diving deaths affecting us?

[MikeFerrara]

Or perhaps your postulation about new students being dependent on DMs is incorrect. For full disclosure, I am a PADI Instructor(right in Walter's crosshairs). At least in California, dive boats don't provide in-water DMs. So divers are dependent upon themselves and their buddy.

While I won't argue that the requirements for certification have decreased over the last 20 years ( I wasn't teaching 20 years ago), perhaps the requirements then (as a carry over from the US Navy design to washout candidates) were in fact MORE than what was required for recreational diving. If the statistics show that the number of deaths/injuries vs. number of certified divers (and presumably dives) has remained constant or declined, perhaps its because current standards are sufficient, if not less than 'the old days'? I believe that for recreational diving, making the sport more inclusive than exclusive is a good thing -- as long as safety has not been compromised. Statistics seem to indicate that is the case.

I think we spend too much time looking at the number of deaths and too little looking at the number of near misses and the cause of the incidents.

I was an active instructor and a dive shop owner. In the begining I believed everything I had been taught including that diving was as safe as bowling and that just about any one could dive with a minimal amount of training. The accidents that I saw and heard about (fatal and nonfatal) changed the way I taught, the way I dive and the way I ran my dive shop. Eventually I became convinced that the agencies had no interest in addressing obvious connections between the cause of those acident and what divers are NOT taught in entry level classes. Additionally they were unwilling to address the fact that so many instructors are masters at teaching very short minimal classes that though they meet standards turn out certified divers who demonstrable can't dive. The end effect on me is that I closed the shop and eventually quit teaching because of my unwillingness to continue to deal with the agencies who are totally clueless about what it takes to dive safely, teach safe diving and don't seem to care much one way or the other. the rely on a seemingly low death rate to justify their useless standards. The fact is that a person can don scuba with no training at all, sink down, walk the bottom for a while and climb out without getting killed. That is not proof that their training was "good" or "adequate".

Apparently we're ok with the fact that 100 divers per year die in DAN's reporting area and that things like buoyancy control problems are reported in over half the fatal accidents. Of course we can visit any number of busy dive sites and witness a dozen uncontrolled ascents (fron various causes) and a like number of buddy seperations in a weekend. Which ones result in injury or death is a matter of luck but most are survived without injury and so go unnoticed all together. Still, I spent too much time helping divers out of the water, directing traffic for ambulances and searching for missing divers. How many deaths are acceptable if it's your family or your students that we're talking about especially if it was completely avoidable?

So, does it effect the industry? Not much but some. I'm not the only instructor who has seen enough to stop believing and stop repeating the party line. Most of the good instructors that I know have removed themselves from thew mainstream dive industry and no longer teach for shops because of how they are forced to teach.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Where I'm learning the goal is safety to increase profits.
One instructor told me that if one of his students (like me for instance) dies diving, it would ruin his career.

Nonsense. I know of several instructors who have lost students and they are still teaching. The next batch of OW students that walk in the door will have absolutely no idea. It'll only effect your career if the agency finds that there was a standards violation and drops you from teaching status.

As an example, in one case that I know of, an AOW atudent became seperated from the group (no asigned buddy?) on an AOW night dive. Eventually the instructor realized that he was a divers short and started a search. The student was found dead. The instructor didn't violate any training standards and continued to teach.

That same instructor was brought in to finish the OW class that my wife was in. I was a rescue diver at the time and I tagged along with the class. At one point he left my wife and her buddy (along with me) kneeling in the mud in zero vis while he went off to conduct skills with other students totally out of site of my wife and her buddy. That is a standards violation but no one died. Later in the same class my wife was doing the tour portion of a dive with a DM that I trusted and I was asked to buddy up with another student. That student and I became seperated from "the group" in the lousy vis. I waited for the instructor to turn and come back to us but he never did. Not knowing whether it was better to surface in open water without a reference (maybe causing a problem) or to stay on the bottom where things were calm and easy to control I continued on in the direction that I thought the instructor whould have gone. I caught up with him some time later and he was never aware that we were missing. Again, standards were violated but no one died...but they could have. Last I heard, this instructor is still teaching but don't worry...as far as I know only one of his students has actually died. A bunch have been abandoned and missing for a time but only one is dead from it. Of course the reason that I didn't report those standards violations was because, at the time, I had no idea that there were standards violations or that there even was such a thing.

I could go on with stories like this all day but I have to go to work. If you want to entertain yourself though, spend some time looking into some of the things that have happened during AOW deep dives (those are my favorite). You'll probably find plenty of good reading right here on this board.

 

[Thalassamania]

Why did you not complain to his agency?

 

[drglnc]

well, deaths do affect the industry. the government doesnt regulate scuba because it is considered a self regulated "safe" sport. if large numbers of deaths or injuries begin to happen then the government would start to regulate meaning also tax. that would mean the costs to get certified and to be an instructor, divemaster or scubashop would all go up, especially insurance fees. right know insurance is reasanoble, that wouldnt last.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

When I was flying, I would pore over FAA accident and incident reports constantly. There's another database for ultralights and I would go over and over those.

Now that I'm diving, I do the same thing. I'm constantly looking to refine what I do, examine my own procedures, and always trying to learn.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Why did you not complain to his agency?

Complain about what? I had only been diving a short time myself and really didn't realize that anything was being done wrong? Is it so hard to believe that a new diver would think that the instructor knows what he's doing? Also keep in mind that this was before I was ever on the net. My sole source of dive information to that point was the dive shop that the instructor worked for. I'm sure tht I realized that there was an agency name on my c-card but I doubt that I knew very much about what a training agency really was or how they worked and I certainly didn't know anything about what was in the training stadards. It wasn't like now where you just post what you saw on scubaboard and get 100 people from all over the world telling you what to do. It was a couple of years before I realized just how far over the wall that instructors actions were. In fact it wasn't until I was an instructor myself.

