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

First, forgive me because I am of little experience BUT....

I keep reading about all these dive accidents which has me thinking that perhaps any and all certifications should be accompanied by a "common sense" lesson right from the get go.

Prior to my getting into the sport of scuba I joined this board. I read about all of the different posts on dive preparedness and equipment malfunctions, different exposure protection and all of the different scenarios that divers with a lot of experience, some not, have faced in different environments. With all of that information I have come realize what my comfort levels are. Prior to my partaking in my certifications i interviewed the person who would be instructing me and I made it quite clear how my world waggles.

Prior to any diving I run through the scenario's in my head over and over. If at any time I feel "hey, somethings a little wonky or I'm not as comfy as i'd like to be"...that's it, thumbs up!

Now while I'm not so sure that this doesn't happen but reading about all of these incidents it has me wondering if common sense is leaving the room because someone has been to 100 feet and feel that they are invincible.

In my rather short time of diving I have witnessed more than one "accident waiting to happen". All the way from a "Divemaster" candidate with two students asking my instructor/dive buddy how to read his gauge to 80 year old men who could barely carry his equipment or walk onto the boat without assistance and actually died 3 months prior and was revived, blaming it on his gear wanting to try new gear on a dive 130' plus.

This to me screams "no common sense".

I know accidents are going to happen but I firmly believe that most of the time it's diver error or bad judgement. Also, the "macho factor". Is it hammered into a diving student that it's okay to call a dive or to not do the dive because you are unsure? I don't think so because it wasn't in my original OW cert done up here in Canada. It was however while going through my different certs in The Keys.

I know my limits and what I am capable of and I strictly adhere to those limits. I check my equipment 2 or 3 times before taking a plunge and again before hitting 30 feet. I'm always checking my gauges and monitoring my air at least every minute or two. Too much perhaps but it makes me comfortable.

Perhaps before OW any certifying agencies course should be "the common sense approach to diving safely".

I really do hope I haven't offended anyone and this post is in no way intended to criticize those that have had the unfortunate happen, but there just seems to be a lot of unnecessary loss of life and close calls happening.

I hear ya but I question how much anyone can learn "common sense". When my wife and I did our OW certification we did private lessons. When it was time for the open water certification dives our LDS was running a bus down to the keys so we signed up. There was a 3rd student on the bus; he was not in our class.

On the drive down we talked with this other student. He was doing his OW certification dives, his AOW dives AND his nitrox dives!!!

Remember, I was brand spanking new to scuba. This guy sound like a disaster going somewhere to happen. Obviously the LDS was taking serious advantage of this sucker. By the way, I no longer do business with that LDS.

Oh yeah, the student failed his OW dives. He panicked!

The point is...the student suffered from a major lack of common sense. This wasn't as much a scuba thing (since I knew very little at the time either)...it was just some guy that did not posses enough common sense to realize that he was taking on too much at once.

There are two major issues at play here ...

The first is a culture of "instant gratification", where a large percentage of the population wants it cheap and fast. Like it or not, dive instruction is a business ... and in any business there are "tiers" of quality ... and in almost every case, the tier that's most popular is the one that offers the service for the lowest price and the least amount of effort. Scuba instructors who want an increasing percentage of the available market will cater to that audience.

Then there is the instructor ... a significant percentage of whom either go through instructor mills or just get sold class-after-class-after-class (like the guy on the bus) who end up with their instructor cert six months after completing their own OW class and who have done little to no diving outside of a class environment. These folks can't teach common sense ... because they never really learned any. Heck, they can barely function outside of what their class curriculums covered.

Now, the fact is that scuba diving isn't rocket surgery. Most times it's an incredibly simple thing to do, and one that you can succeed at without any common sense at all ... as long as everything goes right. It's when things go wrong that some folks discover that they're ill-equipped to handle it. But most folks don't like to think about things going wrong ... they're just having fun, and thinking about stuff like that ain't fun. And besides, humans are very good at denial ... and at thinking ourselves to be better skilled at whatever we do than we really are.

