Info Is DAN Insurance worthwhile?

[jlcnuke]

Sometimes that is the right call, depending on the location and nature of injuries. Especially in remote areas.

Sure, it could be. It could also be the call that results in someone dying instead of living.

Listen.. I'm not saying that companies in the insurance business, with profits to consider, and risk vs. profit considerations will always make the choice that is 100% on the side of making their customers live/be successful.

They will, however, err on the side of 'going with the facts that will most often end up with them being right", .. at least financially. If they KNOW they will likely be found at fault for not providing the correct care, they KNOW they will likely face a massive lawsuit that will cost them lots of money. Most of their customer can't afford to do what Woody did, as they simply don't have the resources. So, their procedures, set by doctors and lawyers and people determining risk/liability based on the data-sets available, said to them that Woody would be fine to wait for their evac, under their conditions, on their understood timeline, and without caring about his money or influence, as a more likely successful outcome than doing something else like what Woody decided to do. If they felt it was more likely to work out well, they would have tried to arrange what Woody charged his AMEX to pull off., as being successful = saving money for them.

Looking at the whole of the situation, without assuming I know better than the experts, it seems Woody and Gus got lucky that something worse didn't result from Woody using his financial situation to over-ride the experts and their plans/opinions to me.

 

[crofrog]

I'm curious what altitude the cabin pressure was on that flight. There are significant complication risks when flying with DCS. A med-evac helicopter could likely have maintained a lower altitude and higher cabin pressure than a GA aircraft. Did the pilot know to run cabin pressure higher than normal, etc. Probably, but there are risks with grabbing a random plane/pilot for a DCS evac.

It was a king air b200 the max pressure differential in the cabin is 6.5psi so it can maintain a sea level cabin pressure up to around 15000 ft.

There aren’t any pressurized cabin helicopters in common usage.

It was also from a provider who specializes in medical evacuation not just like a random

Fixed wing planes are also much faster.

 

[SlugLife]

To be fair their YouTube channel is based on criticism of other people’s videos/accidents/buffoonery. They can’t be held to any different standard when they share their own story…

This discussion can be had without the endless personal attacks. A comment about "it speaks volumes" is clearly intended not to critique a dumb action, but rather discredit him as a person. Like I said:

Critique. I'm sure Gus and Woody (and many others) would love to learn from this incident. Afterall, I'm sure none of us (including Woody) want to be in the situation Woody was in. Ever.

Specifically with accidents and incidents, there's a level of "in hindsight, that (action/decision) was somewhat dumb." We want people to share accidents and incidents, including the things they did which were dumb, not cover them up.

For example, there was an incident that an "Adventures with a Purpose" diver Doug had, and when they were interviewed about it, I'm about 98% certain Doug was were lying because he was embarrassed. He claimed to have switched to the pony bottle, but it wasn't breathing properly, when I'm fairly confident he didn't switch. The real lesson was he was completely inexperienced and untrained with his equipment, and not ready to handle problems under-pressure, which is a valuable lesson. Instead he was trying to push blame onto the equipment itself. Telling the truth, IMO, would lead to a better accident analysis.

I had an incident, where there was a massive leak underwater, caused by improperly tightening a regulator. I had listened to advice saying to only finger-tighten regulator-hoses. I can't stop you from saying that proves I'm an idiot nobody should listen to, but I think the dive-community is better off learning from these incidents. It took me a while to talk about that incident publicly due to being embarrassed.

We're fortunate that we have people who survive these incidents, and get over their ego enough to discuss them, including admitting the mistakes they made. Or do you think the dive community is better off just laughing at, discrediting, and engaging in personal attacks at all the dummies who have accidents underwater?

 

[Searcaigh]

FFM might be the preferable option to have but most definitely not a necessity for IWR of a conscious and alert diver. I have an 80AL of 100% on my boat for both in water and surface O2 options. Probably better discussed in another thread..

That is probably what my tech group would do, but we have the equipment to deal with this.

FFM is necessary to avoid drowning if the patient ox tox's a poor second would be a gag strap on a regulator. So doing IWR with a rebreather is not so difficult as most have gag straps

The first 10 mins is on 100% at 9m using IANTD tables, my CNS was at 247% at that point when we did the air switch during my refresher course last November.

Gus was cold after the dive, so the only person who could have gone down with Woody would have been the other guy (can't remember his name), but a third diver would also be preferable to accompany the two already in the water to transmit information on the progress.

I'm sure a quick call to some people locally and they could have found other divers willing to help, but personally I'd prefer it was people who were trained in this procedure.

@NW Dive Dawg if you want, why not start a new thread on this subject in the Technical Diving section, I'm sure a lot of people would find it interesting to learn the ins and outs of IWR, but it still remains a very controversial subject to many.

First choice though is always to get to a dry chamber asap.

A small portable one man chamber is probably a good idea to have in remote locations especially in places where technical cave diving is done as well as on LOBs running in places like Raja Ampat, provided there are people qualified to operate them.

Additionally Woody's difficulty on breathing when he reached the surface did have me think of possible IPO/IPE, and it would have been incorrect to start IWR.

