Time For Some Industry Standards for Dive Computer Alarms

[HowardE]

I believe it's heart/stress related issues as well...

Out of Air is relatively low on the list of COD for dive accidents. The vast majority of accidents are caused by human error though, frequently coupled with panic. Do you think that a beeping computer would be comforting, or a stressor to add to a panic situation?

Do you honestly think that this idea of having annoying alarms is new? If it was a good idea, don't you think think that everyone would embrace it, and that manufacturers would place annoying alarms that go off all the time, or would the migrate away from that, as over the many years, people find that alarms aren't a preventative measure.

Sound underwater travels faster than on land, and directional sound is very difficult to discern. If everyone had alarms on their computers, everyone would stop and get all flustered when someone's alarm 20' away went off, and they think it's their own problem.

The simple solution, is to be an attentive diver. Check your gauges regularly, and not run out of air.

Divers need to take responsibility for their own life, and stop looking for someone else to do it for them. Alarms with sounds are crutches and an excuse to not pay attention to yourself on your dive... They are not aids.

 

[diverrex]

150 deaths a year x 10 years = 1500 in 10 years.

Is that insignificant?

Yes it is actually.

 

[Mike]

I spent some time thinking about this before I made this proposal on SB. This really isn't so much about the person who ran low on air, as much as it is about their buddy who didn't. In scuba diving, they teach us that if the @#$% hits the fan, the buddy is there to save the day. That puts the buddy in a position of rescuer. That's a lot to ask of somebody, especially, if it's due to someone else negligence. In an OOA situation, the rescuer now has approx. 1/2 the air supply they had before. The rescuer may well have been within their safety margin before the incident, now, their safety margin may very well have been compromised. This might not be a problem at 20', 30', 40' or even 50' but at 100'???

Right, I gotcha. So you're concern is with your buddy carrying your emergency air also.

Unfortunately, for me it just comes back again to the same old dead horse we have to beat. If an alarm is your first indication your buddy is low on air, you have bigger problems.

As a good diver I'm checking my air and I'm also checking my buddies air. As a good buddy, my buddy is checking their air and checking my air during the dive.

Before every dive you and your buddy should be doing some dive planning. If you have a brand new buddy on a dive you two should be doing a lot of dive planning and a lot of discussion about what if. What if we lose each other, what is the turn around point, what is the ending indicator of the dive, what is the signal for how much air do you have, what are the signals for indication of psi of air, etc...

If you're going to depend on an alarm to notify you that your buddy has totally blown his responsibilities and sucked down all his air while you're still at 130 feet, well..... you've got bigger problems.

Good communication, good following of the basic policies and procedures of buddy diving should be all you need to remain safe. The problem is I see about 5% of buddies actually being good buddies, the solution is education and information like you are getting here on this post, not government intervention, not trying to apply a cure all technology solution to a basic problem of divers failing to follow their training.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

I understand and appreciate the resistance to any sort of government interference with our favorite hobby; however, with an average of 150 death per year, it's simply unacceptable to think the government and insurance companies will turn a blind eye much longer (The 7 Deadly Hobbies: Pastimes Your Insurer Hates - DailyFinance). If divers truly don't want government regulation, now is the time make the sport safer by decreasing the annual fatality rate.

Is it going to be well received and a popular idea in the dive community? Of course not. Judging from the responses in this thread, ever diver is sure of their own skills and it's simply not going to happen to them. More than likely, right before their last dive, ever diver believed it would happen to someone else.

If you want to self-regulate, fine, but we need to do a better job. We will all pay the penalty, if we allow politicians to decided what's best for us.

We need to be pro-active.

A certain Billy Madison quote, the entirety of which is too impolite for me to repeat here, is all that comes to mind upon reading this. Suffice it to say that I award you no points.

---------- Post added January 4th, 2013 at 04:26 PM ----------

When it comes to better safety equipment, the leaders of the fire service embrace it.

