Why ‘everyone is responsible for their own risk-based decisions’ isn’t the right approach to take

[boulderjohn]

I don't know the numbers, so I can't comment on which made the greater difference. If you have data comparing those, I'm interested in looking at it.

DAN's annual report shows the numbers for North America across the history of diving, starting with 1970. I have not looked in the past couple of years, but in the past I have responded to questions like this with the actual numbers. During the first 10 years, when the total number of divers had to be a fraction of what it is now, the average number of fatalities was roughly double the average number of fatalities for the last 10 years.

# of accidents per capita by agency - this would give real numbers for consumers to compare, and would probably be the single most influential quality influencing pressure that could ever be reported!

1. Where would you get the numbers for the numbers for that? If you look at the DAN reports, you will see that in many cases they have barely any information at all about the deceased. I doubt they would have the original certifying agency on many cases at all. The numbers aren't "hidden" if people don't know them.
2. I have certifications from 5 agencies. If I were to die on a dive, which one would get credit for that death?
3. If a dier with 500 lifetime dives dies of a heart attack on a dive, do we list that as a death on the agency that certified him 20 years before, or the one that gave him a specialty card two years before?

specially when you consider the relatively high accident rate of divers being trained or recently certified,

It isn't relatively high. Check the DAN reports and you will see that.

 

[boulderjohn]

John, I've done those dives, much to my shame. Trust me dives are anathema to safe Scuba. Are you condoning them? Are you accepting them as being OK or even normal? I don't think so. Your "ever" indicates that these are exceptions, rather than the rule. I'm not addressing the "evers"... I'm addressing the majority of dives by the majority of divers. What you are referring to is nothing but peer pressure. Adding in some self proclaimed expert doesn't change that one whit. Might as well say "Hold my beer" as you splash.

Once again, you seem only able to answer in extreme absolutes. Do you ever recognize a middle ground on anything? "Trust me dive" is one of those phrases I have long identified as too frequently being used as a substitute for thought. I have done many dives around the world in which a DM led groups of people through underwater routes to reach featured sites. I have hired a cave guide in Mexico to take me into a cave well known to the guide but new to me. In some of the best caves in Mexico, a cave guide is required. New divers in an area are frequently advised to hire a personal DM to lead them through a dive. Most dive agencies recommend that divers follow the lead of a local professional when encountering new dives in unfamiliar areas. When I dived Puget Sound, Lynn Flaherty led me on a great night dive at a site I had never seen before. All of those are "trust me dives." Are you saying no one should do any of these?

 

[sigxbill]

1. Where would you get the numbers for the numbers for that? If you look at the DAN reports, you will see that in many cases they have barely any information at all about the deceased. I doubt they would have the original certifying agency on many cases at all. The numbers aren't "hidden" if people don't know them.
2. I have certifications from 5 agencies. If I were to die on a dive, which one would get credit for that death?
3. If a dier with 500 lifetime dives dies of a heart attack on a dive, do we list that as a death on the agency that certified him 20 years before, or the one that gave him a specialty card two years before?

1. I'm sure there has to be a way to get the data. I read stories all the time about the certifications of the deceased, as well as everyone on the boat being disclosed. Maybe encourage operators to include a DAN data release in their waivers - so that when something happens, they automatically have permission to release the victim's training history to DAN. Maybe we as an industry need to push for legislation allowing researchers, such as DAN, access to court documents that disclose training levels. DAN already collects cert info on it's members. With more brainstorming, I am sure many methods to collect this data could be developed. I personally think more access to this data is currently already available - DAN just doesn't publish it for fear of backlash from the biggest players who stand to lose the most from such data.

2. The one that most pertained to the dive that resulted in death? For example, for an accident involving a wreck - wreck diver; 20-30m - deep diver. In the absence of proper certification, follow the certs back to the last or closest one - which was probably responsible for the diver developing the attitude that they didn't need further training. Better yet, the data reporter could simply list all the certs and leave it up to the reader to decide for themselves which one applied and / or draw their own conclusions. I'm sure an systematic approach to applying the appropriate cert could be developed.

3. Diving deaths are already categorized by medical and non-medical related. For the purposes of improving diver safety via training, obviously we are interested in the non-medical related accidents and discard the medically related deaths as they do not apply.

 

[Storker]

Ultimately, you are responsible for yourself in this life.

Sure, but responsiibility isn't a null-sum game. And I have a feeling that many of those taking part in this discussion aren't properly aware of that.

