All these dive accidents are making me wonder....

[Ozwald]

I am not a RB diver either,. But from what I understand about them, he more than likely flooded his gas loop or allowed water to enter the breathing loop. it causes a reaction with the CO2 absorbent.
BTW, I'll take a guy like this to the scared one any day.
And if he requires rescue, I would gladly be there.
I would help any fellow diver, whether they are my buddy or not.
It's just that the scared diver worries me more than the determined one.

Obviously.....again, not what I was eluding to.

 

[MikeBell]

Personally, thinking back to my training - who is ever really "ready?". You can be told something repeatedly but until the time comes when you need to rely on the training, you aren't positive that you know it. I had my own panic on my OW dives and my dive instructor was right beside me. Scuba has it's risks just like other sports. I was recently reading one of the Accidents threads that's currently "closed for cleanup" and they were discussing whether or not AOW should come right after OW.

I would say that in whatever capacity, students should dive and dive frequently. Learn through repetition. I took my AOW with 6 dives under my belt, was it a mistake to do so? Absolutely not. I had an instructor with me and it was still a safer environment than it would have been had I just been on my own with my buddy (who has the same experience level). Through my AOW dives, I felt I grew a lot, I learned more and was more comfortable in the water. However, as a still relatively inexperienced diver, one thing I wish was readily available on PADI's website (and maybe it is?) Are materials to read to brush up on the basics. The things that should be remembered but perhaps forgotten in a time of need. If those "cheat sheets" were available to review every dive for newcomers, it could benefit them should a challenging situation arise. The only other recommendation I can think of regarding training is to reiterate that this is a serious sport with potentially deadly consequences. Will every dive turn out badly? Obviously not but respect must be given to being submerged in an element in which you couldn't take the gear out of your mouth and breath normally.

 

[Crush]

Personally, thinking back to my training - who is ever really "ready?".

IMHO you are "ready" if you practice regularly. This means you need at least one other like-minded individual - your dive buddy. Ideally you have a whole bunch of like-minded divers in the area. Near the end of a dive when we are doing our safety stop I often signal my buddy YOU-WATCH-ME. He then knows that I am going to have some type of mishap. I usually go OOA. Next, I signal I-WATCH-YOU. So, he goes OOA. Sometimes for a change (where the bottom is at about 15-20 ft) I dump the air from my BC and sink down the the bottom where I lie "unconscious." When my kids start to dive and after they learn to do a rescue I plan to have a heart attack on every second dive

Edit: MikeBell, welcome to SB!

 

[c0r3yz]

Great post!

I have to say that for me, I am not diving because I have something to prove; I am diving because I simply enjoy it. I also like to think that I have enough common sense to keep me out of life threatening danger. Between those two traits, I would like to think that I will be diving for a very long time.

That said, I sadly admit that I find myself wondering the same thing about activities other than diving:

• Out kayaking, there was a gentleman that anchored his camouflage kayak near the middle of the intracoastal waterway directly underneath a bridge and threw a line in. You have to wonder how long before he gets hit by a boat who can't seem him sitting there.
• Driving the short 6.5 miles to work every morning, I always see the same guy on his bike riding against traffic, on the while line between the two lanes that are coming straight at him. One day, I'm sure I won't see him.
• There's always the kids who were "planking" on the edge of another bridge in the area over the intracoastal that fell. They were lucky enough that they were only injured.
• A few years back, my neighbor was showing his son how to make a potato canon, and they were apparently using a rubber stopper as their maiden projectile. Rather than loosen up the plug when it looked to be in there too tight, they decided it would be better to use more accelerant. A call to 911 necessitated an ambulance and the local fire department.

The lack of common sense in some is the reason why the Darwin Awards exist. As a friend of mine usually says though: "It's not so much a problem as it is a solution."

 

[Thalassamania]

Who is ever ready? Anyone who has been trained by what I would consider to be a competent instructor.

Surviving underwater is not "common sense." In fact, it is often quite the opposite, the proper response requiring an overcoming and abandonment of inherited terrestrial responses.

 

[markmantei]

Who is ever ready? Anyone who has been trained by what I would consider to be a competent instructor.

But training is useless without practice and repetition.

 

[Jax]

Who is ever ready? Anyone who has been trained by what I would consider to be a competent instructor.

Needs a caveat . . . ". . . and practices that training often enough that it is muscle memory."

Seems to me that there are a lot of failures to think about ditching weight and / or equipment.

 

[Jax]

But training is useless without practice and repetition.

Darn it, Mark, you beat me! :cussing:



:joke:

 

[Thalassamania]

But training is useless without practice and repetition.

The need (and desire) to practice must be inherent in the training to begin with. One of the biggest problems with most diving instruction is that a student is "taught" to do something, demos it once, and then is moved to the next "skill." The skills are never integrated into a whole and the student is not given a practice model to repeat on his or her own. Saying, "now you need to practice," is meaningless by itself.

Needs a caveat . . . ". . . and practices that training often enough that it is muscle memory."

Seems to me that there are a lot of failures to think about ditching weight and / or equipment.

A perfect example, except for the start and end of the dive most divers never remove or replace their weights, in fact, they only did it once ... in class. We place belt remove/replace into a practice exercise and our students do it, I'd guess, on the order of 100 times during class as well as have it firmly in mind as part of their practice routines.

 

[flots am]

Personally, thinking back to my training - who is ever really "ready?". You can be told something repeatedly but until the time comes when you need to rely on the training, you aren't positive that you know it.

Everybody could be "ready". It just takes training and repetition. The problem is that people tend to not get much of either.

Being "told" doesn't really count for much. Doing something does. If someone explained air-sharing to you in a class (even two or three times), it wouldn't mean much. However if you spent 6 or 8 pool sessions with random people coming up to you demanding an air share, after a while it wouldn't be any more interesting or stressful than starting your car when you go to work.

flots.