I believe this happens a lot. Instructors do some really off the wall stuff but the only witnesses don't know what they're witnessing.

I've reported a few things to the agencies but they are only interested if there was an actual standards violation. The problem is that it's more than possible to teach a lousy and even dangerous class while in complete compliance with standards. In my experience, the agencies do not want to hear about those. To make matters worse, it can be the most experienced instructors (even those with some decision making power in the agency) who are the best at using "loop holes" in the standards to their advantage to get more students through faster. My own course director was an absolute master at it and I started my own teaching career thinking that's what made a good instructor. Experience taught me different and fortunately, and to the best of my knowledge, all my students survived my learning curve.

 

[dive_lover88]

So in a nutshell, you are saying that safety of new divers are compromised for monetary gains...

 

[Thalassamania]

If the number of fatalities remain flat and the overall numbers of divers are flat and equipment advances are reducing the risks and many divers (everywhere but the Pacific coast) are being lead about by DMs, my conclusion would be that the risk is rising.

My read of the data is not that the number of deaths/injuries vs. number of certified divers, or number of dives has remained constant or declined. There are indicators that point in both directions with no clear shining light such as a total number of air fills per year. Even total number of certifications issued is a bogus figure since it is neither an auditable figure or corrected for multiple certifications earned by a single individual.
Since you were not teaching 20 years ago, please take my word for it that both skill and knowledge standards have steadily diminished.

My read is that the evidence indicates that current standards are insufficient. If you believe that recreational diving should be more inclusive than exclusive -- as long as safety has not been compromised, then you have to embrace the status quo and you must defend as reasonable a risk of fatality that is at least two orders of magnitude higher than football.

You should also understand that the idea that any requirements or standards were a carry over from the US Navy is clap-trap. While there were (are) a very few instructors who received their initial training in the Navy and copy that training in their civilian classes. But there has never been any significant presence of Navy types in the upper echelons of the training agencies making decisions about standards. This is an archetype developed out of the whole cloth, as best I can see, for no other purpose of ridiculing those who promote higher standards. It has no basis in fact.

The real question remains, as you indicated, WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR RECREATIONAL DIVING? In 1952 that question was answered with respect to research divers when the Scripps model training course was first offered (BTW: the Navy copied that course for open circuit training, not the other way around). While the basic requirements of that course remain unchanged in the research community (100 hours and 12 dives for a 30 ft. certification) standards have been steadily reduced within the recreational community. Do you not think that if the science community felt the standards could be reduced that they would not do so? There are not stupid people. But then, they have no commercial axe to grind.

The very people who built the Scripps model programs are the founders of the NAUI and LA County programs, and by extension PADI and the other agencies that grew out of that base. But the original standards of most all of the agencies have shrunk. Were the original standards MORE than what was required for recreational diving? Should candidates for diver training know how to swim? Should basic snorkeling skills be demonstrated prior to SCUBA training? The common wisdom in my world is that diving candidates should do both these things, and a few others. The difference between the two communities shows in their disparate fatality experience.

 

[MikeFerrara]

well, deaths do affect the industry. the government doesnt regulate scuba because it is considered a self regulated "safe" sport. if large numbers of deaths or injuries begin to happen then the government would start to regulate meaning also tax. that would mean the costs to get certified and to be an instructor, divemaster or scubashop would all go up, especially insurance fees. right know insurance is reasanoble, that wouldnt last.

Though this is what the agency tells us I think it's myth. Before we say why the government does what it does we need to specify what government we're talking about. Here in the US, legeslators are after votes. they are unlikely to take action until an issue comes to the attention of some significant sector of their votor population. The agencies and other industry members lobby far harder than the families of the injured or lost so that's who the politicians are listening to. In other words, the government will regulate a thing only when it's to their advantage...votes or dollars (which help to get votes).

On the other hand, there are other countries where the same agencies are doing business where the government has stepped in to regulate.

I don't believe that it's the regulation of the agencies that have kept government out though it helps the agency to get our support if we believe that. Another marketing line of bull, IMO.

Who says that insurance rates are reasonable? What are you comparing the rates to? I'm a full time farrier (horse shoer) and I can get liability insurance less expsively than I can get underwater liability insurance even though horses can be pretty unpredictable. That same insurance will cover my tools even though they spend a good deal of time in the back of my truck as I speed down the expressway and are at significant risk. If, and I say "if" we can say that underwater liability insurance rates are reasonable, I have to think it has more to do with volume (deals made between the agency and the insurance carrier), the number of law suites and their success rate. I don't know how often there is legal action when there's a diving injury or death but of the instances that I have personal knowledge of there has rarely been any legal action and the insurance company didn't pay out a dime. Then we have all the releases that we sign that say it's our fault no matter what happens. I don't know how good those releases really are in court but both the agency and the insurance company insist on us using them so they mnust do something. BTW, in the farrier insurance that I mention above, there are no liability releases that clients are required to sign. They sue if they wish and never promis in writing to do otherwise.

 

[Thalassamania]

A young lifeguard that I knew died in a 13 ft deep pool while engaged in a tragically stupid breath holding contest. That does not keep me from practicing my free diving in the same pool. I think that the same lesson may be applied to rebreathers. They are a potentially deadly piece of equipment that in my experience can do wondrous things, when used with great care and more attention to detail than some of the cowboy divers that are out on the edge of things are suited to.

I'm not a highly experienced RB diver. I've done a fair bit of pure oxygen diving and used several SRBs and CRBs, but with the SRBs and CRBs I had either the inventor/developer or a "factory rep" there to maintain and set up the gear and backstop my own inadequacies. It is a healthy thing to know your own limits.