Dealing with a buddy's decisions

This thread comes out of two things. One is that the thread discussing Quero's death has claimed that one of her dive group tried to dissuade her from swimming in underwater and alone, but she said she would be fine. The other is that we were getting ready to go cave diving today, and one of my buddies had a very slow DIN o-ring leak found on bubble check, and he wanted to ignore it and dive anyway. I found myself in the uncomfortable position of trying to get him to come around to the idea of fixing it instead, when he clearly didn't want to bother.

So that got me thinking about high risk behaviors, and what you do when your buddy's risk tolerance is clearly different from yours. In my case, today, if I had had to, I was prepared to say that I was not going on the dive until the leak was fixed. (Luckily, it didn't get that far.)

So do any of you out there have stories of situations like this? How did you handle it? Were there any hard feelings or problems afterwards?

So that got me thinking about high risk behaviors, and what you do when your buddy's risk tolerance is clearly different from yours.

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Two key questions here are:

1.) High risk for who?

2.) What is 'high risk?'

In your cave dive scenario, a demanding environment where the buddy team obligation makes his problem yours, should it unfold (or so many would interpret it on an actual dive; people may post tough about letting Darwin harvest fools but I suspect fewer would shrug & swim off), it stands to reason you may not want to agree to that risk liability. I'm not qualified to judge your buddy's leak risk level, and I am not calling your buddy a fool, by the way. I was speaking generally, as how someone might see it. I've dove with slow leaks, but I don't do tec. or overheads (except guide-led swim-throughs).

In Quero's situation, dive buddies made their more risk-conservative view known, and she, a highly seasoned diver, an educated woman and, not least, an adult, made her own decision and lived (and perhaps died) with the consequences. Even if, as some speculate, she took on what some would judge to be undue risk, she did so in a way that didn't take anyone else with her.

One can argue that anytime a diver dies, others are affected by the event (e.g.: dive buddy, charter op.), but if you believe in respecting the autonomy of free-willed adults, and not everybody intends to confine their hobby to shore diving solo, then that's part of the price that's paid.

I prefer not to let someone else excessively endanger me. I may speak up and advise if I see an 'accident waiting to happen' situation, but I am not inclined to try to coerce an adult into doing what I believe is right.

A 3'rd situation you may not want to derail the thread into is the issue of certified cave divers blocking, or even bodily hauling out, non-certified people entering the caves. A justification offered there is that the risk-takers are putting the caves at risk of closure by our nanny-state government.

Richard.

I had one last weekend. Insta buddy who was a good diver and clearly experienced. On the boat he starts making noises about going solo. The captain is fine with solo as long as he knows you and you have redundancy. Unfortunately this person satisfied neither requirement.

To defuse the situation, I agreed to buddy with him (instead of my original solo plan). Anyway, it's a deep dive and I hit my NDL. No worry. I let my buddy know. He wants to stay down. I'm relaxed as I have plenty of deco experience, the right equipment and oodles of back gas, the dive site is unbelievable so I figure some deco is fine. Buddy is aware of it. Time goes by and I get to the point where my deco obligation now puts me at the maximum dive time permissible for the boat. My deco obligation is starting to grow quite rapidly now. Again let buddy know. He wants to stay down.

At this point;
I have personally explained to him the risk of solo without redundancy;
His gas is running low;
He is on the edge of his NDL;
He wants to stay down to red line his NDL.

Only one one rational decision for me to make. I wave goodbye as I start to surface. At some point your it won't happen to me bravado is more than I can work against.

I find myself at the cross roads quite often, on the boat. I allways voice my concerns about gear configuration, gas choices, and dive plans in the form of a question. Based on the response you get, you can either make it a mentor momment, or make the capt. aware of a impending soup sandwich. The most recent was a hose routing issue. The punters doubles hoses were showing some age and when I pointed out the sharp bend in his inflator hose, I pinched and it started leaking. Issue averted.
Eric