Often time, the real value of a well-taught scuba class isn't in what you learn about scuba skills ... it's in what you learn about yourself and your own limitations. The quality instructors will task you, and put you in situations where you WILL be challenged to think about how you'd deal with a failure ... because that's how you have those "AHA" moments that connect what you read to what you experience.

... and that's where common sense comes from ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Although I do believe the OW training provided now days (and this is a generalization, there are some - perhaps many very good instructors, but there are others too) is too watered down, or too short of duration, there are other issues at hand. The thing is, there are numerous categories for how events can happen:

equipment issues
health issues
bad choices
bad luck

There are subsets of these too. I'm not sure, despite all the training, how much of these won't still happen..... Not sure how you can eliminate some or any of these.

I do believe that the number of incidents as a ratio to the number of dives made is very low, but as visitors to the underwater world, we are less than suited for survival. When things go wrong, there is a higher chance of a bad outcome.

Because of SB having an accidents forum to serve as an awareness and possible "education" forum, we are hearing about these more than would commonly happen from normal media sources, so the appearance of lots going wrong lately isn't necessarily accurate.

I wouldn't recommend learning "common sense" via scuba diving if you hadn't previously learned it on land. You're much less likely to be around afterward to learn from your mistakes.

difficult to fix common sense because of it's relationship to "lack of stupid"

Ozwald:

I know accidents are going to happen but I firmly believe that most of the time it's diver error or bad judgement. Also, the "macho factor". Is it hammered into a diving student that it's okay to call a dive or to not do the dive because you are unsure? I don't think so because it wasn't in my original OW cert done up here in Canada. It was however while going through my different certs in The Keys.

Click to expand...

Dive shops breed their own self-regulating and self-reinforcing culture. Back when I lived in Winnipeg there was only one dive shop around. The owner oozed and exuded "macho." I can't say whether or not he was a good instructor, but I decided that I didn't trust him as a businessman.

Also, as Bob mentioned, many shops want to keep on selling training (which is good) and encourage most of their divers to train to be an instructor (which is perhaps not so good). IMHO training with only one group of people or one shop breeds a type of nepotism and lack of breadth of experience.

Everything we do in life is a gamble. Whether it being getting in our car to go to work or getting on a plane to our favorite dive destination. Statistics will support that the ratio of the number of dives to the number accidents is far less that the number of cars to the number of accidents. Most diving accidents are either health or poor judgement related. Poor judgement is easily seen everytime I get on the interstate to drive to work! You just can't fix stupid!!

It seems to me that the "common sense" approach to a body in a hostile environment is to leave that environment (lets face it humans weren't designed to live underwater). I am pretty stoked we have people who want to learn to take jaunts into this realm safely but common sense doesn't play into this. Much like common sense wasn't part of the moon mission or Slocum's circumnavigation...

We get a little different, more adventurous, crowd.

O and just because someone asks about equipment doesn't mean they don't know... Inst and DM's like making conversation (I absolutely HATE WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS the nervous silence that can set in on a boat, really kills the spirit of the trip) so we ask questions and talk to people about diving. I may say "hey that's an interesting BCD how does it work how do you like it? etc..." which does not mean WTF is that? what does that button do? It means "hey lets chat."

...and when I'm 80 I want a buddy check and to be pushed into Red Sea with my doubles.

Real freedom is the freedom to make risky choices... don't get me started.

Common sence cannot be teached. It must be part of you.
I started my OWD course in April 2007. The course was composed of 16 theoretical sessions and 16 pool sessions + 1 pool session more per week to practice. After all this, the theoretical exam and the pool exam. After this, the OW dives to certify.
OW dives were in October 2007. When we reached October we all were more than comfortable and wishing to enter the water.
All this under SSI.
I cannot understand how can someone take a dive course that only involves 2 days and 2 pool sessions, no matter how long those sessions are.
Besides how can someone believe that an AOWD course can be made before OWD certification ? The same with Nitrox. If someone tells me that I can take all those 3 courses in one shot and certify everything in the same dive excursion, he surely is cheating me.
All this is a warranty to failure.