If you go ahead and die (or get seriously hurt) on a dive with me, the ultimate responsibility for your demise is yours. Because you've (or at least should have) been taught that the only person responsible for you own life is yourself. But if I've mentored you wrong during that dive, and the reason for your demise can be connected to my mentoring, I WILL carry some responsibility for you dying. Even if that doesn't decrease your responsibility for your own life.

 

[boulderjohn]

1. I'm sure there has to be a way to get the data. I read stories all the time about the certifications of the deceased, as well as everyone on the boat being disclosed. Maybe encourage operators to include a DAN data release in their waivers - so that when something happens, they automatically have permission to release the victim's training history to DAN. Maybe we as an industry need to push for legislation allowing researchers, such as DAN, access to court documents that disclose training levels. DAN already collects cert info on it's members. With more brainstorming, I am sure many methods to collect this data could be developed. I personally think more access to this data is currently already available - DAN just doesn't publish it for fear of backlash from the biggest players who stand to lose the most from such data.

2. The one that most pertained to the dive that resulted in death? For example, for an accident involving a wreck - wreck diver; 20-30m - deep diver. In the absence of proper certification, follow the certs back to the last or closest one - which was probably responsible for the diver developing the attitude that they didn't need further training. Better yet, the data reporter could simply list all the certs and leave it up to the reader to decide for themselves which one applied. I'm sure an systematic approach to applying the appropriate cert could be developed.

3. Diving deaths are already categorized by medical and non-medical related. For the purposes of improving diver safety via training, obviously we are interested in the non-medical related accidents and discard the medically related deaths as they do not apply.

A. Note that #2 and #3 call for someone to look at the data and make a decision as to which agency gets credit for the problem. Who will make that judgment? Will you create a non-partisan board whose job it is to make this analysis? Who will pay for it?

B. When a diver signs up for a dive with a dive operation, the diver only lists one card from one agency. Many divers with advanced certifications only show a card with a beginning level of certification. How does the operator know what other agencies have certified that diver?

C. I said that I have certifications from 5 different agencies. My stack of certification cards is just under 2 inches high. If I die, who is going to go through that stack to determine which of those cards is most applicable to my death? How will they know where in my home that stack is located?

D. I did not ask before where you would get the per capita data. PADI is the only agency I know that releases certification data, and it issues roughly 900,000 certifications at all levels combined per year. Does each individual certification count as a separate diver, or does a diver with 15 certifications from the same agency count as one diver? Do I count as 5 different divers because of my 5 different agencies? How will you be able to extract the number of individual divers from the total certification counts?

 

[Doppler]

Humm... interesting topic and some contrasting points being made.

For what it's worth, a couple of observations. The first on pre-dive checklists.

Diver Magazine recently published an article on the use of checklists in the sport-diving community. Actually, the article may have been in Scubaverse. Anyhow, the point was that the mnemonic devices that every agency teaches are as useful as ashtrays on a motorcycle because people do not use them. A written one is better... always using one is best.

This is a new approach. I wasn't taught it... but I teach it now.

Second thing is that it seems as an industry we continue to lie about risk. For example, we teach CESA as a "skill." look up the stats on that. It kills people... well, it contributes to them ******* up and dying. Only recently have the major sport-diving agencies bent a knee and admitted they needed to do a better job of teaching gas management and risk assessment.

All that said, I am surprised at times that we do not have to move bodies aside to get to some dive sites.

 

[sigxbill]

A. Note that #2 and #3 call for someone to look at the data and make a decision as to which agency gets credit for the problem. Who will make that judgment? Will you create a non-partisan board whose job it is to make this analysis? Who will pay for it?

B. When a diver signs up for a dive with a dive operation, the diver only lists one card from one agency. Many divers with advanced certifications only show a card with a beginning level of certification. How does the operator know what other agencies have certified that diver?

C. I said that I have certifications from 5 different agencies. My stack of certification cards is just under 2 inches high. If I die, who is going to go through that stack to determine which of those cards is most applicable to my death? How will they know where in my home that stack is located?

D. I did not ask before where you would get the per capita data. PADI is the only agency I know that releases certification data, and it issues roughly 900,000 certifications at all levels combined per year. Does each individual certification count as a separate diver, or does a diver with 15 certifications from the same agency count as one diver? Do I count as 5 different divers because of my 5 different agencies? How will you be able to extract the number of individual divers from the total certification counts?

