Dangerous psychology- Diving beyond one's training

[tstormdiver]

How long do you expect to stay alive and why are you "trying to keep people alive?" There won't be any food.

Ahem.... Don't know why I'm even replying to this troll,..... But maybe because its' the right thing to do,... perhaps????

 

[divad]

Ahem.... Don't know why I'm even replying to this troll,..... But maybe because its' the right thing to do,... perhaps????

It's not a troll, it's a right question....biologically speaking. And you seem like a very nice well-meaning person.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Swampy

The difference is how prepared you are to heed the warnings that have been given to you by people who understand the risks involved in that dive. For a large part of the thread you came across as someone who did not appear to want to listen to the advice given and furthermore your reaction to some of the warnings appeared very hostile and ungracious.

Jim while I understand your point the deco stop is no guarantee of good info either. It's better to have a larger number of naysayers here than hear the same advice albeit in more colourful language from a smaller group.

But it is that coloful language that coming from those guys that may actually get through a mind with a cement wall around it.

 

[billt4sf]

No one has told them that that this is an extreme sport and people die doing it. The agencies try to insure that instructors make this all about fun, sun, safe, easy to do, anyone can do it, and put nothing in the materials that illustrate just how dangerous certain aspects of it are and what the actual outcomes can be.

Great question!

When I have gone beyond my limits and into dangerous situations, it was because I didn’t understand what my limits were and why those activities were dangerous. As others have commented, there is a hole in OW training around this. My ignorance was aided and abetted by dive operators who were only too happy to take my money. With the help of ScubaBoard, and our own reflections on how close we came to losing our lives, we now dive within what we know our limits to be:

60 ft or less
No (or small) currents
15’ or more visibility
No overhead environments

I posted a link in the “Near Misses” section on some dangerous things we did (unknowingly) as newish divers:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/near-misses-lessons-learned/429008-everything-worked-out-great-now-were-really-scared.html

Every time I think of this a shudder runs through me.


A contributing factor to our lack of understanding of our own limits is the tendency of most instructors to use a “follow me” approach when taking new divers out. New divers are not trained to be good buddys.

- Bill

 

[tracydr]

This thread is being started as I am trying to understand what goes through the minds of people, when they decide they are going to go beyond their level, without appropriate training.

There is a current thread right now that has the general cave & diving community in general, advising against doing a cave dive (though very short) vs a diver who wants to make this dive & sees the cave diving community as elitist & the training as an inconvenience & overly expensive.

Also I recently became aware of some divers that made some 200+ft bounce dives on air, in Mexico, with single cylinders & no training. Only 1 of those (open water) divers had more than 100 dives. They claimed that they planned it out by placing 32% deco bottles at 40 ft. At that depth,... not sure what what good that would have done at that PO2. That they came back unscathed has made them think that type of diving is "no big deal". Never mind that a little over a year ago, that same type of dive killed 1, paralyzed another & injured yet another.

What I am struggling to understand is,..... what is actually going through their heads to want make or actually participate in such potentially dangerous dives. Especially when the pioneering of those dives has been done, the mistakes have been made & the loss of life has taken place. I am not talking minor excursions (though it usually leads to bigger excursions), I'm talking about inexperienced divers going massively beyond their training & into what is considered technical levels. Is it:
-Bravado?
-Overconfidence
-Ignorance?
-Curiosity?
-Impatience?
-Peer pressure?
-Forbidden fruit?
-Thinking they are above the facts? (might fall in the bravado part)
-Perhaps something I have not thought of?

Now to set the record straight,... No, I am not perfect. Yes, I did 1 time go beyond my training by entering into Vortex's cave. I got enormously lucky & survived. The good point is, it rattled me enough to seek the proper training, to go further safely. What went through my head? First was curiosity. I just wanted to know. Next & the biggest was ignorance. If I had only known what could go wrong. If someone would have spoken to me, encouraged me as to why not to go, with examples, I would have certainly heeded. I did cave in to peer pressure. My buddy kept nudging me with hints & with reassurances that he had done that dive many times,... but when the doo doo flew, he abandoned me, freaked out. What I did was wrong, I learned my lesson well. I am much more cautious,.... maybe even too cautious at times.

So in light of many saying that diving that far beyond their level of training, is a bad idea, why do some think they can beat the odds & ignore the advice?

