Diving past recreational limits...with no deco

[sigxbill]

If this were part of a PADI class, then, yes, PADI should be contacted. PADI has no authority to limit diver activities outside of a class, though.

I wonder if agencies do have some authority through insurance though? Professionals buy insurance - which insures them to teach within their agency's standards. I have not noticed any reference to guiding dives in my policy. Which leads me to wonder if insurance covers guiding activities that violate the professional's agency standards?

 

[Bob DBF]

I wonder if agencies do have some authority through insurance though?

If the agency owned the insurance company, they could require what they want.

An insurance company will insure a business and employees with a policy that covers what they do, not one that excludes their normal operation. The price of the policy is dependant on the actual risk involved. If the overall risk was too high they may refuse to insure.

Being a private organization, PADI can make any rules they wish concerning their professionals, but suspending or canceling professional status for breaching reccomended limits, outside of training, will be the beginning of the end of the agency.


Bob

 

[sigxbill]

Hi Bob - you missed my point. Insurance policies have limits of liability. For scuba professionals, those limits are the limits of the professional’s agency. That makes the agency’s rules also the rules of the corresponding insurance policy. There is no scuba professional policy without a corresponding agency who’s rules the professional has agreed to under the terms of insurance. With that in mind - if the professional wishes to be insured, and taking it one step further - the client wishes to have insurance liable recourse, then it seems to me that professional guides must operate within the applicable agency’s standards ...

 

[boulderjohn]

Dive operations have insurance. That is different from instructor liability insurance. Many of those insurance policies do limit what the operator can do. It is one of the reasons that many shops require AOW for some dives.

Let's say you are a dive operator in South Florida, where the most popular dives are to wrecks. Let's say your insurance company wanted to say you could not allow customers to enter those wrecks. I suspect that if you would change insurance companies, because if not, you would be out of business in no time.

 

[Bob DBF]

Hi Bob - you missed my point. Insurance policies have limits of liability

I didn't miss it, you seem to believe that the limits of liability should be the same for all businesses, whether scuba training, scuba dive ops, or my homeowners. As I said a buisness, or person, shops for the insurance they need and negotiates with the insurance broker for the best policy and price to cover their need.



Bob

 

[kafkaland]

When I first saw the poll whether PADI should revise it's standards of limiting recreational diving on air to 40m I though the question was whether it should be 30m instead, and relegating the 30-40m range to trimix, like GUE. So I was surprised when the actual post was talking about 60m dives instead. In any case, I'm fine with the limit where it is, it seems reasonable for most practical purposes, but your personal mileage may vary, of course. No one is forced to do a 60m dive on air, or a 40m dive, for that matter.

 

[sigxbill]

Hi Bob - I think you did miss my point - maybe on purpose. You assumed one can shop around and find a policy that covers almost anything in diving. While thats the way it should be, and I am not debating that one such policy may exist, I have not seen such a policy - and that is not the policy I was referring to.

What I was referring to specifically are the policies that instructors buy for themselves - like from VB, DAN, Witherspoon, etc. I have shopped all of those types of policies, and they all have one thing in common: they all rely on the agency (that both the insurance company and the instructor are associated with) to set the limits of liability of the policy.

That may not apply to all instructors, because some are under blanket shop policies that aren't related to the scuba industry - and maybe some of those cover more; I get that. Other instructors may live in countries that don't require insurance. But for those instructors and DMs that buy instructor policies directly for themselves, it seems to me that they are bound to the limits set forth by their agency ...

 

[SoccerDad]

Guys there are only a handful of insurance carriers in the world that insure Dive shops and instructors( No dive agency has near the money to own an insurance company that will write this risk). Unless things have changed in the last two years PADI's is a master policy and every dive shop/instructor gets a certificate of coverage.
The insurance carriers will use the professional agencies guidelines as a basis and may very well decline a claim should say a PADI instructor take a student or group past the set rec limits. Just like a doctor may very well see a claim denied for not following accepted protocols.
If you are an instructor or LDS you better read the exclusions and endorsements on your certificate.

 

[BlueTrin]

Guys there are only a handful of insurance carriers in the world that insure Dive shops and instructors( No dive agency has near the money to own an insurance company that will write this risk). Unless things have changed in the last two years PADI's is a master policy and every dive shop/instructor gets a certificate of coverage.
The insurance carriers will use the professional agencies guidelines as a basis and may very well decline a claim should say a PADI instructor take a student or group past the set rec limits. Just like a doctor may very well see a claim denied for not following accepted protocols.
If you are an instructor or LDS you better read the exclusions and endorsements on your certificate.

I think it has more to do with the expertise rather than the money required to do it.

It’s not as simple as having the cash to run an insurance company

 

[SoccerDad]

Without the money to show you can pay claims from somebody you cannot get approved in any of the 50 states or in any first or second world country. As for expertise when insurance carriers first started writing this coverage they had no date and put programs together solely on what the dive industry could offer. Now they have enough data to actually based on their own loss experience to better understand their risk from an insurance standpoint.