Worsening insurance crisis

[Jim Lapenta]

Getting out of teaching has been the best decision I've made in the last couple of years. Second best was to get out of the business end (servicing/selling gear) and just dive for fun. The rising cost of insurance was just one reason.
The reasons for the rising costs of liability insurance was another.
Even though people supposedly need instruction to dive, there are segments of the industry that push for less and less instruction.
There are no longer what used to be considered normal minimums for time in the classroom and pool before going to open water. Some of this is in response to the cost of maintaining a classroom and more so, the cost of pool time for many.
As a result shops and instructors have been doing more and more corner cutting to reduce the time spent in both areas.
E-learning, though meant to supplement classroom, has replaced it for many instructors.
Confined water training exercises are sometimes conducted in the classroom instead of in the pool or poolside. I have heard of a shop that is doing the gear assembly/disassembly at the shop and not at the pool and counting that as breaking down the gear the required number of times.
To me there is a difference between doing it in street clothes with dry gear and equipment.
More and more I saw at EVERY training site I used, instructors doing their utmost to be in and out of the water as quickly as possible. Our average OW dive was 45-60 minutes. We would switch tanks and have a thorough briefing on the surface and take our time exiting the water to reduce the amount of post dive stress.
Many times this resulted in us going in a few minutes after a group of 4 or more and when we were exiting after the 1st dive, they were finishing up the second.
Rush through the skills, get the 2nd dive in, and get out by noon.
I never planned to be done with 2 students before 3 on the 1st day which was usually Saturday.
On Sunday, the same thing and we knew that by 11 - 11:30 am we would pretty much have the place to ourselves along with a couple of people just diving as buddy teams. The classes were gone.
The lack of pool practice was also evident by the doggy paddling and rototilling of the bottom.
Even more disturbing was the instructor still leading a group of divers along a line or feature on the bottom single file. No buddy teams, no way they had control of the group, and I surmised that was part of the rushing. Get them in and out before one has a chance to get lost.
And the industry rewards this unethical and unsafe behavior with awards for most people certified in a year.
Then they not only reduce standards to make certain training more risky, they put all the blame on the instructor. Seeing the new PADI drysuit standards I wonder why any company would insure anyone teaching to those. Those are just setting up more victims.

 

[azstinger11]

$800/year sucks but is a lot better than losing one's house, savings, etc., as a possible result of litigation because one did not establish an LLC for their professional diving endeavors.

-Z

Oh fully agree, just a drag.

 

[runsongas]

the dedicated will just get trained overseas and be their own dive operators

there will still be divers, even if there is no dive industry

 

[GiraffeMarineSalvage]

Getting out of teaching has been the best decision I've made in the last couple of years. Second best was to get out of the business end (servicing/selling gear) and just dive for fun. The rising cost of insurance was just one reason.
The reasons for the rising costs of liability insurance was another.
Even though people supposedly need instruction to dive, there are segments of the industry that push for less and less instruction.
There are no longer what used to be considered normal minimums for time in the classroom and pool before going to open water. Some of this is in response to the cost of maintaining a classroom and more so, the cost of pool time for many.
As a result shops and instructors have been doing more and more corner cutting to reduce the time spent in both areas.
E-learning, though meant to supplement classroom, has replaced it for many instructors.
Confined water training exercises are sometimes conducted in the classroom instead of in the pool or poolside. I have heard of a shop that is doing the gear assembly/disassembly at the shop and not at the pool and counting that as breaking down the gear the required number of times.
To me there is a difference between doing it in street clothes with dry gear and equipment.
More and more I saw at EVERY training site I used, instructors doing their utmost to be in and out of the water as quickly as possible. Our average OW dive was 45-60 minutes. We would switch tanks and have a thorough briefing on the surface and take our time exiting the water to reduce the amount of post dive stress.
Many times this resulted in us going in a few minutes after a group of 4 or more and when we were exiting after the 1st dive, they were finishing up the second.
Rush through the skills, get the 2nd dive in, and get out by noon.
I never planned to be done with 2 students before 3 on the 1st day which was usually Saturday.
On Sunday, the same thing and we knew that by 11 - 11:30 am we would pretty much have the place to ourselves along with a couple of people just diving as buddy teams. The classes were gone.
The lack of pool practice was also evident by the doggy paddling and rototilling of the bottom.
Even more disturbing was the instructor still leading a group of divers along a line or feature on the bottom single file. No buddy teams, no way they had control of the group, and I surmised that was part of the rushing. Get them in and out before one has a chance to get lost.
And the industry rewards this unethical and unsafe behavior with awards for most people certified in a year.
Then they not only reduce standards to make certain training more risky, they put all the blame on the instructor. Seeing the new PADI drysuit standards I wonder why any company would insure anyone teaching to those. Those are just setting up more victims.

I appreciate your indepth vantage point...
(I'm not an instructor but once considered that path and you largely confirm many of my thoughts, especially as relates to organizations bulk certifying herds of divers at warm water tourist destinations...)

 

[drrich2]

This whole self regulation thing isn't working out too well.

I'm skeptical external regulation would make the world better. The medical field is heavily regulated; ask Obstetricians and Neurosurgeons about their malpractice insurance premiums. People in organizations who deal with OSHA or CMS (the Medicare and Medicaid people) can tell horror stories.

