CCR: Tool or death trap?

[Cave Diver]

Ok, the title is a little provocative but since I have your attention...

I'd like to get this groups opinion of CCR's and more importantly - why - you feel that way. This is prompted by some of the responses I've seen regarding the recent Oriskany incident, both here and other places, as well as comments after other CCR incidents. One comment that keeps surfacing is that CCR can kill you/render you unconscious with no warning.

Fundamentally that may be true, but in principal I have to take issue with it. I haven't heard (yet) of any such incident caused by a failure during the dive. Every one that I recall seeing details on pointed towards some sort of user error, or failure to follow a proper procedure pre-dive. Skipping positive/negative pressure tests, ignoring readouts, diving with a known issue, etc. I find it hard to fault the machine in these instances.

I'm not intending this to imply that the missing diver was careless or negligent or that he even had a CCR issue. I'm really looking for more of an idea of the perceptions about CCR from a more informed group.

I'm also interested if anyone has information regarding a CCR failure, resulting in an incident, where there wasn't a possibility of catching and correcting the problem.

 

[Dive-aholic]

I think one of the issues is too many CCR divers try to work out problems while on the loop rather than bailing out to OC first then troubleshooting the problem.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Damn, this would have been a fun poll.



Death Box

Why? Except for the most meticulous and disciplined divers, they seem to be too demanding in procedure and maintenance. Even good and great technical divers are dying due to 'user error' on these things. The other popular reasoning to rebreather user deaths is the medical blame. Maybe I'm hardheaded, but I don't believe that the majority ailing divers out there just happen to be diving rebreathers. If there's truly medical reasoning behind some of the deaths, I think the rebreathers need to be looked into as far as contributing factors leading up to the medical. WOB? CO2? I dunno.

There's some truly amazing dives being conducted on rebreathers in extreme conditions and for exploration. The risks here outweigh(IMO) the risks of an every day normal technical dive.





You can't ignore the fact that the great majority of technical diver deaths over the last two years have occured with divers on rebreathers, while they still are very much the minority of technical divers. I think it'd be foolishness to chalk that up to coincidence.

 

[LiteHedded]

mat is spot on IMO

 

[ScubaAl]

Something that also has to be taken into account is the fact that rebreather divers are doing more in the way of extreme dives. People are diving to depths that a short time ago they would of never considered. This being the case, a problem that could be resolved at shallower depths may become deadly.
The lack of post accident analysis not being available, results in what could be life saving information not being made available to other RB divers. As a result the same mistakes could be being made over and over again.

Al

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Something that also has to be taken into account is the fact that rebreather divers are doing more in the way of extreme dives. People are diving to depths that a short time ago they would of never considered. This being the case, a problem that could be resolved at shallower depths may become deadly.

Extreme for that particular diver, I can see that. If thats the case, I think rebreather training needs to make giant strides in educating users to not push their personal envelopes so much.

Extreme by technical scuba standards? Not really, as far as the recent fatalities are concerned... The extreme diving, again by scuba standards, are being conducted without fatalities for the most part.

 

[TSandM]

I'm with Matt. Too much hand-waving and too many unknowns. The machines are more complicated and demand more care from the user, true -- and if most of the understood accidents are due to user error, doesn't that say that perhaps they are simply too hard to use safely?

 

[Cave Diver]

and if most of the understood accidents are due to user error, doesn't that say that perhaps they are simply too hard to use safely?

Or some people just get sloppy. I can't recall specifics, but 2 or 3 of the deaths that I heard of had problems that should have been caught during a pre-dive check. I also heard rumor (unverified) of someone who was used to letting their unit fly itself and their lack of manual skills almost caused an incident when a failure occurred.

 

[Cave Diver]

Damn, this would have been a fun poll.

I always thought tech divers didn't like polls? :mooner:

Throw me some options, I can add one to the thread.

 

[danvolker]

Buying a CCR is like a normal person buying a nuclear powered car...you will never have to buy gas again--awesome duration , but before each drive there is a huge AND "CRITICAL" checklist, and during each drive, the driver MUST monitor many key processes , and failure to be attentive to all of these at all times, can be catastrophic, as in turning the car into a nuclear bomb....

So as far as I'm concerned, I have no interest in strapping a nuclear bomb to my back just so I have better duration and depth