Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park
- Thread starter Jim Lapenta
- Start date
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John,
You absolutely cannot be serious. This has to be one of the most disingenuous things I've ever read on ScubaBoard. Specifics have been discussed ad nauseum on ScubaBoard and elsewhere on social media.
But allow me to dispel your claim once and for all.
In DAN's 2016 annual report, they listed changes they wanted to see. High level/conceptual changes, but a further drilling down leads to obvious concrete practices for improving dive safety. For those interested, those are found here: https://apps.dan.org/publication-library/?&token=na. I've attached the 2016 report here. On page 5, DAN lists the "Ten Most Wanted Improvements in Scuba."
1. Correct Weighting
2. Greater Buoyancy Control
3. More Attention to Gas Planning
4. Better Ascent Rate Control
5. Increased Use of Checklists
6. Fewer Equalizing Injuries
7. Improved Cardiovascular Health in Divers
8. Diving More Often (or more pre-trip Refresher Training)
9. Greater Attention to Diving Within Limits
10. Fewer Equipment Issues / Improved Maintenance
I added numbers for the sake of convenience. First, lets' talk about #1. We all know that with on the knees training that overweighting is common, and that students are typically foot heavy. That overweighting and incorrect distribution of weight results in a number of problems.
The first problem is that in order to achieve neutral buoyancy, additional gas must be added to the wing/dry suit to compensate for that excess weight. On ascents and descents (#4 Better Ascent Rate Control), that additional gas expands resulting in an even greater increase in buoyancy force, and the diver accelerates towards the surface if they do not dump gas fast enough. It takes time for students to learn how much gas to dump on ascents. Excessive weight just makes it harder, just as excess weight makes it harder on descents.
When I started out, I was an OTKSI (on-the-knees-shyte-instructor). I had students corking/cratering all the time as I was taught to overweight them and ensure that they were stable on their knees on the bottom. It was frustrating seeing my students crater (kicking up a silt cloud) and corking. It is luck that I didn't have any incidents. Now one of the realities of cold water teaching, we are extremely limited with time. The on the surface weight checks simply do not happen here for students in wetsuits. I would pay your $100 to show me a Seattle area PADI shop that does this. Make it $1000.
Approach weighting as more of an equation, how positive is the wetsuit? How negative is the scuba kit with cylinder at 500 psi? How much weight does a student need to sink without a kit in confined water? Add those numbers up, and see how that works. I have described how I did it here: How I weight students in open water courses. This is not the first time I've shared this link/info on ScubaBoard or elsewhere on social media. It isn't the only method, but a method that worked great for me. You only have to determine the buoyancy characteristics for the scuba kit and wetsuits once. It takes less than a minute to find out how much weight a student would need to sink in confined water.
At the end of OW dives, conduct quick weight checks. First, if the wing/BCD is emptied and the dry suit emptied to the point where comfort is still maintained, does the diver still sink? Then remove some weight. Are they able to hover without sculling? If not, move some weight up. THIS SHOULD BE REQUIRED.
I would also add the requirement of teaching balanced rigs. At the first dive, can the diver go down to 15 feet / 5 meters, and with an empty wing/drysuit, can the student swim to the surface without ditching weight? If they can't due to excess weight, it is obvious what to do. If they cannot due to a lack of fitness, then they should get in better shape and try again after improving conditioning or stick to warmer water where less exposure protection and less lead is needed. This may hurt some people's feelings, but I'd rather do that than have people die. Agencies seem to think differently as that'd mean lost income.
If the young woman who died in Montana had to do a failed wing scenario (balanced rig) along with her instructor at the start of her dive in shallow water, it may have saved her life. Yes, having a dry suit hose would likely have saved her life as well, if she was capable of using it. Some people shut down due to stress, which is why they have us. We are supposed to safeguard our students against everything but medical emergencies. Those we deal with as best we can. But in this case, we had a healthy young woman.
I think I've addressed #2 Greater Buoyancy Control while addressing #1 Correct Weighting. They are tightly coupled.
Regarding #3 More Attention to Gas Planning. I would address this in two ways. I would introduce the concept of min gas. I would also add a dive for timed swims for rough estimates of swim rates and gas consumption rates. When the students do their planned swims, have them calculate how much gas that they expect to have at different points in their dive that they are planning using a dive map. Second, when it comes to monitoring cylinder pressure, I found randomly asking students to be ineffective. So I turned it around. I gave my students a task: report to their buddy first, me second, when they reached certain cylinder pressures: 2000/1500/1000 psi. I have yet to have a student fail to report their gas within 100 psi. They knew what was expected of them.
Regarding #5 Increased Use of Checklists. BWRAF/ABCDE/BAR/etc. are nowhere near as effective as what GUE does: top-down, right-left equipment checks.
#6 Fewer Equalizing Injuries. Stop teaching Vasalva. REQUIRE teaching other equalization techniques.
#7. Improved Cardiovascular Health in Divers and #8. Diving More Often (or more pre-trip Refresher Training), I don't think much more can be done in an open water course, but I could be wrong and am open to listening to how others may think this could be approved.
I also don't know how to address #9. Greater Attention to Diving Within Limits, as since the pay in the scuba industry is so paltry low, dive guides often push the limits in order to get a better tip. Open to suggestions on how to address this.
