@Omisson , you didn't answer my question.
Yes, I moved the goalpost when you pointed out that the prior case wasn't prior.
And yes, I think I understand the huge nature of what a finding of agency would do to us (not to mention PADI).
But you are ignoring my question.
no I did not ignore it. You just don’t like the answer.
How can one claim the degree of oversight that PADI advertising materials imply with regard to shop adherence to standards and instructor excellence without agency? It would seem that the judge recognises the murkiness here; hence his ruling. And PADI will settle but the matter will not be settled.
no the judge said this is a fact issue first. There are currently no “facts” in the case because there has been no significant “discovery” - the legal process pre-trial hasn’t developed.
If you don't monitor your instructors, don't imply that you do. Sell your instruction packages and leave it at that.
you are conflating issues. Medical licensing boards do all the things you say makes agency. Hospital committees do likewise, no agency. Law boards do likewise- no agency.
You stated the facts of the current legal situation with regard to agency, and I see the parallel you are trying to draw. But if I screw up in the hospital enough times, the medical staff or the medical board will take action, because I am watched.
so again “screw up…enough times”…. Again NOT THE CASE HERE. You are creating straw man arguments.
PADI says it watches, advertises that it watches, but the egregious occurrences here suggest it does not. Could this particular death have been prevented without priors? Perhaps not. But if we, as instructors, knew that we were monitored, we would probably not deviate from standards as often as we do.
Once again you are just making things up. There is ONE incident here- no notice of prior “bad acts”. So how does this incident suggest PADI doesn’t follow up on quality management issues? And moreover, isolate incidents do not make the pattern you are pretending exists…. The reality is there have been very very few instructor lead deaths in training PERIOD. You can count them on one hand in the last 10 years. In fact you can count diver deaths -as DAN has pointed out across ALL AGENCIES and find the EXACT SAME MORBIDITY RATE - 14 per 100,000 of which 1/3 are pre-existing conditions, 45% are diver error and 3% are “acts of god”- leaving a whopping 3 deaths per 100,000 POSSIBLY ascribable TO INSTRUCTOR “error”. As the statistics point out, golf, swimming, jogging, tennis…operating a car all have between 12-14 deaths per operator/participant. So what “crisis” are you talking about? Basically one that doesn’t exist.
Maybe there's no agency, and maybe you are legally right. But the reason one sees the outcry is frustration over the fact that the PADI big dog "lays down the law" in a fashion that is unresponsive to the needs of instructors to be able to teach safely, make a living and not get fired for inadequate peoductivity. DSD ratios haven't changed. OOA ascent training is still almost impossible to conduct and stay in standards.
DSD ratios haven’t changed? Ratios did change (from 6:1 to 4:1 around 2001), and then came an amendment that prevented the guiding instructor from taking photos while supervising his 4:1 participants. Then PADI also set limits of 2:1 when young children are involved (10-11). Now some people want lower ratios (2:1 or eliminate DSD completely) but interestingly -lowering ratios didn’t radically impact the number of diver incidents with DSD; but the overall trend has been a minimal lowering of deaths for the last 30 years to a norm that is all but statistically insignificant- see the attached table below.
Your all-knowing attitude as this case is debated does little to advance the discussion.
We don't want to be told, "There is no agency, so be quiet." We want to debate how to prevent the next case like this, whether through a finding of possible agency and a change in how standards are monitored, or some other approach. PADI having to answer to this in court might have been the first step. But it won't happen.
Again- here in a nutshell is the whole problem. You don’t like the facts- you don’t want to accept the actual data- because it conflicts with your predetermined premise: PADI BAD. I’m not “all knowing” but I’ll be damned if you telling fake stories to bolster a wrong opinion gets to go unchallenged. You’ve admitted already to moving goalposts- that says everything we need to know about the ”honesty” of your debate here.
Preventing “the next case like this” means either we do away with modern “open diving to everyone” philosophy and revert to the 1970’s approach -basically only fit males with strong endurance, swimming skills, and a willingness to endure the rigors of old school scuba are the divers - or we allow some nanny-state governmental take over of the industry and let them regulate and issue “licenses” - cause the government has done such a a great job with everything they do….yea right. So realistically neither is a workable solution.
No matter how you try to twist the facts to make it amenable to your PADI BAD philosophy, this case is not about PADI training and standards. IF the instructor had followed them there would not have been a death. It’s not about training, IF Mills would have followed the training she had -especially the elearning she was given- this wouldn’t have happened. If not for the shop’s criminal trespass in a federal park violating their rules for diving- there would likely have been no incident.
If anyone is “worked up” it’s you- your “righteous indignation” is based on a set of unrealistic expectations, using fake facts, that you have to keep backtracking on- and emotion to inject whataboutisms into an objectively explainable tragedy that is squarely the instructor’s fault- but indicative of no systemic issue. There will always be bad guys. Always people willing to cut corners. The question is - what can any agency do to ensure better quality instructors and then maintain those instructor’s “frosty-ness”.
Periodic instructor reviews? And then when PADI charges for that- your crowd cries “see PADI is all about the money”… when they charge for better quality more detailed elearning - suddenly they are “put another dollar in”… it’s a joke how you guys want it both ways… DO MORE…CHARGE LESS. Really? Is that how ANYTHING works?
I know you are going to come up with some other new things to spin and rationalize the absurd position you are taking to feed your ant-PADI angst- but if you take a moment to be objective - since I’ve answered all your questions, answer mine:
what could PADI have done differently in THIS case given the facts as we know them that would have changed the outcome?
what good will come to the dive industry by a finding of agency here?
what will the likely consequence be to the industry if agency is found?
do you believe other agencies (not PADI) are in the same, better or worse position on these issues?
I’ll wait for your well-informed responses……
