Cert. cards can't be revoked for cause?

[OldNSalty]

From my understanding, Frank Lorenzo, the former chairman of Texas Air, was prohibited by a judge from ever owning airlines again after the Eastern Airline debacle. Several prominent members of Wall Street have also been banned from working in the securities industry. Granted while these types of restrictions are not the norm, they do seem to be within the judges power to enforce.

These are easy to enforce. I worked in banking for a number of years and I am sure it is pretty easy to tell the SEC to not issue a license to a certain person (thus shutting them out of the business all together). I imagine the FAA would work likewise.

Telling someone they can't dive-for life...not very easy or practical to enforce...in fact, pretty close to impossible.

 

[ScubaSteve1962]

The thing about this, I haven't been diving that long, but I could teach someone the basics of diving, all they have to do is go buy the book, I go get the tanks and they can rent the equipment we could go to a pool and a quarry with no problem, I just couldn't issue them a cert card. Would this be right? NO. Is the something that I would ever try? NO but I'm sure there are plenty that do it. How do you police this? Most of the time you just have to know how to answer the questions, and they may or may not ask to see your card.

 

[captain]

I had no certification but I had a boat, a compressor and diving equipment, dived solo, exceeded recommended limits, yada, yada, yada. I had and did all of those things many years before I ever got a certification.

If the Coast Guard stops a personal boat to check for required equipment and papers and they see diving equipment on board I guarantee they won't ask to see a certification card.

 

[nolatom]

I'm sure it will also depend on whether the person in question uses a snorkel or not.

Oh, absolutely. I would rank snorkels on mask straps right up there with "Conspiracy to commit Acts not normally considered Illegal" ;-)

Nice to see a little levity. But I think my idea is going nowhere. Maybe rightly so, but I meant it about caution for the future if the sport is not perceived as (or isn't in fact) doing much of anything in terms of enforceable safety, at least at the certification level.

As a new diver over a decade ago, I was kind of surprised to learn the certs were lifetime, and later on to learn that there is no mechanism to un-certify or suspend a truly bad actor.

Maybe it can't (or shouldn't) be done? But if not, watch out if there are a spate of accidents (again, I hope the hell not) and some Congressional committee wants to have a hearing.

Okay, I'm Chicken Little. Maybe the sky will never fall. Anyway, I agree it's been an interesting discussion, I learned some new points of view from it. But if there are 41 "Likes" to my zero, I get the picture..

 

[rhwestfall]

nolatom:

It is true to say that collectively, we all would prefer to see completely competent divers. Heck, most of the complaining is in regard to a perceived lesser quality of instruction in the industry now (whole different thread). Obtaining a c-card is a step along the way. Does a newly minted diver necessarily have that? Not really. Does one later in their career necessarily become better? Not necessarily. Do they become worse? Sometimes....

There are numerous methods to "weed out" this. Shops can decline service, operators can decline service, and buddies can deny partnership. Regrettably, Darwin can act too on the less than ideal behaving to weed out poor abilities, and it is hopeful that if/when it happens, others are not put at risk - though it almost exclusively is the case. We "self regulate", and I would say that 99% of the diving community would not be in favor at all of someone deciding that they are going to make the decision on what the benchmark or enforcement is....

 

[boulderjohn]

From my understanding, Frank Lorenzo, the former chairman of Texas Air, was prohibited by a judge from ever owning airlines again after the Eastern Airline debacle. Several prominent members of Wall Street have also been banned from working in the securities industry. Granted while these types of restrictions are not the norm, they do seem to be within the judges power to enforce.

Are you sure? I was unable to find anything like that. I did find that as part of the agreement he made when he stepped down, he agreed to stay out of the airline business for 7 years.

 

[adurso]

Are you sure? I was unable to find anything like that. I did find that as part of the agreement he made when he stepped down, he agreed to stay out of the airline business for 7 years.

There ya go again, John, confusing the issue with facts....

 

[boulderjohn]

Maybe it can't (or shouldn't) be done? But if not, watch out if there are a spate of accidents (again, I hope the hell not) and some Congressional committee wants to have a hearing.

There aren't many really good statistics on dive fatalities. The best I know of are the annual DAN reports. I read every case description every year. In the last decade, the total number of fatalities each year is about 40% less than for the first decade of study (1970-1879), even though they are now covering a larger area and even though there are believed to be many more divers now than 40 years ago.

 

[nolatom]

There aren't many really good statistics on dive fatalities. The best I know of are the annual DAN reports. I read every case description every year. In the last decade, the total number of fatalities each year is about 40% less than for the first decade of study (1970-1879), even though they are now covering a larger area and even though there are believed to be many more divers now than 40 years ago.

That could well be, but the tone of the Coast Guard's recent Advisory to Commercial Dive vessels indicates that they, at least, think the number of accidents is going up. They may have their own stats based on how many medevacs they've had to do, since they get called in on most of the casualties.

For what it's worth, I would guess that any outside pressure to "regulate scuba" would come from the press and public, who would then lean on their fed. congress reps, who would lean on the Coast Guard, who would then lean on the dive boats and the industry in general.

the same type of evolution happened over the past few years to the inland commercial towng industry, following a couple of bad accidents (worst one was tow hit bridge at night in fog, didn't know which river branch he was in nor that it was a bridge he hit, Amtrak train hit bridge and derailed, fire and submerged railcars, many deaths (the "Sunset Limited" disaster). Now there is much more CG regulation and inspection of these previously uninspected vessels and their personnel. I'm not comparing this to rec. scuba, but that's the pattern of how increasing public regulation starts, and works, at least on the water in the U.S.

 

[beanojones]

Nice to see a little levity. But I think my idea is going nowhere. Maybe rightly so, but I meant it about caution for the future if the sport is not perceived as (or isn't in fact) doing much of anything in terms of enforceable safety, at least at the certification level. As a new diver over a decade ago, I was kind of surprised to learn the certs were lifetime, and later on to learn that there is no mechanism to un-certify or suspend a truly bad actor. Maybe it can't (or shouldn't) be done? But if not, watch out if there are a spate of accidents (again, I hope the hell not) and some Congressional committee wants to have a hearing. Okay, I'm Chicken Little. Maybe the sky will never fall. Anyway, I agree it's been an interesting discussion, I learned some new points of view from it. But if there are 41 "Likes" to my zero, I get the picture..

The thing is that the high profile accidents (like the Honeymoon scuba killer) involve negligence to some degree on the part of an operator, who is (in many of these circumstances) under Coast Guard jurisdiction, or at least the local version of the Coast Guard. Captains and companies employing them can get involved with the Cost Guard with respects to these high profile incidents.

What the original post on the thread is about is individuals and their ability to lose certification. But that's not where the actual risk usually comes from, rather it comes from operators, and or instructors. Operators, and intructors/guides can put perfectly trained and perfectly performing divers at risk easily by leaving them out in the open ocean, through failure to use proper accounting, or taking them to sites beyond their ability, or diving customers off moorings in high current etc,etc.

So the first step to safety is not to do away with divers ability to dive, it is to do away with negligent operators ability to operate, it seems. This is usually done by way of civil suits in the US. The lawsuit was what did away with Atlantis dive operation in Hawaii. And it is part of the mechanism that keeps irresponsible individuals out. So part of the reason that your original question was not directly answered is because ordinary certified divers are not usually the cause of the high profile incidents.

In a sense who cares if someone falls off there own boat and dies? Many scuba deaths end up being labeled as heart attacks, whether the original cause was the heart attack or not, and how can diving be blamed for heart attacks?