I think it has to do with the "immortality" that many young people, especially men, feel.

 

[TSandM]

You are asking about the psychology of people who go above their training and experience, and do dives that are rendered high enough risk by that that the majority of us would not do them, or recommend anyone else do them.

I think there are a lot of different ways people end up doing those things. One subgroup is simply egotistical, and believes that they are better than anybody else, and the rules don't apply to them. I see a lot of those people in the ER, as a result of the things they decide to do. Without intending at all to be sexist, these people tend to be young men.

One subgroup is simply stupid. Not being capable of the imagination necessary to envision the consequences of what they do, they do it. Unfortunately, this type also tends to be very stubborn and resent input from others about the risks involved -- in fact, the more they're told, the more set upon their course they become. I see those, too.

Another subgroup is the group that isn't stupid, but is ignorant of the risks, and unaware that they exist, so they don't know enough to research them. I think a lot of OW divers who swim into overhead environments are like that. I can't remember whether it was here or elsewhere, but very recently, I had someone say to me that they had no idea caves were full of silt. If you don't know that, you can't envision zero viz or getting lost -- and you may not be aware that there is information about swimming into a cavern that you don't have.

The group that terrifies me is the group that has good information and is intelligent and generally prudent, but decides they have enough experience and training to push the edge of the envelope a bit. I could fall into that group. In fact, one thing belonging to forums has done to me is that, as I am (as I was yesterday) swimming into passage that is small and silty and unfamiliar, I ask myself, "If you died here, what would the internet pundits write about it?" Any time you extend yourself a bit, you are vulnerable to criticism. But I'd like to think that all my decisions could also be defended, as many of the ones that kill people really cannot.

 

[SangP]

This thread is being started as I am trying to understand what goes through the minds of people, when they decide they are going to go beyond their level, without appropriate training.

There is a current thread right now that has the general cave & diving community in general, advising against doing a cave dive (though very short) vs a diver who wants to make this dive & sees the cave diving community as elitist & the training as an inconvenience & overly expensive.

Also I recently became aware of some divers that made some 200+ft bounce dives on air, in Mexico, with single cylinders & no training. Only 1 of those (open water) divers had more than 100 dives. They claimed that they planned it out by placing 32% deco bottles at 40 ft. At that depth,... not sure what what good that would have done at that PO2. That they came back unscathed has made them think that type of diving is "no big deal". Never mind that a little over a year ago, that same type of dive killed 1, paralyzed another & injured yet another.

What I am struggling to understand is,..... what is actually going through their heads to want make or actually participate in such potentially dangerous dives. Especially when the pioneering of those dives has been done, the mistakes have been made & the loss of life has taken place. I am not talking minor excursions (though it usually leads to bigger excursions), I'm talking about inexperienced divers going massively beyond their training & into what is considered technical levels. Is it:
-Bravado?
-Overconfidence
-Ignorance?
-Curiosity?
-Impatience?
-Peer pressuZ
-Thinking they are above the facts? (might fall in the bravado part)
-Perhaps something I have not thought of?

Now to set the record straight,... No, I am not perfect. Yes, I did 1 time go beyond my training by entering into Vortex's cave. I got enormously lucky & survived. The good point is, it rattled me enough to seek the proper training, to go further safely. What went through my head? First was curiosity. I just wanted to know. Next & the biggest was ignorance. If I had only known what could go wrong. If someone would have spoken to me, encouraged me as to why not to go, with examples, I would have certainly heeded. I did cave in to peer pressure. My buddy kept nudging me with hints & with reassurances that he had done that dive many times,... but when the doo doo flew, he abandoned me, freaked out. What I did was wrong, I learned my lesson well. I am much more cautious,.... maybe even too cautious at times.

So in light of many saying that diving that far beyond their level of training, is a bad idea, why do some think they can beat the odds & ignore the advice?

Great post.

There are so many people that do dumb things in life that they usually get away without too much damage however, when it comes to diving, rock climbing or sky diving, all it takes is one mistake and you're not coming back the same way.

Some people never grow out of the "mommy look at me!" phase and can't seem to ever do anything without needing some form of approval. The fact that there's a huge following for shows like jackass or extreme sports makes you wonder if these people will live past their 30s?

