What do Safe Divers do that Unsafe Divers don't?

[Thalassamania]

I would imagine this one is a very common issue.
...

"Someone who dives beyond their training, ability, and/or experience." really should be changed to "Someone who dives beyond their training, ability, and experience."

There are many times when I have made dives that I had neither training for nor previous experience in doing, in fact someone did that for the first instance of each and every dive that has ever been made. Fortunately, ability, when used with care and caution, can oft substitute for both training and experience.

 

[fdog]

For me, "safe divers" can see the future, and avoid futures with nasty endings.

The unsafe divers can NOT see the future.


All the best, James

 

[elan]

Someone who does not maintain their gear.
Someone who dives beyond their training, ability, and/or experience.
Someone who displays blatant disregard for any accepted safe practices.
Someone who chooses the wrong tool for the job.
Someone who thinks they know better then everyone else.
Someone who has the "it can never happen to me" attitude.
Someone who does not respect that we are practicing a sport/hobby that can kill you.
Someone who thinks they have nothing to learn.
Someone who thinks because they read about it on the internet, that they can do it.
Someone who does not plan a dive and then dive that plan.
Someone who wants to take a less experienced diver out of their comfort zone.
Someone who gets so wrapped up underwater that they get tunnel vision and forget about everything.
Someone who thinks with less dives then I have fingers thinks they can teach someone else to dive safely.


Should I go on?

James some points are very shaky/vague

I'm probably not passing half of the criteria I do sometimes dive doubles with 3 stages on a 30ft dive which is a wrong tool And I get tunnel vision when task loaded learning new skills, I think at the point when I had few dives I was overly conservative just like now so technically I could "teach" some people safety

---------- Post added April 27th, 2012 at 02:56 PM ----------

Just havin fun but I found your list alarming... I'm an unsafe diver

Should you stop in Toronto I could unsafely dive a DH reg with you

 

[Doomnova]

Its been said a few times. The diver is the big issue. A person who has not dove in 6 months or more just jumping in and you can tell they need a refresher. Pushing limits. ok there is a reasonable extent of pushing limits. Ie diving to 60ft a few times then moving to 70ft (after AOW) ect. But going to 100ft just cause you can (or deeper).

Gear configuration. Especially with rental gear knowing how much lift your BCD has and making sure its enough in the gods worst case scenario of you having a 40lb lift BCD and having 50lbs of weight+gear and not being able to ditch any of it in case of a BCD flood. I had a dive buddy like this a few months back and him and I had a rather long talk after the dive about his weighting. Also up here with the Phytoplankton blooms going on you need to havea dive light cause odds are once you get below the bloom your doing a night dive anyways.

Knowing the reasons for restrictions on depths and why the NDL ect is in place for us rec folks.

Being cautious about diving based on conditions of both the dive site and your health. I have a simple rule "you can always dive another day so long as you don't screw up your body". All it can take is one major accident and your either dead or your not diving for a longtime/ever again. Diving when sick ...eh no. ****ty dive site conditions eh no...

Diving a site that's new without any idea what the unique dangers to the site are. This one is more targeted at newer divers imho. If you have not dove a site before make sure to at least ask someone who knows the site what the major dangers are. Like 10 mile point here wonderful dive tons of life everywhere on that wall and near it. But if your not from the are/ dove it before you don't know that there is not way to get out of there when the tides going in or out your at its mercy which odds are your going for a nice ride out to the Salish sea have fun....I hope your wearing bright dive gear...

Also improving oneself. I think this is the big one for newer divers too many people figure I got my OW/AOW and that is it I'm done learning to dive and I think this is the biggest mistake most newer/irregular divers make there are tons of things you do not know about from skills that are not taught to the subtleties of dive planning. Also technique wise. I set 3 goals every dive of things to work on seeing as I only have 25 dives under my belt I still have alot of things to worko n. Like hitting neutral buoyancy more easily when we hit the bottom depth of our dive.

 

[Hoomi]

I read the title of this topic aloud to my wife, and she had the same immediate response that came to my mind:

What do safe divers do that unsafe divers don't?

Live.

 

[vladimir]

I read the title of this topic aloud to my wife, and she had the same immediate response that came to my mind:

What do safe divers do that unsafe divers don't?

Live.

Yes, but they also retain bladder control, sexual function, sensation and motor control in their limbs, hearing, balance, etc., for themselves and their buddies, and they do so predictably, rather than by the grace of good fortune. The bar is set a little bit higher than just survival.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I read the title of this topic aloud to my wife, and she had the same immediate response that came to my mind:

What do safe divers do that unsafe divers don't?

Live.

Not necessarily ... I can think of one local accident where the unsafe diver lived, and the person who attempted to save him didn't ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[ian@1904]

The divers that make me feel uncomfortable have often modified their kit. Two examples:
Diver had added a shoulder dump valve to the wrist of his drysuit. Diver jumps in and is underweighted, has a feet inversion and generally unhappy dive. Extremely intelligent person, no common sense.
Diver had added two handles facing forward on his twinset. No idea why he had done this. His idea of buoyancy control was to crawl along the sea bed. I navigated by keeping to the left of his personal silt cloud.

When holiday diving, I wait to see if my buddy wants to do a buddy check. If not forthcoming I offer a buddy check. If no buddy check has taken place by this point I generally start asking questions about self-rescue training. I sometimes point out that I might not be able to effect a rescue as I don't know how the diver's kit functions.

I think that safe divers will always try to check their buddy out.

 

[Thalassamania]

Allow me to repost something I posted some years ago:

I have always modeled safety as a "cone" in the water that is point down. As long as you are inside the cone you're OK, when you start to drift outside of it you are in trouble and when you are completely outside of it you are not going to make it. Skill, as transmitted through training as well as experience both teaches you how to stay, not just inside the cone, but to stay in the center of the cone so that even as you go deeper and the circle scribed by the intersection of the plane of your depth and the cone narrows, you are still close to the middle. Panic results in the almost chaotic jump from inside the cone to somewhere outside the cone with little or no frame of reference as to how to get back. This is sometimes the result of a single big predictable or stochastic event, but is more often the result of a series of small displacements, each one of which multiplies the one(s) that came before. What is the difference between say Parker Turner struggling to get to the opening till he passes out and the new diver clawing his way to an embolism because his valve was not open all the way? Are either of them just bad luck? I don't really know ... some would say that it is a lack of imagination, while others would say that it is strength of will. If I had to guess I say that lack of panic comes from the habituation of good habits that jump you back into the cone, almost without concern as to where you were displaced to. Thinking slowly, taking a deep breath, and knowing that even if all your gear has failed you've got four minutes or so (rather a long time) to solve your issues can go a long way.

 

[supergaijin]

Allow me to repost something I posted some years ago:

I have always modeled safety as a "cone" in the water that is point down. As long as you are inside the cone you're OK, when you start to drift outside of it you are in trouble and when you are completely outside of it you are not going to make it.

I like that analogy and will try to use it in the future.