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

[GJC]

You would have to convince the instructors of it's efficacy before they would teach it. In my first ITC, it was impressed on me to use the gear your students would use. I stopped teaching tables because I saw more and more divers using PDCs and no tables on the boat. Even now, I see divers setting up their rebreathers without printed checklists.

Wouldn't have to convince every instructor, only the person(s) that write the training standards.

 

[drrich2]

As a side-note, I do a 'checklist of myself before I splash (I've jumped in with air off, and later with no fins) or leave the dive boat (left a pair of fins once). I'm solo certified; I don't expect someone else to 'go over' me.

I think the 'personal responsibility' thing, in and of itself, can be a bit of a red herring in this discussion. Let's say for sake of argument every non-medical diving death were shown to be the moral fault of the diver, and no one else, but you had a cheap, easy, widely deployable practice that would save all such people going forward.

How many people would say 'Don't do it, Darwin needs fresh meat?' Hopefully nobody. So whether & to what extent it's the diver's fault, in and of itself, isn't what's driving this.

The problem in our liability-driven society is, a death that shouldn't have happened has to be somebody's fault (I don't believe that!), and if not the diver's, then somebody else's, which means that somebody else is legally liable, and...

Here's a real world example. On Scuba Board, there are recurring topics of debate that never see closure. One is whether dive boats should require AOW cert. instead of accepting OW cert., with diver affirming experience and capability for the divers on offer, when the boat dives tend to run over 60 feet deep, for instance. I've read this is a more common thing in the U.S. (where liability risk drives a lot of corporate policy) as opposed to the Caribbean. So a diver with OW and nitro cert.s + over 500 dives with extensive deep diving experience may post on Scuba Board indignantly asking why he needs to take an AOW course to teach him nothing (new). And some of us tell him so he doesn't risk getting denied some dives.

That sort of thing is why I keep pushing for what you want done 'real world,' how sure we are that whatever the current death rate is is excessive (compared to similar sports), what an acceptable death rate would be, and whether you're going to keep pushing and tweaking into perpetuity no matter how low it gets (non-zero), in which case I'm concerned about the potential for OSHA-fication.

It's not the problem-solving approach to safety improvement that triggers objections. It's how it'd be carried out in the real world. If you want to encourage (not require) dive boats to post checklist placards in dive areas as reminders, fine. If you want to mandate AOW for any dive over 60 feet, Deep Diver for any dive over 100 feet, drift diver cert. for drift diving...well, I doubt you do, but sometimes once you open Pandora's box these things take on a life of their own.

I like the way you think but I'm scared of what people (esp. lawyers) will do with it.

Richard.

 

[The Chairman]

Wouldn't have to convince every instructor, only the person(s) that write the training standards.

Only if they're the ones teaching the class.

 

[GJC]

As a side-note, I do a 'checklist of myself before I splash (I've jumped in with air off, and later with no fins) or leave the dive boat (left a pair of fins once). I'm solo certified; I don't expect someone else to 'go over' me.

I think the 'personal responsibility' thing, in and of itself, can be a bit of a red herring in this discussion. Let's say for sake of argument every non-medical diving death were shown to be the moral fault of the diver, and no one else, but you had a cheap, easy, widely deployable practice that would save all such people going forward.

How many people would say 'Don't do it, Darwin needs fresh meat?' Hopefully nobody. So whether & to what extent it's the diver's fault, in and of itself, isn't what's driving this.

The problem in our liability-driven society is, a death that shouldn't have happened has to be somebody's fault (I don't believe that!), and if not the diver's, then somebody else's, which means that somebody else is legally liable, and...

Here's a real world example. On Scuba Board, there are recurring topics of debate that never see closure. One is whether dive boats should require AOW cert. instead of accepting OW cert., with diver affirming experience and capability for the divers on offer, when the boat dives tend to run over 60 feet deep, for instance. I've read this is a more common thing in the U.S. (where liability risk drives a lot of corporate policy) as opposed to the Caribbean. So a diver with OW and nitro cert.s + over 500 dives with extensive deep diving experience may post on Scuba Board indignantly asking why he needs to take an AOW course to teach him nothing (new). And some of us tell him so he doesn't risk getting denied some dives.