Thankfully, divers require no leaders. If someone wants to go and get themselves killed while diving, that's their business. Mine is to ensure they're not my buddy, not to abide by some bone-headed regulation about reminders (which would just end up being disabled by many divers if mandated) being built into dive computers.

 

[RonR]

I'll just point out, since no one else has, that the technology for doing this sort of diver to diver signaling is not easy. Firefighters get to use inexpensive and reliable RF to communicate. RF, at power levels that can be achieved by a hand held device, doesn't work underwater- for more than a couple of feet, anyway. Audible tones are often, well, inaudible- even to the diver himself- in a cold water environment. And underwater sound is nondirectional. Ultrasound carries well underwater, and may eventually be able to provide direction and status sensing, but at this point it's very expensive and the difficulty in separating signal from interference underwater is considerable. A red light bright enough to attract notice from even a few feet away might well require a battery larger than most divers would want to carry- and a significant portion of the population doesn't see red well. The underwater environment is just very different.


Total dive accident statistics are meaningless in analyzing this proposal. If you were seriously researching it, you would go through the last several years of DAN accident reports, and determine the number of those incidents where it could plausibly have helped change the outcome. Then determine if this sort of change would provide the highest safety return for the investment required, measured against other possible investments. And factor in technical and market feasibility. I'm sure that is exactly the sort of analysis that firefighting underwent in setting standards for SCBA's and com systems. Their solution was rather cheap and easy to implement, the value is obvious.


I will sort of agree on one point- though with a different emphasis. Rather than top down standards, which tend to stifle innovation, there should be better effort on the part of manufacturers- and more demand on the part of consumers- to make dive computer interfaces easily understandable. Alerts, whether audible or visual, should be very easy to understand, even without memorizing the manual. Consumers can right now exercise their ability to chose products that meet a standard of clarity and ease of use. And computers, like most other gear, are getting better.

Ron

 

[diverrex]

You know where I got this idea from? The Fire Service. You see, every firefighter in the country has a bell on their SCBA that goes off at 500 psi. They also have a PASS device which they can activate manually if they become trapped, OOA, lost, or entangled. You see, fire fighters also have a limited air source, just like you can't breath water, they can't breath smoke. And just like divers, they and their buddy need to know when it's time to leave. Someone, at some point said, "you know what be a good idea... if we had some sort of warning device that let's us and others know when we're in trouble." The NFPA adopted this and now it's a standard. Now, no matter where you go in this country as a firefighter you know when your own air-supply, or that of your buddy is low. It's easy to become distracted in a fire and it's easy to become distracted underwater. Where is the harm in having a backup alarm, especially, if everyone knows and understands what it means? The NFPA thought this was important enough they adopted it as a standard. Could it save a life? It couldn't hurt.

I don't agree at all with the fireman comparison. I totally understand why they should have a low air warning. I understand them being so distracted with their efforts they don't monitor air. I also understand them pushing air to the limits. Diving is different. Divers shouldn't be so distracted as to not know their air, if so they shouldn't be diving.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

If you really want to reduce deaths due to OOA, buddy separation, rapid ascents, etc.. What you need to do is this. Get the agencies that allow it to stop allowing weekend certs, piss poor buddy procedure instruction, prohibit single file swims for all levels of OW training through rescue, and non swimmers to get scuba certs. Then you might make a difference.

Insisting on divers using unnecessary technology that will not do a damn thing for the poorly trained people that are turned out by instructors that teach to the bare minimum standards. Which really are laughable as they permit some of the crap I just noted to go on. All in the name of making a buck. Course these agencies may see a quick buck if they required their divers to use such drek.

What about those of us who do not promote computers at all for new divers? Just because the technology removes the incentive for students to think for themselves and observe conservative limits until they get some experience. I don't push my students to use computers. I want them using the tables we spent time learning, planning their dives based on those and their SAC rates that we also cover, and adhering to the buddy skills I have just spent hours and hours drilling into them. And then sticking to them on their checkouts.

