Dan - Human error in diving

[gcbryan]

If you look more closely the article says that in SIXTY PERCENT of the cardiac events there was recognized cardiac symptoms in the divers involved. Id say when you have recognized cariac issues while on the boat it is VERY MUCH a human error to jump into an enviroment where you cant breathe anything but whats in your tank and any form of emergency response is severely inhibited..
I also cant see how running out of gas is NOT a human error.

The only way I can find this article to be a "nothing story" is if you already have knowledge of these things and if you do, its not targeted towards you in the first place.


Yet theres a lot of people on scubaboard frowning upon checkout dives because they feel its an insult to have to prove they can dive..
(as has been seen in threads discussing the topic before)

Of course it's human error but it's obvious. Also, I doubt there are people having heart attacks on the boat who are then continuing to dive If you have high blood pressure or shortness of breath you may be considered to be having a cardiac event but that may apply to everyone on the boat. Not that people shouldn't address those things but some things are obvious only after they occur.

However we know that people should be competent to dive before diving and everyone has that knowledge if they stop to think about it.

Everyone already knows not to run out of air as well.

Most accidents happening on the first dive makes sense as well. Those who shouldn't be diving are weeded out pretty quickly sometimes. I don't think there is any secret to most of these problems however.

I went on a dive in Canada once where two brothers from Calgary were doing their first cold water dives. All others had been warm water vacation dives. They had less than 20 of those dives as well.

They showed up without drysuits and were sure it wouldn't be a problem. On the first dive the first brother didn't make it under the water and the second brother ended his dive after 10 minutes. They cancelled the rest of their 3 day trip.

However this was no surprise to anyone else on the boat. I would argue that the majority of accidents are no real surprise to others on those dives as well. Most accidents are either health related (realistically not much one can do about them) or are due to things so obvious that everyone (perhaps other than the victim) recognizes the issue from the start.

I don't even think it has a lot to do with inexperience. Experience plays a large role in diving but not necessarily in good judgement. Didn't most of us here know not to run out of air even as a brand new diver?

 

[AfterDark]

The other number that jumped out at me was that of the high percent of cardiac cases that appeared to ignore warning signs and apparently continued to dive...

What is of greater concern, he added, is that of those who died from cardiac causes, 60 per cent had signs or symptoms that they, or those who were with them, recognised as cardiac related.

Boy, Henry you don't look too good. How about we go diving!

 

[Tigerman]

I have not had the experience of a dive op requiring a checkout dive, but I would have no problems doing one. I would, however, balk at some of the things I've heard. My friend NW Grateful Diver was asked to do a set of skills, did them in about 5' of water, hovering and stable, and when he surfaced, the DM supervising said, "Now go back down and do them properly, on your knees, as I asked you to do!" That would irk me.

My cave instructor was visiting Australia, and was told that, before he would be approved to use Nitrox (note: He's a cave instructor for GUE) he would have to get in the water and demonstrate fin pivots. Now, I have no idea what fin pivots have to do with Nitrox, but I am quite sure that you don't get a cave instructor card from ANY agency unless you have rather elegant buoyancy control, which is the ONLY thing fin pivots test.

So -- I think a checkout dive is a completely reasonable and probably desirable thing, but it has to be a rational evaluation, and it is probably only really helpful if the diver being examined has poorer skills, less training, or less recent experience than the person examining him.

Well, if doing the skills "properly" means I have to do them on the knees on the bottomn or have to do fin pivots to get nitrox, it would serve me perfectly good as a checkout dive on the op as much as the ops checkout of me. I would find a different op who wasnt enitrely incompetent..

 

[flots am]

Boy, Henry you don't look too good. How about we go diving!

I have to tell you that having seen a number of people die in bed, I'd much rather die a month earlier underwater.

flots.

 

[AfterDark]

I have to tell you that having seen a number of people die in bed, I'd much rather die a month earlier underwater.

flots.

That's good planning if you can pull it off!

 

[supergaijin]

I wonder. It demonstrates that the folks who are getting in the water are not prepared for the experience and, it would appear, the proximate cause of the lack of preparation is "rustiness" but ... I'd suggest that the ultimate cause is, in point of fact, that they never really "mastered" the skills to begin with, but rather were trained to the "do it once and rush on to the next skill" standard of practice.

You are free to suggest that the skill was never actually 'mastered' in the first place but I think that is another thread. The ultimate cause?... I don't think that can ever be resolved.

IME as a guide for holiday-makers, it does make a difference whether the diver has come on vacation specifically to dive, or someone who is firstly on vacation but also goes for a dive or 2. The person on a diving vacation has generally given it a lot more thought and has more mental preparedness than a guy who thinks diving is something to do between beers.

Whatever the case, a shallow controlled dive is something all divers should do as their first dive. Knowing the general condition of divers who come to tropical islands to dive, I feel it is a prudent thing to do to ask divers to demonstrate their abilities before being allowed to access locations which have a greater chance of ending their lives and those of others.

 

[boulderjohn]

It's very easy to recognize the signs of an impending heart attack as you think back to how you felt after the heart attack. It's not so easy to recognize them before hand. They are easy to misinterpret.

A number of years ago a Denver radio personality had his morning show interrupted when paramedics burst through the door and started working on him. He had no idea what was going on. It turned out he had been chatting on the air about feeling a little under the weather, and one of his listeners decided he was having a heart attack. The listener was right.