#10. Fewer Equipment Issues / Improved Maintenance. I was pretty shocked when a training director told me he hadn't serviced his reg in four years/500 dives. I had to stop typing as the Greek in me made me wave my hands as "what are you nuts?". I don't have a solution for this normalization of deviance. Unfortunately the normalization of deviance is prevalent, like people diving outside of their training and equipment limits.
I hope that the above qualifies as specifics. If not, let me know and I will address them until you are satisfied. I hope now you will NEVER claim again to have not seen specifics on how to improve dive safety.
Sorry, but all of this is really not responsive to my statement.
All of the agencies have standards that call for the things on DAN's list already. Every agency could respond that they are already doing it. As you point out, many instructors aren't doing it. That means your long post can be summarized as "the agencies suck--they need to do a better job at what they claim to be doing."
My question was about how to make that happen
Government regulation, perhaps?
This self-regulation simply doesn't work. Having the wolf guard the hen house doesn't ever have good results (unless you are the wolf).
There is a fee, have to have a certain volume of certifications per year.
You could make the agency responsible of violations of individual instructors if they cannot prove they did sufficient checks.
Now you’d have to define what is a sufficient check I guess?
You could try to have an approach where after such an incident, the agency would be fined next time a similar incident because they didn’t take enough steps to make sure their standards were applied.
It’d very vague and hard to enforce without being arbitrary?
In financial markets, just turning a blind eye and not being able to prove that you tried to apply the standards/regulations is sometimes enough to be fined.
Costs of the red tape would end up being passed to the customer.
Now you’d have to define what is a sufficient check I guess?
You could try to have an approach where after such an incident, the agency would be fined next time a similar incident because they didn’t take enough steps to make sure their standards were applied.
It’d very vague and hard to enforce without being arbitrary?
In financial markets, just turning a blind eye and not being able to prove that you tried to apply the standards/regulations is sometimes enough to be fined.
Costs of the red tape would end up being passed to the customer.
How would they check?
I worked for two local dive shops, each with about a dozen instructors with very irregular schedules. What would the process of checking each of the instructors look like? Would they go into the pool with them and watch a pool session for each one of them and an open water session for each one of them? That would require the person doing the checking to be in town for months just to do that one shop. They could try to do multiple shops like that in town, but since most of them only do instruction on weekends, that wouldn't help much. I would estimate that doing a check for each instructor in the Denver metropolitan area would take a couple of years, with most of the time spent in motels in that region wasted (weekdays).
Now multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of instructors PADI alone has.
I wonder how they would check me? I am an independent teaching mostly tech on a very irregular schedule. I travel about 420 miles for my classes--would they go with me?
Of course, checking on someone who knows you are there is a problem. All of these people did an acceptable job on their instructor exams, when they knew they were being closely observed. I am quite sure the instructor in this current horror show of a case look would just fine if she knew she was being evaluated. If I were teaching a class in a pool or in the open water, I am pretty sure I would notice a stranger tagging along for the dive.
Now, what about the instructors who teach for multiple agencies. Each one of those agencies would have to have people checking in on him or her.
So, once again--what would the checking process look like? Pray be specific.
Checking everyone would be a challenge, you could require all members to teach one time with an instructor trainer once every X years?
One other thing that could be done would be to rely on feedback. You could make sure you take all complaints seriously and investigate them?
Or you could require the certified divers to send back a online questionnaire with questions such as:
- was a weight check done and the instructor explained how to perform one yourself
- was a buddy check done on all of your dives?
- did you feel unsafe at any point and why?
You could make it mandatory to get certified and online + access open only after the class so people can only fill this away from the class?
Instructors would never then cheat on any of the points of this questionnaire, because they’d be flagged automatically.
One other thing that could be done would be to rely on feedback. You could make sure you take all complaints seriously and investigate them?
Or you could require the certified divers to send back a online questionnaire with questions such as:
- was a weight check done and the instructor explained how to perform one yourself
- was a buddy check done on all of your dives?
- did you feel unsafe at any point and why?
You could make it mandatory to get certified and online + access open only after the class so people can only fill this away from the class?
Instructors would never then cheat on any of the points of this questionnaire, because they’d be flagged automatically.
I know a lot of people don't like the use of camera. It is my understanding that an instructor was distracted by using a camera which resulted in a death. However, I believe this is a non-issue with mask mounted options that exist today, like the Paralenz. Requiring the use of such and uploading video which is spot checked is one option worth discussing. Then checks can be done remotely. More work for the instructor. I'm sure it will be problematic as some regions of the world have poor/nonexistent internet access, but that's the exception, not the rule (I hope).
I know many RAID instructors use video as it is an excellent teaching tool. I think it should be used universally, as showing students how they are doing is incredibly helpful. This is why video is used by many coaches of different sports.
I know many RAID instructors use video as it is an excellent teaching tool. I think it should be used universally, as showing students how they are doing is incredibly helpful. This is why video is used by many coaches of different sports.
All that is already done, at least by PADI.
When I was a DM assisting in classes, an instructor I assisted regularly was investigated as a result of such a report. In response to such a question on a survey, a student had said that when they did the CESA, the instructor did not use a line. That was ridiculous. We always used a line, and we had DMs top and bottom to supervise students closely at all times. The student had misremembered, but that faulty memory caused the instructor enough grief that in subsequent classes he emphasized to the students to remember that a line was used during the CESA.
My students have sometimes shared with me the kinds of questions they were asked.
If I know a video of me instructing is going to be uploaded for evaluation, I am going to make sure it is a darn good video. I am sure the instructor in this case could create a stellar video.