What's more is that many people's answer to imperfections and bad outcomes is to raise the bar, which either makes compliance harder (e.g.: the equivalent of OW + AOW training to get a basic OW certification) or encourages cheating (e.g.: those medical forms where many check 'No' to most everything).

The more you invite regulators in, the more those regulators justify their existence by dreaming up more regulations, ever tightening the screws to businesses. Then to 'ensure compliance and high quality,' someone comes up the surveyors doing surprise inspections, and they feel the need to justify their existence by hair splitting and fault-finding (if you know anyone who works in a hospital, ask them how they feel about the Joint Commission, or even worse CMS, showing up on their doorstep for a survey).

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I'm skeptical external regulation would make the world better. The medical field is heavily regulated; ask Obstetricians and Neurosurgeons about their malpractice insurance premiums. People in organizations who deal with OSHA or CMS (the Medicare and Medicaid people) can tell horror stories.

What's more is that many people's answer to imperfections and bad outcomes is to raise the bar, which either makes compliance harder (e.g.: the equivalent of OW + AOW training to get a basic OW certification) or encourages cheating (e.g.: those medical forms where many check 'No' to most everything).

The more you invite regulators in, the more those regulators justify their existence by dreaming up more regulations, ever tightening the screws to businesses. Then to 'ensure compliance and high quality,' someone comes up the surveyors doing surprise inspections, and they feel the need to justify their existence by hair splitting and fault-finding (if you know anyone who works in a hospital, ask them how they feel about the Joint Commission, or even worse CMS, showing up on their doorstep for a survey).

There are certainly problems with government regulations, but I'd argue there is often a necessity for regulations. Building codes are necessary. Work safety regulations are necessary. Food safety regulations are necessary. Because companies cannot be trusted to monitor themselves. Now are all those regulations perfect? Of course not.

But look at where we are today with increasing insurance costs. Do you want this trend to continue? If yes or you don't care, there's nothing for us to discuss.

If your answer is no, what is it you propose?

 

[drrich2]

I don't think escalating regulation is likely to cut insurance costs. Does anyone know of any examples of similar scenarios working out well in any analogous industries? The law of unintended consequences comes into play; efforts to increase safety can lead to higher legal expectations and raise potential liability. We see this in business when a regulatory agency not only holds a company accountable to the law, but to compliance with their own policies.

No one wants insurance costs of any kind to increase. We were told by Subfiend:

Second, the cost of insurance has been climbing, year after year. This is because the insurance companies and their underwriters perceive that the risk of claims, and the cost of defending these claims, are increasing. They see all the information on the amount of claims, settlements and verdicts. This information is provided to them from a variety of sources on a regular basis, and they write the checks when things go wrong. The number of consortiums willing to insure scuba in North America is getting smaller and smaller, faster and faster.

You gave examples of various complex industries where people are either functionally trapped (e.g.: the work place), or are dependent (e.g.: health care environments, food production and handling) in ways they can't readily access (e.g.: you don't watch the pharmaceutical company make the pill, you may not understand how the pill works, you don't know why the physician picked that pill over the alternatives, etc...). There are a lot of risks customers can't assess.

In recreational diving, there are some similar concerns (e.g.: bad air from a poorly maintained compressor, filling your tank with the wrong gas, the issue raised over alleged lack of a roving night watch in the Conception disaster - which there was a regulation for), and there are regulations affecting dive boats. That said, there's not as much I can't directly consider. I can observe the conditions and conduct a dive, etc...

Despite the contempt some have for modern recreational dive training, it works fine for many people.

In my personal and professional opinion, it will take a lot of effort by a lot of professionals in the industry to steer the ship to avoid hitting the iceberg, and I don't see enough of a commitment to do so. There are bright lights in the industry -- a lot of them -- but there are still too many professionals who make excuses, cling to business as usual, are led by liars, and unquestionably believe what they're told.

@Subfiend - Please give us specific examples of what you think needs to happen to avoid the iceberg, there's practical in the real world (where instructors don't make much, customers aren't willing to pay much more, many dive shops struggle, etc...).

Also, I sense that there are 2 different (albeit with some overlap) issues here - recreational dive instructors teaching classes, and recreational dive boats offering dive trips and rental gear. Are both of these in similarly dire straights?

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Let's not forget, a decision to do nothing is still a decision.

 

[drrich2]

Agreed; it is.

One thing I'd like to see divided up in this discussion is dive students vs. divers.

Is the main liability concern when an instructor is teaching a class and a Discover Scuba Diving or Open Water course student presumably drowns...or is it a dive boat operator in U.S. waters running dive trips with certified OW and/or AOW divers and a certified diver dies?

I would think the perceived 'duty of care' would be quite different between trainees with an instructor and certified divers needing a water taxi to/from the dive site (I'm aware the dive op. may have an instructor teaching students on the boat, too, but I'd like to avoid confusing things more for now).

 

[tursiops]

certified divers needing a water taxi to/from the dive site

The concept of a water taxi for divers is not always the case; in fact, most of the non-resort dive boats I've been on have had a DM on board, often in the water; definitely not just a taxi service to the site. There is clearly some diver-operator duty of care involved, even with no training going on.