That is what prevents deaths. Not giving them a way out of doing that. And of those 150 deaths a computer would not have helped some of them. I did the research and even wrote a presentation on it. Some of them died out of stupidity and inattention to what they were doing. That's Darwin at work weeding out those whose genes should not be passed on. Some died of previously unknown physical conditions. Some died due to the way they were trained. Or more correctly NOT TRAINED. They were not given good instruction on buddy skills. They were not given basic rescue skills in the name of expedient training and fleecing them later on by requiring additional Advanced training before they could take a Rescue class.

Rescue skills in OW and letting divers know in no uncertain term the reasons for that saves lives IMO. Instead of hot bodies and palm trees, pics of dead divers who screwed up should be in the training materials. Instead of taking time to encourage a new diver to take an AOW class to get many of the skills and the knowldege they should have gotten in OW, the time should be used teaching them how to bring an unconscious diver up from depth.

Instead of telling a new diver they'd make a great DM and how they could do that, they should be shown how to support a diver at the surface and help them ditch their weights. And instead of trying to sell them a Boat Diver specialty or Fish ID course, teach them to get control of a panicked diver at the surface and help them. That would change those death stats more than any new gizmo.

As for the article about what insurance companies care about - screw it. They will find a way to screw you over no matter what you do. Getting out of paying people what they owe them is what makes those jackals money.

 

[Doppler]

Tell us what you really think, Jim...


As many have said, bells and whistles are a piss-poor substitute for proper planning, training, and constant attention to the details. Those are the standards we need to look at and work at improving.

 

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

I'm actually a fire fighter in a major metropolitan area with 17 years experience. So much for the Librarian.

It's interesting to note that, just as in scuba diving, the majority of fire fighter deaths occur from heart/stress related issues; however, that hasn't stopped the fire service from trying to improve safety equipment and better fire operation tactics. I can't imagine the fire service adopting an attitude "no one can avoid death...we can't stop this". When it comes to better safety equipment, the leaders of the fire service embrace it.

For your years of fire service and public safety my hat goes off to you.............seriously. I'm working on my 22nd year as a police officer just outside of New Orleans. I have trained over 40 fire fighters in the Rapid Diver System. The difference I think I have gathered, by your last post to me, is that work and play have to be separated. Scuba Diving is a fun sport. We are not straddling a line in a smoke filled house when we are doing this. I have pulled my share of hose over my career. We have a unique relationship with Fire and EMS here. We get along and work together well. At work, I am a warrior, and will not die easy. At play and life in general, we all die and can't avoid it. When I am inside of my Superlite 27 in an intake pipe, there is a compressor, pnuemo box, a high pressure storage bottle, a bailout bottle and communications. At play, not so much. Back to the topic......

In scuba awareness and self responsibility is important. Monitoring your gas supply, your depth, etc is a big issue (in a bad way) with divers, even some older divers. It is, mostly, not taught initially. It is talked about but not really covered as it should be. Many instructors, on here, do cover it as many are tech, wreck and cave divers. NASE is doing a good job of a new way of training. I guess what I am saying is there is no need to reinvent the wheel. There are many things already in place that keep divers safe. A basic tenant in scuba is I am responsible for me. I am glad if you are watching but I am ultimately responsible for me.

I apologize as your post kinda made you sound like a very young person and a new diver, or a troll. I guess what we write doesn't always seem the way we mean if we said it. Thank you for your selfless service. Mark

 

[Scared Silly]

You and you're buddy decided to go for a dive. You descend to your intended target and after 5 minutes of dive time, your buddy's dive computer starts making a noise. After you see him check it, you signal if everything is "okay", he in return gives you the "hands up" IDK gesture. You swim over to have a quick look but you soon realize that you're not familiar with this brand of computer.

Feedback?

1) Take the time to learn your computer before you get in the damn water.

2) Take the time to learn your buddy's computer before you get in the damn water.

Problem solved without the need to shove your lack of preparation off on unneeded standards.