Emparo821,
Could you please explain your seemingly inconsistent logic: if a lifeguard is "basically useless," in your opinion, why should the victim have had, in your opinion, a safety-swimmer? True, a dedicated safety swimmer can render aid a few seconds faster than a lifeguard, but there are many instances when lifeguards have indeed saved lives - so how are lifeguards "basically useless?" Also true, sadly, have been instances of "useless" lifeguards - situations where people drowned when lifeguards, as determined by courts after-the-fact, had neglected their duties by chatting amongst themselves and ignored swimmers. But you seemed to imply that even an attentive lifeguard would have been "useless." BTW, I believe that lifeguards shouldn't be sued if they were responsibly on duty and, despite their heroic efforts, a life was lost.
As you say, the victim SHOULD have had a safety diver working with him (I agree). But why would a well-trained dive instructor lend a solo free diver a mask in the first place? Wouldn't a well trained instructor know about the hazards of shallow-water blackout? If so, isn't lending a mask to a solo diver enabling a hazardous situation - particularly when no lifeguard is on duty? Was the instructor fully - FULLY - informed by his training agency about the risks of shallow-water blackout?
Is it unfair to consider the instructor as potentially liable for failing his or her duty-to-warn RE shallow water blackout? If John Doe (non dive-pro) lent a mask to the victim and didn't warn about SWBO, no liability should be considered. But mitigation of dive accidents -- setting and adhering to "standards of care" -- is the burden accepted by training agencies and dive instructors, for which they receive intrinsic and extrinsic benefits unavailable to non dive professionals. It's a pathetic excuse to rely upon, "Gee, accidents have always happened, and they always will; that's why they're called accidents." Sometimes, that may be true; but all the time? Rubbish.
If -- IF -- part of the dive industry's marketing plan is to increase profits by withholding specialized knowledge and information about risks (as seemingly occurs, per my first post in this thread), then perhaps statistics RE shallow-water blackout are also selectively withheld?
If the truthful scuba accident rate is withheld while the industry simultaneously trains dive pros to overcome the hesitance of would-be divers (customers) by claiming that "diving is as safe as bowling," then no industry Pooh-bah should be surprised when dive pros are beguiled by an accident-waiting-to-happen that swims right up and asks to borrow a mask.
Regrettably, the marketing tactics that some folks believe to be "devious" will continue until the legal defense costs make the industry's traditional risk-management calculus unprofitable, never mind the tragic road-kill of these tactics:
- Countless families the victims left behind;
- Dive pros who carry an awful burden of self-imposed guilt the rest of their lives for losing a student / customer (these conscientious dive pros never knew what their own training omitted);
- And possibly another malleable cadre of dive pros who blindly accepted their training, and fight to preserve the status quo of the industry, without questioning those who make the rules. Perhaps sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies are cultivated with boogeyman tales of greedy plaintiff lawyers? How else can one explain the few but vocal dive pros who passionately concoct ludicrous hypothetical explanations after accidents to explain why and how it is (always) the victims' fault?
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