Wesley Skiles' widow suing over rebreather

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I read through some of it and over and over they mention 'safer alternative designs existed' that were available and economically feasible---but they give no details and are very vague.

What other alternatives were there? I believe Teledyne stopped celling their oxygen sensors so AI was the main provider available and there were no other oxygen sensing technologies. The only alternative I could think of would be Poseidon's sensor validation design but they have a patent on it so wouldn't say it was available to others.

Robert


 
Just to play devils advocate, it's also possible that by being at the pinnacle of training and proficiency might have led to complacency. That sword can cut both ways...

It still doesn't matter much. Even if it's true, it means that rebreathers are dangerous for both under-trained, and very experienced divers. That still makes it a design flaw as far as I'm concerned.

Rob Davie was a commercial jet pilot. He flew planes that held hundreds of people, were thousands of times more complex than a rebreather, and did it safely for years (maybe decades).

If he can die on a rebreather because of a slight slippage of skills (if that's even the case) then the requirements and penalty for failure are just too high.

flots.

---------- Post Merged at 08:52 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:47 PM ----------

Exact same thing can be said about people who have drived cars for 30 years and never had an accident.... next minute.


You could say the same thing about cars. Do you drive a car?

I think your are totally wrong on both counts and I think Dsix summed it up perfectly in his above post.

Completely different. If my car fails, it stops. If I drive it into a bridge, I get killed by impacting the bridge not because of anything the car did.

flots.
 
It still doesn't matter much. Even if it's true, it means that rebreathers are dangerous for both under-trained, and very experienced divers. That still makes it a design flaw as far as I'm concerned.

Rob Davie was a commercial jet pilot. He flew planes that held hundreds of people, were thousands of times more complex than a rebreather, and did it safely for years (maybe decades).

If he can die on a rebreather because of a slight slippage of skills (if that's even the case) then the requirements and penalty for failure are just too high.

flots.

---------- Post Merged at 08:52 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:47 PM ----------



Completely different. If my car fails, it stops. If I drive it into a bridge, I get killed by impacting the bridge not because of anything the car did.

flots.

unless its your brakes that failed, because they were almost worn out, but you didn't know that because your buddy that leant you the car didn't tell you, and you might have survived except you decided you didn't need to wear your seatbelt because you were only going down the block....
 
John Romano is hardly a shyster . Terri Skyles is hardly a fool. Some of the claims look rather damning, others (e.g., the defective spring) look irrelevant. If I were advising the defense (this ones for free) I'd suggest that they hammer hard on, "where's his buddy?", the inherent dangers of all rebreathers and poor safety record of civilian rebreathers when compared to open circuit gear.

I'd hammer the point that he wasn't certed on any rebreather. He wasn't certed on the Optima, he wasn't wearing bailout. He hadn't done his own pre-flight check on the optima. He went against just about everything we're trained in CCR class to do.

---------- Post Merged at 11:18 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:12 PM ----------

However this doesn't change the fact that extremely well trained and well qualified divers die on rebreathers quite regularly, and the issue deserves some public exposure.

flots.

I agree with this point, but Wes was not "well trained and well qualified" on any rebreather, let alone the Optima. Also, you can build the perfect machine, but if you don't run the checklists, you might still perish.
 
It still doesn't matter much. Even if it's true, it means that rebreathers are dangerous for both under-trained, and very experienced divers. That still makes it a design flaw as far as I'm concerned.

Rob Davie was a commercial jet pilot. He flew planes that held hundreds of people, were thousands of times more complex than a rebreather, and did it safely for years (maybe decades).

If he can die on a rebreather because of a slight slippage of skills (if that's even the case) then the requirements and penalty for failure are just too high.

.

Dude, have you everwatched Aircraft Investigations? How often are those accidents caused by screw ups by highly and repetitively trained flight crews in planes that have billions of dollars of R&D spent on them trying to engineer out any possible way of the pilot crashing the plane. And yet these extraordinarily engineered devices piloted by highly trained crews, still kill people each year.

Actually the plane comparison is interesting in the mentality that Boeing vs Airbus apply to their fly by wire systems, as it's philosophically very similar to the eCCR vs mCCR debate. But that would really take this thread off
 
I bet they will settle out of court and that will be the end. A lengthy trial is not in the best interest of anyone and Dive Rite needs this to go away. That is what the lawyers count on.

I personally believe ALL cases MUST go to trial. But that will never happen....
 
