what is a "SAFE" dive

[Mako Mark]

This came from a thread in the instructor 2 instructor forum where we discovered that there are varying levels and ideas about what is safe.

here are some questions to get started.

what do you consider safe, and how do you come to that conclusion.?

Has your opinion of what is safe changed since you gained more experience or joined the scuba board.?

How do we as humans in general come to a consensus about what is generally accepted as "safe"?

.

 

[DBailey]

Any dive that my buddy and I dive the plan.

 

[pipedope]

as a "safe" dive.

There are risks and hazards in every dive as there are in every aspect of life.

The trick is to learn what the risks and hazards are and make your own, informed choices as to what is an acceptable level of risk.

Do what you want, but know what you do.

 

[cdennyb]

a safe dive is the last one we surfaced from.
Like a safe landing in a plane, it's the one you walk away from.
simple.
Of course we can all go 'overboard' and try to explain how the surfacing with exactly 500# in our tanks was the perfect safe dive, or the one where we outswam that shark that was cruizing the kelp beds, or the one where by buddy accidently cut his primary and secondary hoses while trying to remove the kelp stalk from his arm and neck and I was right there to give my reg in his time of need, but really...
what isn't a safe dive?
db

 

[cornfed]

Any dive that my buddy and I dive the plan.

Is it not possible to have an unsafe plan?

 

[Scuba_John]

Slowly assend from every dive and live to dive again another day. Have a plan and dive with in your own physical and experience limits not your buddies. He/she should do the same. And while you are buddies you should by nature of the buddy team stick together. Well not stick but stay close

 

[MikeFerrara]

I don't like to use the word safe in regard to diving.

If we are going to use the word safe even in degrees I'd have to say that it means understanding the potential problems and being pretty confident that you can manage if they happen them without injury.

 

[Mako Mark]

Let me clarify with an example.

There is a generally accepted rule of safe diving, of avoiding overhead environments such as wreck diving penetration dives or cavern dives. There are however thousands of people, without the proper training, participating in this activity with a little guidance without incident.

Does the lack of injuries or fatalities on these guided dives, prove that our preconcieved (or established) ideas of what is safe and what is not, to be statistically wrong, and should we therefore revise what we consider to be safe?

I believe that it does.

.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Let me clarify with an example.

There is a generally accepted rule of safe diving, of avoiding overhead environments such as wreck diving penetration dives or cavern dives. There are however thousands of people, without the proper training, participating in this activity with a little guidance without incident.

What do you mean by little guidance?

Does the lack of injuries or fatalities on these guided dives, prove that our preconcieved (or established) ideas of what is safe and what is not, to be statistically wrong, and should we therefore revise what we consider to be safe?

I believe that it does.

.

I really haven't seen any numbers but they don't mean much to me unless we test the ability of the divers to cope with problems when they do happen.

Like I said in the other thread there are two issued. One is the frequency of a problem and the other is severity.

Even if you have established that the frequency is low (and I'm not sure you have) you still have yet to address severity. For instance a guide in a wreck with 4 divers. The guid is the only one who would know what to do with a reel if they needed one and the guide has the only "real light" and/or knows the way. The guid has a heart attack and drops dead. Will any one else in the group die? The whole group maybe?

Another one... A diver in the group freaks, silts the place up and keeps the guide busy. Does any one else get lost, seperated or dead?

Situations worth thinking about anyway.

 

[AtomicWalrus]

"Safe" implies that you perceive an acceptable level of risk. What's acceptable as a level of risk varies widely depending on your skill level, training, equipment, dive conditions, etc. Lots of people on this board consider a 1000 ft technical cave penetration an acceptable level of risk. With my current level of training & experience, I definitely wouldn't! (Maybe someday)

Personally, I equate "safe" with conservative diving practice. If I'm guiding a group of newly certified OW divers on a fun dive, that's going to mean 50 ft or less in a sheltered area with little or no current and a bottom, starting the safety stop with no less than 1000 psi.