 

[DBailey]

Yet theres a lot of people on scubaboard frowning upon checkout dives because they feel its an insult to have to prove they can dive..
(as has been seen in threads discussing the topic before)

I have been to a few resorts that you have to do a check-out dive with the mask flood skill and regulator recovery skill. It didn't matter your skill level, your certification level, or the time since your last dive. Everyone had to do them because it was a requirement of the marine reserve.

The problem that I had is that the check-out dive counted as one of my "paid" dives. So I paid to kneel on the bottom and do the skill, but then I had to stay there and watch everyone else in group do them. More than half of the dive was wasted. That is my problem with some of the checkout dives.

 

[Thalassamania]

You are free to suggest that the skill was never actually 'mastered' in the first place but I think that is another thread. The ultimate cause?... I don't think that can ever be resolved.

I submit that while it could also be another thread, so is the entire question of "checkouts." Here is that thread.

IME as a guide for holiday-makers, it does make a difference whether the diver has come on vacation specifically to dive, or someone who is firstly on vacation but also goes for a dive or 2. The person on a diving vacation has generally given it a lot more thought and has more mental preparedness than a guy who thinks diving is something to do between beers.

Since I do not know anyone who, "who thinks diving is something to do between beers" I really can't comment, but aren't they supposed to be on "trust me" DSDs with leadership personnel? While it may not fit you experience, I have seen any number of folks, who were on their tropical diving vacation, who thought diving was something to be done between the rum punch at lunch and the Mai Tai at dinner, and that I would be inclined to consider human error.

Whatever the case, a shallow controlled dive is something all divers should do as their first dive. Knowing the general condition of divers who come to tropical islands to dive, I feel it is a prudent thing to do to ask divers to demonstrate their abilities before being allowed to access locations which have a greater chance of ending their lives and those of others.

There are effective alternatives to a "shallow controlled dive" (BTW: shouldn't all dives regardless of depth, be "controlled?).

Here are two very different approaches:

Innovative checkout in Puerto Rico.

and:

A friend of mine had a shop in Marathon in the Florida Keys. They'd set up a Diamond Reef course (which took just a few minutes to deploy) and invite divers to try it out. They also marketed the whole kit, the passport, the stamps, etc., but no one had to buy.

This gave the staff a great chance to eyeball all the divers who attempted to swim thorough the "hoops," gave them a chance to do a little buoyancy teaching when indicated, let them test out the other skills (e.g., go into a hoop, flood and clear our mask without touching, two divers facing each other each in a hoop sharing air, etc.)

It was built up as "big fun" and, in fact, was. People would come back the next year expecting it and clamoring for that years stamp (a new stamp was available each year). Great solution to the problem that advanced peoples diving skill (at least in most cases), was a great deal of fun for everyone, made the shop a little extra cash, upped the pro's tips, and made some money for the non-profits that the Diamond Reef Foundation helped to support.

Information about Diamond Reef may(?) still be available from:

Peter Wallingford
Buoyancy Training Systems, Inc.
236 SW 171ST
Seattle, Washington, 98166, USA.
Telephone: (206) 241-2634

Anyway, as I initially said:

What is the problem there? Is it all just ego on the part of the divers or is it that the checkout process is so unimaginative and boring that the divers subjected to it naturally balk, especially when they are paying for it? ... If the checkout is something more than assemble your gear, drop down to the bottom, kneel, flood and clear your mask, share air and ascend ... then perhaps divers would have less objection?

 

[FPDocMatt]

What Dan of DAN is saying is true, but only in the most general sense, when you get down to specifics what Dan is saying makes much less sense.

I agree. You can say that almost all accidents are due to human error.

The 25% who suffered cardiac events may have decided that they'd rather die while scuba diving. That's not an error, it's a life decision. They know they have chest pain and should see a doctor, but choose not to. They know they might have a heart attack but choose to dive anyway.

The 15% who were entrapped, that's a buddy situation. If their buddy had been nearby, it probably wouldn't have been a problem. So you can say the human error is not having their buddy nearby. But they made the decision to drift away from their buddy, knowing full well that it could be a problem. And did it anyway. Is that human error, or just living on the edge?

I mean, it's circular logic. You have a diving accident. We can identify something you could have done to prevent it. So, because you didn't do that thing, the accident must have been human error.

It would be interesting to do a study at a dive resort to figure out how many bad decisions are made by divers that might have resulted in accidents. This would be an easy study. Just ask your DM's to report everything they observe the vacation divers doing that's not safe, and after a month or so put it into an article. Of course, the DM's would correct the divers to prevent the accidents.

You could even self-report errors made on a dive trip. We could hand out a questionnaire (or put it online) asking, "On your recent dive trip, did you do any of the following?"

• Forget to check your air supply?
• Arrive back on the boat with less than a safe margin of air?
• Drop an item of equipment and have to retrieve it off the bottom?
• Enter the water without first inflating your BCD?
• Dive improperly weighted?
• Suffer a preventable injury?
• Have a fogged mask because you forgot to defog before diving?
• Ascend faster than the recommended max ascent rate?
• Forget to do your 3-minute safety stop?
• Exceed your recreational diving limits, necessitating a deco stop?
• Lose track of your buddy?
• Get separated more than a safe distance from your buddy?
• Dive in cold water without adequate thermal protection?
• Suffer any type of baro-trauma?
• Come in contact with flora or fauna due to poor buoyancy control?
• Stir up silt due to poor buoyancy control?

And a million other questions.

We could assign weights to the answers based on how dangerous the mistakes are. Then the questionnaire could give you a safety score for your dive trip.