Gilboa

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Facts would be good however when things like this happen you never get them.

The instructor does need to file an incedent report with his agency and the insurance company. These reports are confidential and to my knowledge are never released. The purpose of the report is to give the agency and the insurance company the information they need to defend the instructor and the agency against legal action. If the supervisor was a DM he may not even be insured. Not all agencies require DM's to have insurance and PADI is one that doesn't. I know more DM's without insurance than I do with it. Also while all instructors probably have experience with filing incedent reports I have never personally known of a DM that has (it might be different on charters or something). To put the incedent report in perspective we are required to file one within a certain amount of time following any incedent which interupts diving activities. If some one drops a weight on their foot at their car and decides not to dive a report is required. I had a diver that was just tagging along with our class (we don't do that anymore) who got sick after his first dive and skipped the second. I called the insurance company and they wanted an incedent report.

With PADI the instructor is automatically put in non-teaching status until the matter is investigated when there is a fatality in training. I don't know if that holds true for supervised non-training dives.

In fact I don't really even know how the training standards apply here. If it was a dry suit class there is no doubt that taking a diver into OW without recieving the entire confined water training as outlined is a blatant standards violation. However, I don't know how the standards apply if it isn't a class. If the supervisor by chance isn't a drysuit instructor then I would think it would really be sticky. DM's for instance aren't usually permitted to teach dry suit diving.

Like I said the agency and insurance company will do whatever they can to protect the instructor. Accident analysis for the betterment of diving do not enter into it at all and they will only share what they are forced to. PADI as an example has always (so they told me) had a policy of NEVER settling. Everything goes to trial. The reason I was given is to discourage suits.

DUI's insurance will work to protect them. The only entities concerned directly with public or consumer interests here are going to be the public agencies like the police and coroner and they don't know anything about diving.

Since there a relatively few diving fatalities nobody really cares. Nobody will take steps to prevent the one. It's a numbers thing.

When I was asked to help with demos no one could reconcile my concerns with the standards and I skipped it. In fact we recieved a not so nice phone call a couple of weeks ago about the most recent one I skipped.

"buyer beware"
 
Take these for what they are worth. I consider them "facts" because I was at Gilboa both Saturday and Sunday but all in all it's just my perception.
Some want to condemn DUI for being profit motivated, only there to sell dry suits, etc. Go ahead and cendemn them if you want. Why else would a dry suit manufacturer underwrite the cost of a demo 2000 miles from their factory except to sell a product? This is hardly an evil pursuit however. I only had an opportunity to demo the suits on Saturday (Sunday cancelled) but at no time did anyone even remotely connected with the event push the sale of a suit. The only things I was asked were "How was your dive?" and "Did the suit fit OK?"
The scene at the water on Saturday was a form of semi-organized chaos. What DUI will be forced to respond to is that their web site mentioned that dry suit demo divers would be led thru the dive as soon as a small group formed. I don't know if this was actually done. I was with a small group of my own which contained three very experienced dry suit divers. This puts me in good hands but I don't believe the event coordinators knew this when they handed me a dry suit. This issue is what I suspect will be pursued in any legal action.
The point is made that the diver who died paid the price for his own mistakes and that it has nothing to do with dry suit demos. That isn't totally true. The diver in question may not have even been at Gilboa that weekend except for the demo. The conditions, at least on Saturday, could be considered more advanced than beginner. It was cold, vis was poor, there were a lot of divers in the water, etc. What every one needs to take away from this tragedy is that scuba diving, even in a recreational setting such as a quarry, can be deadly if you dive beyond your training and personnal limits.
 
Thanks yknot. If there is a suit it will be (at least in theory) be judged based on the duty of care or breach of it by the person being sued, the damages and the cause of the damages. There may also be liability releases that come into play. BTW, I'm not a lawyer.

Does a supervisor by agreeing to supervise a dive establish a duty of care to the divers being supervised? I think so. Does a dry suit manufacturer establish a duty of care by offering to lead you on a dive ina dry suit? I think so.
At the same time other things would be argued, I think, like the fact that the OW manual says you shouldn't dive beyond your training. Some instructor has on file the knowledge reviews, quizes and tests that this diver took that will establish that he knew. It is documented that he was tought and practiced a bunch of relevant in-water skills.

Maybe the guy was an experienced dry suit diver. Maybe he wasn't in a dry suit. In a way that makes it worse, IMO.

Nothing is clear cut in court and the guy with the most money has the advantage.
 
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Popeye once bubbled...


The guy that's responsible is -dead-.

And it wasn't a training issue.

He made his mistake (several, actually), and paid his price.

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M: Yes he was ultimately responsible. Sounds like a lot of mistakes for a trained diver especially under supervission. Like they say "buyer beware".