A. No need to make non-partisan board to make analysis. Such boards develop as needed; Consumer Reports is an example of such a board. It is always the consumer that decides. Like I wrote earlier - researchers / consumers are perfectly capable of drawing their own conclusions. It is better to have the data available than to not.

B. We live in a computer age where operators could require customers to develop a profile that could include more than one cert. But even in the case of showing only one cert, operators could require that the cert presented matches the intended dives for the trip. It's not that hard.

C. It's funny how you accused 'The Chairman' of "extreme absolutes," but you are in fact also answering in extreme absolutes to discourage data collection and promote a 'it can't be done' attitude. Like I wrote before, the courts are able to easily discover the entire boats certs! Maybe a wavier could include a release for DAN or other researchers to request cert data from all agencies. No need to invade your home searching for your two inches.

D. Obviously the point of developing per capita data is to prevent larger agencies from being unfairly singled out for having certified divers involved in a greater number of accidents. Applying the correct cert to the dive helps assign the more responsible agency. But I suspect there are a great many number of accidents where victims were not certified to dive at the fatal level they did. It would be interesting to see what sort of data patterns emerged. It is often better to let data patterns organically emerge and then deal with the pattern once they happen, rather than arbitrarily decreeing that data can't be dealt with, and not allow the data to emerge at all. To some degree, researchers might have to apply the agency based on diver specified affiliation, just like is done for ethnicity. No one decides what race someone is; only the person themselves decides racial affiliation. Despite the fact that you have certifications from five different agencies, everyone here knows you describe yourself as padi diver...

 

[ofg-1]

My God, people, think of the poor lawyers trying to make a living, of course, its is someone's fault.

 

[GLOC]

From someone who has tried to access data as part of a PhD, I can tell you privacy and data protection comes into it. The access to data for those outside the collecting organisation is nigh on impossible. Imposing data collection requirements on operators won't work. How do you know I have a cert card for multiple organisations (I do) if I only show one at booking.

The problem of diving safety cannot be resolved by focusing on one aspect of diving (training, equipment, agencies, instructors, operators, culture, behaviour etc), there is a need for a systematic view of the problem to look at the interactions.

In terms of trying to determine safety figures, fatalities are a pretty poor metric of safety given their small numbers and the contributory and causal factors. Each accident/incident is unique. Other industries have learned that near-miss reports are a better way of improving safety but that means you have to have a definition of both safety (if compromise of safety is defined as an incident) and an incident so that divers know what to report and equally important, there is an independent organisation tasked and resourced with data collection and analysis. Such an organisation does not currently exist.

 

[GJC]

A. No need to make non-partisan board to make analysis. Such boards develop as needed; Consumer Reports is an example of such a board. It is always the consumer that decides. Like I wrote earlier - researchers / consumers are perfectly capable of drawing their own conclusions. It is better to have the data available than to not.

B. We live in a computer age where operators could require customers to develop a profile that could include more than one cert. But even in the case of showing only one cert, operators could require that the cert presented matches the intended dives for the trip. It's not that hard.

C. It's funny how you accused 'The Chairman' of "extreme absolutes," but you are in fact also answering in extreme absolutes to discourage data collection and promote a 'it can't be done' attitude. Like I wrote before, the courts are able to easily discover the entire boats certs! Maybe a wavier could include a release for DAN or other researchers to request cert data from all agencies. No need to invade your home searching for your two inches.

D. Obviously the point of developing per capita data is to prevent larger agencies from being unfairly singled out for having certified divers involved in a greater number of accidents. Applying the correct cert to the dive helps assign the more responsible agency. But I suspect there are a great many number of accidents where victims were not certified to dive at the fatal level they did. It would be interesting to see what sort of data patterns emerged. It is often better to let data patterns organically emerge and then deal with the pattern once they happen, rather than arbitrarily decreeing that data can't be dealt with, and not allow the data to emerge at all. To some degree, researchers might have to apply the agency based on diver specified affiliation, just like is done for ethnicity. No one decides what race someone is; only the person themselves decides racial affiliation. Despite the fact that you have certifications from five different agencies, everyone here knows you describe yourself as padi diver...

Per capita data is only somewhat helpful. More helpful would be the number of hours underwater as the denominator.

But right now nobody knows exactly how many active divers there are, let alone how many hours they spend underwater. Data collection for this is the big problem we need to solve.

Just had a thought. Getting the number of tank fills that are done may give us a pretty good number we can use to estimate the number of underwater hours.