Curious about accident statistics

[-hh]

I agree, the standards are good, and the low morbidity and mortality rates prove it...When standards are followed, the rates should continue to fall.

Having lived through it, my personal opinion is that equipment technology has been a more significant contributing factor than training for our mortality trends over the past ~30 years.

Any instructor who breaks standards is a bad reflection on all of us...you are going to flame me for this, but the QA process is confidential between PADI and its members..

but here goes: the names and businesses they own

At first glance, this public list looks quite impressive.

But peeling the first layer off the onion, we see that the date information is extremely poor and we can't tell if this is a 2004 PADI expulsion list, or a 40 year list. My personal best guess (based on the Archives page) is that it is a list of all expulsions from 1998 to present: 7 years worth.

Which might mean that this list of 64 expulsions means that PADI only gets rid of roughly 9 per year?

And this is the result out of how many millions of students taught per year and how many QA complaints received?

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any really good, independent way to gage if a particular Agency's QA group is really doing a good job or not.

you should know, PADI (and I assume most other agencies) want to know when their members are doing good and bad. Positive reinforcement is as impoprtant as identifying problems.

Sure...And we all should know too that the purpose of a business is to make money, and it is fundimental for there to be a strain between spending money (for "doing the right thing") and making money.

The classical business solution is to optimizate the profitmaking process by spending only the minimum in necessary expenses, and QA is clearly an expense.

And specific to this, I personally lost my faith in "The System" when a friend of mine who was an Official QA Investigator for their Agency mentioned in disgust that they had done an investigation, found clear Standards Violations and had recommended that the violator be promptly terminated...but later found out that the violator had been instead allowed to return to teaching without even a reprimand.

Please note that its not productive for me to name this individual or who the Agency was in the above, because all the Agencies are "Stove Piped" with in-house QA groups.

If we really want to have a better Diving QA system, the facts of the matter are that we wouldn't have a PADI QA + NAUI QA + SSI QA + YMCA QA + (etc) stovepipe structure: the Agencies would hire (or pool) a fully independent external auditing organization to provide QC, to provide impartiality and to reduce the temptation of conflict-of-interest.

But an external auditing organization would change which column the expense is reported in, so people will claim that it will cost more. How convenient it is to neglect factors such as economy of scale considerations in order to have a contrived justification to retain control of your Auditor

I apologize for being such a cynical old SOB, but this kind of stuff happens in every industry every day, and relatively small industries simply aren't as sophisticated as the big dogs.


-hh

 

[Linthorn]

You know I was thinking along the same lines. I had a person in the dive shop today and I thought OMG, they are certified? I would be willing to be the fatalities are statistically higher for people in the 5 to 20 stage and when they are diving by them selves. Reminds me why the scuba skills update is a GREAT thing.

I think I would take that bet. I, for one, am in that range, and I bet I am more than twice as careful than someone with twice my experience. I am still too new to dive too deep, to push my NDL, to stop watching my guages, or to get myself in a dangerous overhead. I would be concerned about diving beyond my abilities. After I get 30-50 under my belt, I risk overconfidence. This is when divers become dangerous.

Also, I would bet that after 20-30 dives, the certifying agency is irrelevant. The agency/instructor is most important for the first post OW dives, when all you have to go on is your training. After that, you go on experience. I have only logged 16 dives, but I have probably done 80-90% of my OW skills for real.

 

[Keysdrifter454]

I think I would take that bet. I, for one, am in that range, and I bet I am more than twice as careful than someone with twice my experience. I am still too new to dive too deep, to push my NDL, to stop watching my guages, or to get myself in a dangerous overhead. I would be concerned about diving beyond my abilities. After I get 30-50 under my belt, I risk overconfidence. This is when divers become dangerous.

Also, I would bet that after 20-30 dives, the certifying agency is irrelevant. The agency/instructor is most important for the first post OW dives, when all you have to go on is your training. After that, you go on experience. I have only logged 16 dives, but I have probably done 80-90% of my OW skills for real.

Wisdom.

 

[icyman]

I think I would take that bet. I, for one, am in that range, and I bet I am more than twice as careful than someone with twice my experience. I am still too new to dive too deep, to push my NDL, to stop watching my guages, or to get myself in a dangerous overhead. I would be concerned about diving beyond my abilities. After I get 30-50 under my belt, I risk overconfidence. This is when divers become dangerous.

Also, I would bet that after 20-30 dives, the certifying agency is irrelevant. The agency/instructor is most important for the first post OW dives, when all you have to go on is your training. After that, you go on experience. I have only logged 16 dives, but I have probably done 80-90% of my OW skills for real.

So your saying single diver fatalities are one of the highest risk, or did you not read all of my post?

 

[emtdan]

http://www.padi.com/english/common/padi/statistics/