Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park

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The sad thing is a young girl's death prompted all these discussions of changes in the industry standards. Why did someone have to die in the first place?

Steve

Rules can mostly only be written in blood. It’s sad but true way human nature works.

The larger issue is whether any changes will actually be made, or is it just discussion.
 
And the Olson's (owners of Gull) are no longer part of lawsuit.

Paying legal costs, I will assume they settled.

Interesting turn.
I don't know how much the Olson's got in the end:


But I suspect that a big chunk of that is gone.
 
I don't know how much the Olson's got in the end:


But I suspect that a big chunk of that is gone.
 
The problem with courses like the one Snow was "teaching" is that standards allowed her to fail and result in the death of Linnea Mills. They allowed her to combine courses and teach them in conditions that should have been a no go from the start.
Those standards leave too much to the discretion, judgment, and EGO of the instructor.
I call BS.

Jim you know this is a completely false statement- I’ve posted the relevant standards TWICE in this thread.

the standards prohibit EXACTLY what was done here in multiples sections.

care to use all the standard pages I posted here to show exactly how you reach this BS conclusion?
 
I call BS.

Jim you know this is a completely false statement- I’ve posted the relevant standards TWICE in this thread.

the standards prohibit EXACTLY what was done here in multiples sections.

care to use all the standard pages I posted here to show exactly how you reach this BS conclusion?
No, I don't. The standards are bullcrap. That's made clear by how often they are ignored and when reported nothing is done. I and others have tried to report violations we witnessed and PADI doesn't give a rat's behind because they did not come from a PADI pro.
Instructors combine courses on the same day and teach unsafe ratios for conditions because they leave that decision up to the ego and greed of the instructor/shop. And no one checks to see that Joe Bob instructor issued deep, OW, AOW, and UW Nav on the same day. I saw that kind of stuff done by my old OW instructor. I didn't know any better. I see other instructors doing the same at other sites.
There is no quality control. They don't send out auditors or secret consumers. Quality control is based on two things. How much money is the operation generating and did anyone die? Other than that they can't be bothered.
And when that's coupled with an incompetent instructor like this one, the deaths are going to keep happening.
And it's not just one agency that does it. Now that I'm done and inactive I'm not going to play along with the code of silence.
Some agencies prohibit instructors from saying disparaging things about the industry. Even when it could save lives. That's a crock I no longer have to abide by.
Not that I ever have. Even when a past president of DEMA had another DEMA board member, who was the head of the agency I was with at the time, call me and tell me to stop my criticism of them. My response? I got louder and more public.
The recreational dive industry is getting worse every year. It's greed that's driving it. The RSTC and WRSTC are a joke. DEMA is a joke.
ISO Standards? Another joke because nobody enforces them in any way. As many deaths as there have been where is the ISO audit to find out why? I've never seen a report.
Profit-based training is a joke.
Hedge funds, venture capital firms, and equipment manufacturers owning agencies are laughable. They have proven over and over that there is an acceptable number of deaths related to training and incompetent instructors.
I'm going to devote the rest of my time around the industry to calling out incompetence and exposing the shady and greedy practices that I see. Regardless of the agency.
 
No, I don't. The standards are bullcrap. That's made clear by how often they are ignored and when reported nothing is done. I and others have tried to report violations we witnessed and PADI doesn't give a rat's behind because they did not come from a PADI pro.

Being a PADI pro doesn't help if you report another PADI pro. I reported an instructor this year who worked for 15 months, teaching PADI students even though he wasn't an active instructor.

PADI did nothing. No suspension of the instructor, no action whatsoever. That probably had something to do with the fact that the instructor is the manager of the highest volume shop in the state.

When I did my IDC with PADI, I was told that about the only way to loose one's membership was to refuse to cooperate with an investigation...

The sad part is, the joke is on the customer - they don't know any better when they get substandard training, and for a fair number of people, they will have only one instructor for the entirety of their recreational training.

I'm not a fan of state boards and regulations, but I can't see any way, short of something styled on a Medical Board, that anything meaningful will be accomplished as far as dive training standards go. On the other hand, the same goofball instructors would likely be on that hypothetical state board, so I'm not sure that would be any better.
 
Here are all the PADI OW and AOW elearning sections that warned her again and again about what she needed to know….

but hey YOU clearly paid attention to the program….
I hope the images are included in this reply. If not, it is post Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park with images of violations according to Dan.

Dan, this isn't directed to just you. Does anyone know what/if any book/elearning training was completed by the victim?
 
It just blows my mind how many red flags there were. I understand that she was young and didn't have a lot of life experience, and probably thought her instructor would keep her safe, but WOW! My spidey sense would have been going off.
Even if some of these topics weren't covered in depth in the manual or e learning, you would expect someone who is interested a hobby or sport to make a reasonable effort to learn all they can just for their own interest. Especially in what could be considered a higher risk activity where you life is on the line.

And this wasn't 1985, 95, 2000, it was 2020! Access to reliable sources is so easy, and little effort needed to be made to look this stuff up on your phone.

There is no doubt that the instructor should be hanged, and I was furious that this could be allowed to happen. But when I thought about this case again a few months later I was just as ticked off that so few people tales about the accountability of the victims.

Everyone seemed to bash the state of the industry, PADI, the dive shop, the instructor, even the people who sold her the dry suit, but at the end of the day a certified diver chose to enter the water under those conditions.
 
I'm sure it's been said already, but reading this almost made me physically ill. It's as if they were actively trying to kill her.

This is paraphrased, but there's a video where an instructor for -- not really sure which agency -- spends a fair bit of time hoping that this sticks to PADI and hits them in the bottom line. Either they're responsible for the people who carry their brand, use their materials and training methods, and are (theoretically) following their standards, OR their quality control and quality assurance processes aren't worth the paper they're written on.
 

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