I agree with this point, but Wes was not "well trained and well qualified" on any rebreather, let alone the Optima. Also, you can build the perfect machine, but if you don't run the checklists, you might still perish.

I apparently missed that. He wasn't a trained rebreather diver?

In that case his widow won't (or shouldn't) be getting anything. That's just dumb.

flots.
 
Actually, I just checked. He holds a cert on the Meg and the MK-5. He was not certed on the Optima. I apologize for the bad information that I took second hand.
 
I agree with the premise that rebreathers are inherently dangerous. The idea that you or your system makes one tiny mistake equals death by putting you to sleep is just too dangerous for my likes. Sure, you can die on OC, but if you watch your gas consumption and stay within rec limits you are fairly safe. I understand that almost all activities have an element of danger. However, one mistake from a rebreather can put you to sleep eternally. The real answer isn't banning rebreathers, but we need more innovation and more safety systems to ensure deaths don't happen due to simple errors by machines or humans.

As for the lawsuit, I say full speed ahead. If Dive Rite did nothing wrong then that will come out. However, if they suppressed information on a faulty design to keep making money then they deserve to be hammered. I know the general public hates lawsuits, but many times they are needed to punish offenders and they often result in sweeping safety changes industry wide that are beneficial to all.
 
I agree with the premise that rebreathers are inherently dangerous. The idea that you or your system makes one tiny mistake equals death by putting you to sleep is just too dangerous for my likes. Sure, you can die on OC, but if you watch your gas consumption and stay within rec limits you are fairly safe. I understand that almost all activities have an element of danger. However, one mistake from a rebreather can put you to sleep eternally. The real answer isn't banning rebreathers, but we need more innovation and more safety systems to ensure deaths don't happen due to simple errors by machines or humans.

As for the lawsuit, I say full speed ahead. If Dive Rite did nothing wrong then that will come out. However, if they suppressed information on a faulty design to keep making money then they deserve to be hammered. I know the general public hates lawsuits, but many times they are needed to punish offenders and they often result in sweeping safety changes industry wide that are beneficial to all.

I think that's over simplification of the issue. I think if you haven't been trained on a rebreather, then to make claims like "one simple mistake can put you to sleep forever" is a bit exaggerated. Because honestly, if you haven't had training, you really don't know what you're talking about. I don't mean that to sound harsh, but really, what do you know? Especially when ONE simple mistake in OC can put you to sleep forever also. How many of you have ever gotten a Nitrox fill and not analyzed your gas? Yet, that is the SIMPLE industry standard. Everyone should be analyzing their gas, but how many do?

Guys, if you're not trained at the level you are diving, and you die, you really have no one to blame but yourself. I trained on a rEvo. I believe the rEvo to be stupidly simple. I equate it to combining an O2 analyzer and a 2nd stage regulator. That's how simple it is to me. But as simple as it is, there's no chance in hell I'd ever consider jumping into another CCR without training. Because while the rEvo is simple as can be, the Optima might not be. I have no idea how to turn on the Hammerhead (the computer the Optima uses). I have no idea how to calibrate it. I don't know the bells, the whistles, the alarms, nothing. Just as you probably don't know any of that on the rEvo. To jump under the water in a CCR I wasn't trained on is as stupid as letting my 15 year old daughter drive the 175hp Hayabusa Motorcycle. Sure, she can ride a bicycle, but does that knowledge transfer over? No way.

I've gotten off on a tangent, and I'm sorry. I'm too tired to edit. But my point is, rebreathers might screw up, but there is tons of redundancy in them. Many O2 cells, not just one. Many computers, not just one. There's bailout, there's buddies, there's common sense. Wes had no idea how the Hammerheads worked. So those redundant O2 cells and computers were useless. He used no bailout. He had no buddy. He had no common sense.

I don't care how simple and how bullet proof and how redundant a system is... if you are not following industry standards and you got no training, no bailout, no buddy, no common sense and you die, it's your fault and your fault alone.

Now, lets talk about the Optima (for which I am not trained)...
Dive Rite has been the pinnacle of tech gear for more than 20 years. When you get that big, you are a target. Lamar owns Dive Rite. Do you think for a second Lamar would let his son dive an Optima if it were defective? Do you think for a second that Lamar would dive the Optima if he thought it was unsafe?

Anyway, that's my tangent. I think the lawsuit is frivolous, and I hope to hell it goes to trial. Unfortunately, the world is about to learn things about Wes that only his close circle of friends knew. I hope the money Mrs. Skiles might win is worth trashing an icon, a good name, and a hero in the diving world that Wes Skiles became.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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