I see a difference in behavior based on higher risk tolerance and that based on ignorance. Experienced divers that I respect in all actuality seem to have a lower level of what is acceptable risk when it comes to gear issues, conditions, and how far they are willing to push their limits. Does not matter if it involves overheads or open water pool like conditions. A dive is a dive. It is an excursion into an environment that is normally hostile to human life. Success depends on equipment functioning as it was designed to, people conducting themselves responsibly, and the stuff not hitting the fan to a degree that is unmanageable for the diver.
More experience seems to take two routes at higher levels of training. Some are more willing to.push things and accept little issues as part of the game and ignore or push them aside. I don't personally want to dive with those guys. Others are like the rebreather divers I saw at a quarry one time. They got all their gear ready, units set up, pre breathed, and were getting ready to suit up when one discovered what apparently was a small issue. I think it was one of his analog gauges not acting as he thought it should. I guess he did not have a spare for whatever reason. He just said to his buddy today must not have been meant to be. They disassembled their rigs, packed up, and left.
I have my own levels of what is acceptable when diving with students, buddies, and solo. There are some small differences. But when it becomes uncomfortable either the problem is getting fixed or I'm not.diving. I have driven almost three hours to a site to.dive. Got out of the car. Something felt off. Got back in and drove home.
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I agree totally, someone elses risk taking is NOT your responsibility. I discuss up front and if I feel they are being silly, risky or not going to agree on the dive plan, I either don't dive or I buddy with someone else. They are NOT my problem if they are (in the Aussie term) Wankers.

I allow it all the time with people I dive with. They dive rigs that I think are stupid, less safe, non-optimal etc. They are aware of the risks this gear presents, but they decide to dive with it anyway. Their decision can affect me if I have to help them. One guy I know has had a power inflator that does not work for many months, a few weeks ago the entire inflator ripped out of the BC.. and he dove anyway without a functional BC. He was too light on the safety stop because he removed some lead.. no big deal for me.

Another guy I know, dives with his octopus hanging in the water column.. he dives every weekend for over a dozen years like that.. Stupid, unnecessarily dangerous, but it is his rig, his decision and he has a pony bottle, so I don't bother saying anything about it anymore.

A lot of guys I will dive with will go diving to 130 ft with zero redundancy, while we are spearfishing and we often get separated and there is no reasonable assumption that I will be in proximity in an emergency. I show them a pony, but they dive the way they want.

Many guys I know, go scuba diving and fail to bring an oxygen tank on board for an accident. I remedy that by remembering to bring my own.

Last weekend, I did a quick solo bounce to 100 feet, with a starting pressure in a big tank of like 600 psi. Some people would find that excessively dangerous (but I had a pony). Nobody on the boat said anything about it.

Generally, I will open my mouth when I see stupid stuff, make a suggestion and that is pretty much it. I remember an individual who was experienced and I made a strong case to use some redundancy and they did not. Three weeks later they were dead, the body was never found, even though we did many, many dives searching for it. I always wonder if I could have been more convincing, maybe they would be alive. This person's risk tolerance was different than my own.

For myself, I do NOT dive in a team where I expect or rely on any help. Once you remove yourself from the "team mindset" and every man for himself, it is much easier to ignore decisions that you personally do not agree with. Rather than letting them screw up your dive and precluding you from diving, just make it not your problem. I TRY to have enough tools in my bag to avoid being killed by their screw up.

If I were diving in a cave, I think I would be much more particular about all of this, because the potential for them to kill me goes way up.

There have been a few times where I have been insistent that corrections needed to be made or I was not diving, but that was when I was a DM and my butt was on the line.

I usually dive alone but when diving with a buddy I never leave them. If that means a shorter dive then that is fine. As for diving with someone using defective equipment, I would have also walked away from that dive.

The scenarios described are quite different. Many people dive solo quite successfully and although there are some others who believe such activity is a certain death sentence others don't share that belief. I would not stand in the way of a person, especially an experienced one doing what they felt was acceptable.

I entered a fairly demanding cave dive earlier this year with a buddy who convinced me to go against my personal risk comfort zone. When a small problem cropped up I thumbed the dive due and ended up being berated by my buddy for thumbing it. It caused me to cut my cave diving vacation short because as a result I no longer had a buddy I felt comfortable with.
Cave diving to me is a very buddy reliant activity and if you aren't all on the same page you should not do it. I know I won't ever make that mistake again.

wedivebc:

When a small problem cropped up I thumbed the dive due and ended up being berated by my buddy for thumbing it.

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Sounds like your buddy didn't know (or was ignoring) the number one rule of diving!