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There was another diver in their group, a "student" if you will, who saw 80ffw on his computer, knew it was wrong, and aborted the dive. I'm not sure of these next points, but the deceased was diving air, without a computer. I'm very sure that a dive plan had been made, and he should have known he was going wrong. They were supposed to be going from the DUI tent (at the concrete blocks) over to the airplane and back. He had no business going over the wall. I was told that they swam into an AOW class, swimming from the "plane dock" to the deep side, and became mixed with that group. I also don't know if his "dive guide" was an instructor. There were many guides, and if they were all instructors, there sure was a bunch.

I don't want anyone else, especially you, to take responsibility for my diving.
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M: I don't want responsibility for your diving. I do, however think that I should take responsibility for the skill level of my students when I hand them a card

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You say that someone has to take responsibility (IIRC), and I say, for what? The kid did this to himself, his god given right. If he didn't have enough information to make a supervised drysuit dive, then he shouldn't have. What would stop him, except better judgement? He broke almost every rule that applied to the quarry, and diving training in general, so more rules and training won't help.

Because if it was left up to you, there would be no DUI demo days, and the -thousands- of divers that get an opportunity to try a drysuit never would.
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M: Not true. I have stated though that based on the training standards I am bound by I have had to decline when invited to help with Whites demo days. So I guess I would do it differently

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But they don't have time to give a drysuit class to each and every one of the 500 divers that were there, as in the questions you asked Rachel. So they go outa their way to let you try a suit, and you have to be mature enough to assess and accept the risk. I jumped in a suit, and took off like a shot, solo. I didn't wait around to see if they were happy about that. My decision.

If I'da died, that'd be my tough luck.

There wasn't even a hint of a sales pitch, as a side note, and the event was the most informative dive production I've ever attended. It won't be my last.

And I won't be told by someone where and when and how I can dive, especially one who looks though the glass darkly.


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M: I certainly don't want to tell you when, where or how to dive. I suppose many of my experiences in diving and the dive industry cause me to have a dim view.

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Your view (of the general diving populace) is very dim, I must say. I don't want it to be involved in any rule making that may later affect me. I don't mean that as an insult, if I had a girlfriend or family member that wanted to learn to dive, you'd be one of my first choices. We just see things in a greatly different light. Once you issue the card, it's all up to the diver after that. If you list the chain of errors that we know about, let alone the ones we don't, I myself don't see any training issues in this accident. No agency told the guy to get in a drysuit and go over the side.

He did all these things himself.

Poor judgement, which you can't issue away with a card.

Not to rain on everybody's witch hunt, but has anybody ascertained whether or not the drysuit was even involved in the accident?


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M: Not that I've heard.

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The papers said he drowned, but he was breathing when I helped pull him up on the beach. His tank was empty, or more specifically, 50psi at 1 ata. I know for a fact that the dive guide got to him at 120, and tried to donate air. What happened after that I don't know. What the victim's training level, experience level, or agency is, is unknown to me as well.

I was told the kid got lost, went deep, panicked, and hoovered his tank.

And it's not DUI's fault the kid couldn't read a depth guage or an SPG.

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M: It isn't DUI's fault if he couldn't use his gauges but I suppose that's why these dives are supervised.
I can't help but wonder how much con trol the diver had over his position in the water. I wonder what he knew about gas management. I wonder how all these things happened all on the same supervised dive.

Popeye, you seem of the opinion that the diver just had a bad day or something. I guess that based on my experience in the dive industry I'm not as comfortable with all of this as you are.

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The diver had a bad judgment day, fer sure. I certainly can't imagine what he was thinking, any more than I can't imagine why non cavers keep dying in caves, and stuff like that. I'm not glad he's dead, I just don't see it as anyone's fault but his own. Hundreds of other divers survived the day, and thousands have survived the Demos.

Sometimes, it all comes down to Darwin.
 
Popeye

Much of what you said is true of course. The only thing I really want to add or clearify is that I don't want more "rules". I just don't think that enough instructors and the industry in general do a good enough job of preparing divers to make their own good decissions. They don't know what they don't know.

You mentions non-cavers getting killed in caves. I went in caves a little before I was trained to do it. I didn't have a clue at the time. I lived and I learned but it could have been different. As a result I make a major deal of discussing the risks of an untrained diver entering overheads. After hearing my rant and watching the video "a Deceptively Easy Way to Die" if they still do it then it is a decission they made on their own while having the information needed to make it.

I think some divers make the decission to drop over the wall at Gilboa or follow a DM into a wreck (or whatever) without ever having been given a hint as to what they should know before doing it. I agree, once their informed it's up to them.
 
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