Disturbing trend in diving?

[DivingKDawg]

So, lately I've seen some things posted that have me raising my eyebrows a bit.
There have been a few stories posted about people relying completely on the divemasters or guides for their bottom times, NDL status, basic dive profiles. This seems to be in Mexico from what I gather but it might include some other locations.
The trend seems to be that these divers in question don't have computers or depth gauges/any kind of timing device and rely 100% on the divemasters to take care of them and keep them safe.
Is this a thing?

Normalizing wreckless diving habits is a sure way to increase your chances of injury

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Normalizing wreckless diving habits is a sure way to increase your chances of injury

From what everyone tells me, even though this practice goes on, statistically diving is safer now than it ever has been.

 

[dmaziuk]

Watered down from what?

From icy green slush.
PS. Where the Real Men dive with J-valve and 3 birdices.

HTH

 

[tmassey]

Normalizing wreckless diving habits is a sure way to increase your chances of injury

From what everyone tells me, even though this practice goes on, statistically diving is safer now than it ever has been.

tl;dr at bottom.

Yup. Both statements can be equally true.

My personal belief is that both statements *are* true. Increasing your personal capabilities, understanding your own equipment, etc. all lead to being a safer diver, which lowers the chance of injury. However, if you do not do either of those things, it does not mean that you are an actually “unsafe“ diver. In other words, ‘less safe’ does not equal ‘unsafe’.

That’s the false dichotomy that so, so many people are drawing: ‘if you are not as safe as possible, then you are unsafe.’ No, you are just less safe. That doesn’t mean that the level of safety drops so far as to be “unsafe“. (Or maybe it’s law of the excluded middle: there is an entire range between safe and unsafe. Being short of maximally safe does not make you unsafe.) (ETA: Replace “as safe as possible” with “what I consider to be safe” or “as safely as I dive” if you wish: the points still hold, and probably more clearly.)

And, of course, “as safe as possible“ is very much in the eye of the beholder. I dive fully redundant backmount doubles on every single dive. Is that “safer” than single tanks? I would argue unambiguously yes. Does that mean that someone diving a single tank is “unsafe“? Not at all!

In fact, on many of the dives I do, that extra redundancy is of such vanishingly small benefit that it is scarcely worth mentioning. Yet dealing with a set of doubles is logistically more difficult, if for no other reason than they are heavier. And that extra weight literally might be too much for a different diver to be able to execute the dive. It certainly doesn’t make sense to denigrate them because they decided to forgo a tiny, insignificant amount of “safety“ in order to be able to create a configuration that allows them to do the dive with a clearly-sufficient level of safety.

And that is true even considering items that might not be controversial to consider to be safer. What about things that are not so clear cut? Things like standard gases versus ideal gas, primary versus secondary donate, manifold doubles versus side mount. Intelligent, reasonable people can come to different conclusions even given the same information. So who has the right to say that one side is correct and one side is wrong? That one side is “safer“ and the other side is “less safe“ – or even “unsafe“!

In the end, so, so many of the things that people are discussing here come down to opinion, level of personal risk, and personal level of enjoyment and satisfaction surrounding a particular task. I think that if people focused more on how much of their position comes down to opinion it might allow them to realize there is room for other people’s opinion.

And in the end, what it comes down to is this: are these tasks being done safely enough? Not could they be done safer, not how would you do them… Are they being done safely enough? And the statistics demonstrate that they are.

Now, many of us like to work hard to minimize what risk there is. Those that do, I applaud you for it. But again: just because somebody else does not do that does not mean that they are inherently unsafe or dangerous. It just means that their balance of effort and risk are different than yours.

It is also important to keep in mind the level of risk that we are talking about. For example @DivingKDawg ‘s statement quoted above: their actions increase their risk. For sake of argument, let’s take that as a 100% certainty. But if their action increases the risk from vanishingly small to slightly less vanishingly small, why should we care? If, for them, it means the difference between doing a dive, or not being a SCUBA Diver at all because they do not get enough value to justify the significantly increased amount of effort to do it to *our* personal level of risk tolerance, why should they?

And again, the statistics show that even for the least capable SCUBA Diver, scuba is an extremely safe activity.


