In
a recent and still current thread in the Accidents and incidents forum, discussion has centered upon rebreather design. A diver apparently died as a result of assembling the rebreather incorrectly, and the opinion was offered that the rebreather should have been designed so that it could not have been assembled incorrectly. As a moderator, I had to step in a couple of times to remind participants that it was the A & I forum, and discussion had to be centered upon the incident, not on the generic topic of rebreather design. I suggested that those who wanted to talk about this aspect of rebreather design should start a thread in the rebreather forum for that topic. Since that did not happen, I am starting that thread myself.
I am not a rebreather diver, and I am as ignorant about their operation as anyone who got as far in OC diving as I have could be. From that perspective, it seemed to me that the two sides, as polarly opposite and hostile as they appeared to be, were actually very close to saying the same thing. Here is how I would summarize the two opposing viewpoints as I understood them:
Side One: Although it is impossible to make rebreather design 100% foolproof in setup, the design should be as foolproof as possible in order to minimize the possibility of operator error.
Side Two: It is impossible to make rebreather design 100% foolproof in setup, so there is always the possibility of operator error.
Now, no one on side two ever came out and said, "because it is not possible to make the design 100% foolproof, the manufacturers should not make any attempt to include any such safety improvements." On the other hand, it almost seemed to be the implication of some of the arguments. I believe if you asked them that question point blank, they would say, "Of course manufacturers should do what they can to make them as safe as possible, even though it will never be 100%." If so, then the two sides were actually saying the same thing.
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I saw it.
So I would like to frame the topic of this thread as follows. I wold like to see a discussion about how rebreathers could be improved to minimize the potential for operator error. Specific references to specific models would be useful. Of course, if you feel it would be wrong for rebreather designers to do this, by all means make that case as well.