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This is not news.... We have known for years that check lists are needed to not miss things... The problem is getting people to use them.. And stop when the check list tells them to stop...
Checklists are very useful for inexperienced and infrequent recreational divers. Complacency is the problem for experienced divers even if the checklist were silkscreened to the arm of their wetsuit.
We had the same problem with far more complex predive checklists on Saturation diving systems. Interestingly, the divers in the bell are more likely to check stuff off without paying much attention, presumably because it was their risk rather than putting someone else in danger.
Many operations now have the supervisor read the checklist over the comms and monitor them on TV while the bellman and at least one diver each call out the OK. You think complacency is an issue with divers the get wet a few times a month, how about every day?
Even though it is far more dangerous, we don’t have checklists for driving a car and don’t think twice assuming the tires are fine. The fear factor is unjustifiably low, the routine is very frequent, so the probability of complacency is very high.
An idea just came to mind that needs more evolution. What if you could put a custom checklist on your dive computer? That checklist would need to be gone through to get into dive mode.
You could structure it like the GUE predive checklist. There is a series of things to cover in a set order but the core is making sure everyone agrees on what you are doing and how you will do it, all your regs can be breathed, your BCD and DS all inflate/deflate, nothing is leaking, you can deploy the long hose and nobody has forgotten any important things.With open circuit, the problem I see is trying to program in multiple types of gear set-up configurations. Any ideas how to do that?