This is the part that you need to provide references for. Everyone can google the documents you refer to.
You're saying that currently available rebreathers have been certified to meet EN14143:2003 even though their electrical/electronic parts either haven't been properly tested under IEC 61508, or have been tested and failed the test, and that everybody knows about this but nobody does anything about it, while at the same time there are no publicly available sources to testify that.
The moon landing was staged too, right?
No, I do not think the moon landing was staged, but blunders happen all the times.
There was a blunder a long time ago and some Notified Body (i.e. a test house/certification agency) issued a two page certificate where the first page could be interpreted one way, and the second page a different way. This led some manufacturer in error and in good faith to mark and sell products as "EN14143:2003" - but in reality the Notified Body never intended to certify it to "EN14143:2003" because the product did not meet Clause 5.13.1 insofar the product had a "SIL Level of less than 1" (SIL 1 is the minimum level to achieve Functional Safety, with SIL 4 being the highest and safest level of Functional Safety).
That is what the Freedom of Information documents I obtained show. They are available to all who make a Freedom of Information request to the U.K. authorities.
So, lots of these products get sold and people start dropping dead (bear in mind that because of the dynamics of rebreather fatalities it is not possible to establish causation, people pass out and drown and the autopsy can only ascertain the drowning as the cause of death - so in no way I am suggesting the rebreather is the
cause of the fatality!!!).
Years later the blunder gets caught, but it is kind of late insofar lots of rebreathers have been sold by now and it has become the de facto standard that these machines can actually be released to the general public despite lacking Functional Safety (i.e. being "less than SIL 1").
The issue is then what to do about the situation (in the meantime more and more people are dropping dead, but these machines make good money for a lot of people and a promising industry has developed).
The solution which is being adopted is to create a new standard which removes precisely the requirement which the machines do not meet, and sell more of these machines to a larger number of users.
It is consumerism and the profit motive is taking precedent over any other consideration.
We have now 289 recorded fatalities across a range of machines which all lack Functional Safety (not for lack of trying hard on the part of manufacturers) because the technology is not there yet (O2 galvanic sensors and cheap electronics in a corrosive environment and the inability of the human to detect bad gas before passing out is not exactly conducive to Functional Safety) and we are putting them in the hands of more recreational divers...
I think what is happening will become a Harvard Business School Case Study.
We can only hope in the meantime that some new technology advancement will come soon and rebreathers can be made safer than they currently are because the greater the adoption rate, the greater will be the number of fatalities (whatever the "cause" may be).
Read the reference documents I posted (post 51) and you will get a better understanding as to why where Human Factors (i.e. human error) is implicated then Functional Safety is key to reduce fatalities.
In the meantime we can collect the stats. and time will tell.