-Bravado (I'm better then everyone else)
-Overconfidence (I can do it, no problem)
-Ignorance (Why can't I do that)
-Curiosity (I wonder how deep I can go)
-Impatience (I'm tired of this boring sh$t)
-Peer pressure (you're a wuss if you don't do it)
-Forbidden fruit? (no one is watching me now let me go take some pics of that funny fish down there)
-Poor sense of direction/self awareness (where am I, how did I get here?)
-Effects of Nitrogen Narcosis

There are many reasons why people do stupid things but its usually it's cus they don't think things through before doing it.

 

[boulderjohn]

So who is more reckless and has more bravado? someone who decides to try it in the middle of a dive, or the person who has the idea in the middle of a dive, then goes home and pulls up maps and charts, watches videos of others diving that cave, and posts on forums to get the "lay of the land" from those who have been before... THEN, with information in hand makes a decision whether or not to do the act?

I made the same answer to your same post in the other thread, but here goes again:

Your question may be rephrased in two ways.

1. If one person does something insanely stupid and the other person does something very stupid, which is the the one with the greater degree of stupidity?

2. If one person does something stupid impulsively and without knowledge, and the second person first studies the situation, sees that it is reckless and stupid and does it anyway, which one is the more reckless?

In either case, I don't see a value in deciding which stupid decision was the more stupid.

 

[soltari675]

Your example of the bounce divers shows my point. The divers said they planned the dive. They apparently considered the need for deco bottles and even used them (???) and completed the dive successfully. Yes, people will always disagree on the safety of such dives but clearly the divers performing them considered the dive and planned accordingly. What extra training is required for something like that? Does the number of previous dives really matter as long as the dive was planned and then dived according to the plan? (Yes I recognize the possibility of emergencies and survival of them changes with dives like this.)

This here is exactly why more training is needed. You simply don't know what you don't know. What these divers did is extremely dangerous. One small mistake, and we'd be reading about when their funeral was being planned. Sure, they read somewhere about deco gas and used it. What if a reg had free flowed at 200 ft? You can't just go up to the surface, and nobody had enough air in a single air tank to save someone else. Lucky they got themselves back. There was no planning for emergencies. No planning for safety deco stops. Nothing like that. Had they had training, they would know about the additional risks and dangers, and how to prepare for it. Instead, they made a dive they knew little about, and got lucky and now think they are bullet proof underwater and some poor sap is going to have to go retrieve their bodies someday. I hope not, but it's reality.

There are some classes that are silly to have and are nothing but money drains. I get that. But there are some things you just shouldn't play with. In this sport, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is not a good excuse. Ignorance will get you killed. I believe a lot of people who do it say to themselves, "Just this once. I'll be ok if I just do it this one time." And of course it's never just that one time, and it's still a bad idea, but it makes it sound ok to yourself. Also there's the, "My buddy has enough experience. I'm safe." Otherwise known as "trust me" dives. Also a bad idea, but it is deceptive and easy to make you feel safe. Those are the biggest reasons I think people do it.

 

[redacted]

This here is exactly why more training is needed. You simply don't know what you don't know. What these divers did is extremely dangerous. One small mistake, and we'd be reading about when their funeral was being planned. Sure, they read somewhere about deco gas and used it. What if a reg had free flowed at 200 ft? You can't just go up to the surface, and nobody had enough air in a single air tank to save someone else. Lucky they got themselves back. There was no planning for emergencies. No planning for safety deco stops. Nothing like that. Had they had training, they would know about the additional risks and dangers, and how to prepare for it. Instead, they made a dive they knew little about, and got lucky and now think they are bullet proof underwater and some poor sap is going to have to go retrieve their bodies someday. I hope not, but it's reality.

There are some classes that are silly to have and are nothing but money drains. I get that. But there are some things you just shouldn't play with. In this sport, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is not a good excuse. Ignorance will get you killed. I believe a lot of people who do it say to themselves, "Just this once. I'll be ok if I just do it this one time." And of course it's never just that one time, and it's still a bad idea, but it makes it sound ok to yourself. Also there's the, "My buddy has enough experience. I'm safe." Otherwise known as "trust me" dives. Also a bad idea, but it is deceptive and easy to make you feel safe. Those are the biggest reasons I think people do it.

I understand you are a student right now. But do you really believe that training is the only way to gain knowledge?