That sort of thing is why I keep pushing for what you want done 'real world,' how sure we are that whatever the current death rate is is excessive (compared to similar sports), what an acceptable death rate would be, and whether you're going to keep pushing and tweaking into perpetuity no matter how low it gets (non-zero), in which case I'm concerned about the potential for OSHA-fication.

It's not the problem-solving approach to safety improvement that triggers objections. It's how it'd be carried out in the real world. If you want to encourage (not require) dive boats to post checklist placards in dive areas as reminders, fine. If you want to mandate AOW for any dive over 60 feet, Deep Diver for any dive over 100 feet, drift diver cert. for drift diving...well, I doubt you do, but sometimes once you open Pandora's box these things take on a life of their own.

I like the way you think but I'm scared of what people (esp. lawyers) will do with it.

Richard.

Very few things stay the same. There will be changes. Some you have control over and some you will not have control over.

Zero has to be the goal. How can you tell someone that has lost a child, parent, brother or sister that their loss was an acceptable loss.

We just have to figure out how to get there without taking all the fun out of diving.

We can be like the LA County Lifeguards and create something new and different (a diving certification course) or we can let the government shut down the beaches to divers.

 

[GJC]

Only if they're the ones teaching the class.

I think most instructors try to follow the training standards of their agency. If they don't there is a process to stop them from teaching.

 

[drrich2]

Zero has to be the goal. How can you tell someone that has lost a child, parent, brother or sister that their loss was an acceptable loss.

We just have to figure out how to get there without taking all the fun out of diving.

We will never get there. With large numbers of people diving, there will always be occasional fatalities. Scuba is not unique in that regard. And there comes a point of diminishing returns in the push for lowering risk where, at least with the resources presently at hand, the situation is deemed good enough, or you will take the fun out of diving.

If 'zero' were truly the goal, we'd be telling a much longer list of people a long list of what they can't do because somebody else determined it was inherently dangerous and no fatalities are acceptable.

The problem with unattainable goals is people tend to keep pushing toward them, and can do a lot of collateral damage in the process, justifying it with a 'We're not there yet' attitude.

Richard.

 

[dlofting]

I want a checklist on a sticker. It could go right on my wrist slate. I don't see any, though. Are there any good ones for sale, or do I have to get it custom printed somewhere?

What a great idea and one I'm probably going to use as I'm a vacation diver, I'm getting old and my brain is becoming lazy
Maybe put some labels and print up the checklists on my computer. My wife won't really like it because you can only use them once and then have to toss them, but what the hey.

 

[GJC]

We will never get there. With large numbers of people diving, there will always be occasional fatalities. Scuba is not unique in that regard. And there comes a point of diminishing returns in the push for lowering risk where, at least with the resources presently at hand, the situation is deemed good enough, or you will take the fun out of diving.

If 'zero' were truly the goal, we'd be telling a much longer list of people a long list of what they can't do because somebody else determined it was inherently dangerous and no fatalities are acceptable.

The problem with unattainable goals is people tend to keep pushing toward them, and can do a lot of collateral damage in the process, justifying it with a 'We're not there yet' attitude.

Richard.

Zero has to be the goal with the understanding that it may take time to get there. But you can't set a goal less than zero and say "Yay, we made it we're done" and stand back, do nothing further and watch as more people die.

Kind of like the airlines saying "Yay, we made our goal, we only lost 5% of our passengers luggage this year" and doing nothing more to prevent lost luggage. I know it's not a very good comparison, but I thought I'd try to add a little humor here.

 

[The Chairman]

I think most instructors try to follow the training standards of their agency.

Instructors 'push' what's important to them and put very little effort into busy work they don't think will affect much. I remember an early mentor explain to his class "While everything in the book is important, this is just a bit more importanter".

The written checklist for OW diving is a solution looking for a problem. It would solve nothing and take away time from more important subjects.

 

[GJC]

Instructors 'push' what's important to them and put very little effort into busy work they don't think will affect much. I remember an early mentor explain to his class "While everything in the book is important, this is just a bit more importanter".

The written checklist for OW diving is a solution looking for a problem. It would solve nothing and take away time from more important subjects.

I disagree. It has been researched under a controlled study and published with the conclusion that it is an effective method to reduce diver incidents. It does have proven value. The debate was over after it was peer reviewed and the result will stand until someone replicates the study and gets a different result.

The only debate is about the best way to get people to use a written checklist and if the cost is worth the benefit of the results.