perfect but it worked fairly well. It took a good bit of time and effort. It was pretty rare for the "CEO" to develop the plan. But he did provide the leadership, direction, and guidance to develop the plan. It can start with the CEO saying, "We have got to do better. We can not accept tragic accidents like this where the best we can do is settle out of court and sacrifice the instructor."

A questionnaire designed to identify standards violations would be a start. Right now, there appears to be a questionnaire but who know what its main purpose is? And an inspection program is pretty basic yet it seems to be non-existent. Workers do those things well that the boss checks.

You are a scuba instructor. What is your solution???

For me, I'm an outsider not allowed to have the information critical to contribute to a serious improvement plan. So, I'll probably just continue to piss in their tea cup until they do something.

last time i checked, the US military is a crony system to maintain the GOP constituency by providing lots of cheap and convenient benefits to an otherwise underpaid, undertrained, underschooled work base, and providing lucrative government guaranteed contracts without public tender to its donor base.

the personal sacrifices of the individual members in the line of combat unfortunately bear no resemblance to the incommensurate and unnecessary gains that the rest of the cronies extract from the whole kaboodle at the expense of the whole community. In fact, when we look at Washington, the #1 source of expense is the defense budget - while military get pennies (and early pensions truth to be told) the politicians get paid millions by corporations which get paid billions with our taxes.

and you call this the best example to evaluate performance?

 

[redacted]

You are insulting every single instructor on this board and your words are simply unacceptable - you do not understand what you are blabbering about and trolling for your own amusement.

Not a single instructor contemplates collateral damage - not even the imbecile whose bad judgement calls have led to the death of the child at the center of this thread.

I don't mean to insult all instructors. Just those that believe nothing more can or should be done to reduce incidences like the one we are talking about. But I do understand your taking insult.

---------- Post added December 21st, 2014 at 10:25 PM ----------

That's what we have currently among all the agencies and their hammers don't cost $250,000.00. The only way to make it "perfect" is to stop Scuba all together. As long as humans are involved, there will be human error. Somehow, you're thinking that perfect should be attainable and that's just not the case. Why hold the Scuba Industry to a higher standard than the one you spoke of? .

It is not a matter of eliminating human error or making it "perfect". It is a matter of making it better, reducing risk. Are you really saying it is as good as it can get and these things just have to be accepted?

---------- Post added December 21st, 2014 at 10:27 PM ----------

Do you really think ANY of the instructors on here are happy to see this, or any, kid die?
Do you really think ANY of the training agencies are happy to see this, or any, kid die?

Happy - no, of course not.

Accepting - yes.

I'm not saying any agency is wrong unless they too just accept incidences like this.

 

[boulderjohn]

My career was in the military. We had proficiency tests, annual evaluations, frequent planned and unplanned inspections, and up or out promotions. It was not perfect but it worked fairly well.

...And how much did all of that cost the taxpayers? I don't know if you realize it, but the scuba industry is not supported by tax dollars. Everyone keeps ragging on PADI because it charges for its services, but those charges go into the extraordinary expense of what it is doing now, which is much more than any other agency I know of. If you want them to have roving inspectors checking on hundreds of thousands of instructors around the world, that will cost many, many millions or even billions of dollars, and where will that money come from? I asked you to provide a solution, and so far you haven't come up with one. You keep saying saying they should do something better, but you do not have a clue yourself how that would happen. You might as well say GM should start making cars that cannot possibly be involved in accidents. Never mind that it is not currently possible--from the comfort of your armchair you can rag on them for not doing it.

You are a scuba instructor. What is your solution???

I have offered a number of solutions to PADI for problems that I have seen, and I am proud to say some have been accepted. If I had one, I would offer it.

For me, I'm an outsider not allowed to have the information critical to contribute to a serious improvement plan. So, I'll probably just continue to piss in their tea cup until they do something.

Did you ever consider for even a second that if they had a better solution, they would have implemented it already? I gave the analogy of the problem with public education, which spends many times more tax dollars to achieve the same goal, with no better results. Don't you think they are looking for a solution as well and frustrated that they cannot find it? It must be great to be where you are. You don't have to contribute one positive idea. All you have to do is mock others for failing at something you cannot possibly achieve yourself.

I just heard that SSI is now requiring all skills to be done mid water. They're now following in NASE's and then PADI's footsteps.

When I first experimented with mid water instruction in my PADI shop, I consulted with the course director there throughout my experimentation. When we wrote the PADI article about mid water instruction, he was included in the drafting process and was credited as a co-author. He was then so impressed with the results that he required that methodology of all instructors at the shop. Then the shop went SSI. Then he left the shop and went into the management of SSI. I suspect most of those methods will soon be required for SSI.