As we now know, Woody was dehydrated so quite likely not an IPO issue, getting on 100% O2 is always the first move, but it appears that Gus and the other guy didn't appear to take it too seriously as per their subsequent delay in taking action.

 

[cerich]

Everything is a huge leap of assumptions at this point. Including your assumption about what DAN might have known or not known about some random transport service....

Do you disagree with that?

Indeed, and why I object to your earlier post.

 

[auto]

People love to say this. It is right up there with the "deco algorithms aren't perfect, therefore they are just guesses." Or, "it is just a theory."

But the science (embedded in the dive computer's algorithm) does not take into account the diver's CO2 or hydration status....or personal physiology. It isn't that the science isn't exact, but rather that it is incomplete for *you*, the diver, unless you are the mythical average person. In this case, the computer did not know about the diver's admitted dehydration...and would not have been able to include the info anyway. It is up to the *diver* to adjust the dive...or not do it.

Well duh... Exactly what I was saying. The science is not valid for every persons physiology, current factors, or unknown issues. Sort of like using GPS to navigate at O'Dark Thirty at speed in a shallow water environment. That track was good last week, I can't imagine why I went airborne on my normal track. Things change.

 

[ofg-1]

DAN is an insurance company. If you fall off a ladder and break a leg, is your first call going to be to Blue Cross? If your house catches fire in the middle of the night, do you call Allstate?

DAN is in a specialized market and advertise specialized services. Its also true that they are an insurance company and have the bureaucratic BS that goes along with being one. They will answer the phone 24 hours a day. They will try to facilitate services, but at the end of it, sometimes they are good at it, sometimes not. I have a friend that got bent at Dipolder. They had to cut his dry suit off him, DAN paid for all transportation, treatments and a new drysuit.

Is DAN worthless? NO. Are they the be all end all for all diving accidents worldwide? HELL NO. These guys should be thankful they were not diving Crooked Island or Acklins. They could still be there.

 

[ELCAM]

This discussion can be had without the endless personal attacks. A comment about "it speaks volumes" is clearly intended not to critique a dumb action, but rather discredit him as a person. Like I said:

Specifically with accidents and incidents, there's a level of "in hindsight, that (action/decision) was somewhat dumb." We want people to share accidents and incidents, including the things they did which were dumb, not cover them up.

For example, there was an incident that an "Adventures with a Purpose" diver Doug had, and when they were interviewed about it, I'm about 98% certain Doug was were lying because he was embarrassed. He claimed to have switched to the pony bottle, but it wasn't breathing properly, when I'm fairly confident he didn't switch. The real lesson was he was completely inexperienced and untrained with his equipment, and not ready to handle problems under-pressure, which is a valuable lesson. Instead he was trying to push blame onto the equipment itself. Telling the truth, IMO, would lead to a better accident analysis.

I had an incident, where there was a massive leak underwater, caused by improperly tightening a regulator. I had listened to advice saying to only finger-tighten regulator-hoses. I can't stop you from saying that proves I'm an idiot nobody should listen to, but I think the dive-community is better off learning from these incidents. It took me a while to talk about that incident publicly due to being embarrassed.

We're fortunate that we have people who survive these incidents, and get over their ego enough to discuss them, including admitting the mistakes they made. Or do you think the dive community is better off just laughing at, discrediting, and engaging in personal attacks at all the dummies who have accidents underwater?

It does speak volumes…it shows a zero to hero mentality which can be part of chain of events leading to an incident. Glimpses into facts such as no p-valve for a 150+ min planned dive in a hot environment means knowingly dehydrating to avoid urinating. This I’m sure is not a one off, as he’s previously done dry suit CCR cave dives in equally hot environments in prior videos.
A lesson that hasn’t been addressed is a progressive learning plan without skipping steps. My tech/cave instructors required drysuits and p-valves..why because they know there importance as you gain experience and progress in diving. Taking a cave class in a wetsuit that knowledge might get missed when a diver decides that due to long exposures they now want a drysuit. That could be a chain in the incident analysis that could have been prevented. It’s not speaking volumes about the individual but the facts surrounding their actions. Believe or not individuals mentalities, personalities and egos are part of the human factors leading to an incident.

 

[TravelGas]

Gus and Woody said that DAN was not being completely accurate with what they were being told and when by DAN. It will be interesting to see if Gus and Woody are also being completely accurate with what they said and when they said it, as evidenced by the complete transcripts, not certain key transript pages of phone calls pulled from what is disclosed to the public to read. i.e. was ownership of Dive Talk ever mentioned, since Gus and Woody said it was not....

 

[The Chairman]

Then why even bother with insurance?

Insurance should never be used as a license to dive in an unsafe manner or otherwise behave recklessly. That's an abuse of the system and will cause all of us to have to pay more. It's hard to accept in this entitled society, but accidents should be the exception, not the expected. While there are exceptions, when diving, you and you alone are responsible for your own safety. Remember, you can call a dive at any time, even before you splash. There's simply nothing down there worth getting, hurt, maimed, or killed over.