This thread is very interesting. Particularly for a european fellow, as me, by the way I hope You'll accept apologizes for my english.
Because it is well known in french speaking countries that the american way-of-life in personnal responsability is strongly different than the ours.
The poor lady burned by this coffee had never had the idea of consulting a lawyer, and if she had make it, the lawyer has certainly said: "Don't do anything, you can't win." It may be curious but it is a fact.
I daresay I quite agree with the statement "We always find our community special" but in the particular case of Diving Society, it's our life and buddy life which is in question. And I think it makes the difference. For me.
But just one thing. I am a PADI diver. (Oh well, and what else...you surely think
)
In Frenchspeaking Europe we're in minority and this way of diving too... And when I see other schools (now I do not mean Nauiour IDEA, SSI etc..., I mean National Federations) I feel this attitude (correct this one?) less frequent. If something goes wrong it's always the other one fault. What a pity. You see, I scheduled a dive and , my scheduled buddy was one of those guys. He refused the pre dive check saying "If you touch my gear and something goes wrong it will be your fault" Cool indeed, nice buddy. That day I finally found the shore very nice and I cancelled the dive. An I forgot the best, the guy very angry has yelled something like: "Now If you dive like an american"...
And what if I do? Where is the problem?
I said to him afterwards that I found my personnal responsability involved if I dived with him without any check.
And his conclusion was:"The responsability will be the one of the owner of the dive site - it is a reserved area).
I don't konw if you see what I mean. But this lack of responsability had make me very suspicious about diving with a buddy like that.
So, you see...Personnal responsability...I believe in it, but I can't say it is very frequent in my local diving community.