Ed,
Thanks for the links. I can see where PADI might not want its accident stats published. What company would want that?
The problem with that argument is that there is no liability for reporting facts. The NTSB does it. They not only report the facts, but the names of those involved. They name names.
Skydiving assns. report facts. You name it, in many areas of endeavor, especially where the government has oversight, or there is the issue of "public good" or safety, accident reports are often part of the public record, often with the names, dates and conclusions included.
The Tech diving agency(cies) that didn't want to let this info loose WAS in fact willing to allow me to collate these reports so long as I scrubbed them clean of all personal info/data and reported only the facts and did not offer any unsubstantiated opinion about the incidents.
I was even introduced at an IUCRR meeting as an assistant to Jeff Bozanic responsible for collating and publishing these reports. Henry even briefly outlined how it would work. I believe that he was on board for the process and with some reservations, agreed with it.
There _was_ the mention of potential liability, during the formative process, for offering opinions that did not clearly arise from the facts, or any opinion at all. But I agree with that position, generally. I think the facts can speak for themselves and as Tech divers we have the right to that information however it's packaged.
I agreed to all of these parameters. I even agreed to allow the IUCRR board to have final say on each report as it was finished as a final fact check, something that would have slowed the process immeasureably. But if that's what it took, I was willing to go jump through their hoops and I did.
They even had me join the organization and take a Recovery Diver course from them, which I did. But when the rubber met the road, they would not release the facts. One of their "hoops" for me to jump through was to work for the current database administrator, Jeff Bozanic, helping him research some dives, which I did. And in each case, when I finished I emailed him and asked when I could start working on the database. Usually I got no direct reply to that request -- stonewalled.
I could not have been more cooperative and nicer about the whole thing but in the end nothing came of it. When, after 14 months, nothing happened I emailed Henry, then head of the IUCRR, and someone whom I respected, (he tragically died of cancer last year) and resigned. My personal feeling was that it was the IUCRR board, packed as it is with many of the old NACD/NSS-CDS dinosaurs, that ultimately could not allow this info to be released. Other, more cynical writers have suggested that this is because these accidents would condemn these agencies for ongoing unsafe practices and procedures. That's for others to decide, IMHO.
In the end, I do not believe that in any way it had ANYTHING to do with liability, I believe it was politics and a fear of criticism, pure and simple. If liability was the fear, why is the IUCRR website now publishing some of the more recent accidents reports? These are reports that could at one time or another have been found on any one of several mailing lists and the facts are out, so why these and not items from their database going back many years which had also been published somewhere at the time?
Sheck Exley's book not only describes the facts, but then goes on to draw conclusions from the facts, often extrapolating what _might_ have happened. The notion that somehow we all have to be protected from the awful facts of these deaths and near-misses is galling. We have the right to that information and they who have collected it over the years (and I applaud them for that) have an obligation to release it in some useful form. I have no doubt that if that info is released it WILL prevent accidents.
And to me, that is the most damning thing of all.
JoeL