None of this is exactly revolutionary. There are so, so many tasks that we do on a daily basis where the people involved have varying degrees of capability and acceptance of risk. I dare say that the majority of us have made the decision to drive under less than ideal conditions, with a car that was in less than ideal repair, with people within the car creating a less than ideal environment. Why? Because we felt that the conditions were still overwhelmingly toward the side of “safe“, and we probably had a task with a level of importance sufficient enough to justify the tiny increase in risk we might be taking.

How many of us have taken driving courses beyond the absolute minimum that was required by law to get our drivers license, and for some of us that may have been a very, very long time ago. Do we rail at ourselves because we haven’t taken additional defensive driving or even race car driving classes? That we might not even know how to set the presets on our radio or use the hands-free functions — let alone check the oil or change a spark plug? No. Do we rail against licensing structures that require newly licensed people to only drive with licensed drivers under specific conditions? No: most of us consider those to be good limitations for a new driver, to be allowed to drive but under the direct watchful eye of a more capable driver.

Yet, when a new scuba diver voluntarily puts themselves under that restriction and only dives with a dive master, somehow they’re the bad person? Now, do I want them to turn off their brain and simply blindly follow a dive master without thinking for themselves? No. No more than I want a new driver to do that. But as someone who has taught children how to drive, in the beginning, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. And it’s probably for the best: in the beginning, they literally don’t know what they don’t know. And it’s my job to help them to figure that out. And then they quickly grow to begin to think for themselves.

So I’m not surprised that many drivers start out with a ‘lean on the dive master’ mindset. And if you’re someone who does a couple of dives a year, you literally may never outgrow that, any more than someone who only drove a couple of times a year would. And who am I to tell them that they are wrong? Again, as long as the statistics show that it is being done without significant injury – in other words,“safely” – why should they be stopped from doing it?


tl;dr:

 

[boulderjohn]

Agree, thought the issue is with the certifications these days for open water. Nobody fails, it's watered down, and people lie.

Pray be specific.

Nobody Fails: In modern scuba instruction, the methodology is to keep teaching the student however long it takes to complete the course. In that sense, nobody fails, but in reality a percentage of students decide scuba is not for them and drop out during the course. That could be considered failing.

Question: Your statement implies that people are passing who have not met standards. Do you have any specific studies to show the degree to which that is true?

Watered down: Question: Can you provide examples of this watering down? What requirements have been removed from courses in the last few decades? (Warning before you search: a thread a couple years ago compared PADI standards of about 35 years ago to todays standards. The only requirement missing was one regulator buddy breathing, and the newest standards had about 15 requirements that were not in the old ones.)

People lie: Question: What are they lying about?

Certifications these days: In their History of NAUI, the authors (including NAUI Instructor #1 Al Tillman) recall the problem that had from the very start (1960) with certifications. Instructors demanded they get the certification cards from NAUI as soon as students enrolled in the courses so they could hand them to the students as soon as they completed the courses. NAUI leaders knew that many of the students were getting their cards before they completed the courses, so many of them got certified without completing the courses or even without even starting the courses. My own certification, completed back in the 1990s, skipped many requirements.

Question: What evidence do you have that it was any different 60 years ago?

 

[BRT]

Maybe we should just go back to enclosing a little instruction card in the regulator box saying "Don't hold your breath" and call it good?

I first dove with a hookah at 12. Those were the instructions. At 22 I built a hookah and found I could hook both of my 25' hoses together and reach 50 feet. Had about 50# of pressure at the surface so WOB was a little high.

 

[The Chairman]

This is not how someone learns.

I didn't die.

But maybe alot of folks just need to know the final rule, without the underlying theory?

BOYLES Law is actually an acronym: Breathe Or Your Lungs Explode Stupid. What else do you need to know?

For maybe the fourth time,

John, if you've made your point four times, a fifth time will not help them understand.

The idea of a diver going diving without a bottom timer or computer is not, inherently, a problem.

I did it for decades. I've never been bent.

Normalizing wreckless diving habits

Personally, I'm a wreck diver who's not known to be reckless.

 

[DivingKDawg]

From what everyone tells me, even though this practice goes on, statistically diving is safer now than it ever has been.

That doesn't make it any more acceptable to not have proper equipment and to be responsible for your self.