Discover scuba without instructor

[northernone]

For this hypothetical, getting sued is far down my list for risk assessment.

Scuba diving you are taking someone into an environment that can passively kill them.

Before you do this, please consider if you have the skills and experience needed to insure their trust in you is well placed.

... Preferably verified by a third party (such as a training agency) we are pretty bad at self assessment in unfamiliar situations with unexpected risks.

Cameron

 

[caruso]

It's very easy for an inexperienced diver to panic at depth, which typically results in a reflexive, instinctive rapid rush to the surface to "get to safety". Bad things tend to happen under such circumstances. As per your example, few people tend to panic while riding a motorcycle around a track and if they do they can simply stop what they're doing.

 

[Stoo]

When I was 12 or 13, my 17 year old cousin came up with a tank and double-hose from his basement. My Uncle, who I barely remember, had been a diver at one point apparently. My parents had an inground pool, that was 9' deep. Needless to say, cousin John had a blast floundering around out there while my (apparently negligent) parents were out. I was hooked from that moment on.

We probably should have died but we didn't. But that's diving right? 99.9% of the time it's great. Then someone's dead.

Doing a try-dive with a pal seems like a dumb idea, especially when you can do it so easily with a minimum expense. Having said that, the OP is diver, and could presumably teach his friend everything he needs to know for a short/shallow excursion. As long as the dive falls into that 99.9%, it'll be fine.

I taught for 25 years and certified something like 2200 students. I suspect that I could have "taught" most of those people everything they needed to know in about 5 minutes, as long as they promised to never dive below say, 25'. This stuff isn't rocket science, at least not at the beginning.

 

[Tribal]

It is really a hypothetical question. I wouldn’t consider it myself, if something went wrong i wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. I barely have 300 dives, and I don’t feel the need to become a instructor. I enjoy diving

It was a discussion at work with non divers who did say if there isn’t a law about it you can do it.

I Europe it’s also not as easy to sue someone and win. On paper you didn’t brake any law.

 

[Hethen57]

There is a dive accident scenario that discusses just this situation in "Diver Down"...surprisingly, it is the certified diver who pays the ultimate price. Why significantly increase the risk of an already potentially dangerous activity. I might have considered doing this as well...until I got certified and got quite a few unsupervised cold ocean dives under my belt and started experiencing some of the potential things that can go wrong that can't be taught and you might have never anticipated. Now I have a much greater respect for the sport and the rules that have been put in place to try to minimize the risks.

 

[tursiops]

This stuff isn't rocket science, at least not at the beginning.

I had an agency representative who used to say: "Diving is easy. In OW, don't go too deep, don't hold your breath, don't stay down too long, have a good time. In AOW, here are some cool things to do while you are not holding your breath. In Rescue, here is what to do if someone holds their breath."

 

[Lorenzoid]

That is the thing i’m Wondering, why would they be able to sue you? If tomorrow you take a friend with you to ride a bicycle, he crashes and gets hurt. They can’t sue you unless you did something wrong?

Whether someone would be successful in a lawsuit for negligence against you depends on whether they can persuade the judge or jury that you did something wrong. What standard does the law compare your behavior against to determine whether it was "wrong"? Part of the lawsuit would involve determining what is the proper standard. In the US, determining the applicable standard might take into account whether there is a relevant industry and whether there are any standards in the industry.

 

[Bob DBF]

A DSD no, although I have done some pool dives with friends. Wouldn't do it in the lakes or ocean around here, too many issues to overcome, it sure wouldn't be a fun dive for me. A lawsuit would be the least of my worries.

That being said, I learned from a book and a diver that had a few dives on me. That was back in the early '60's, but things were a lot different then, including diving. You didn't see people that were not already proficient in the water before they started to dive. I got started because I could hold my breath long enough to see what I wanted to see underwater.


Bob

 

[TMHeimer]

Law? Not in most places. Insurance? After a beginning SCUBA diver suffers an accident, there usually aren't any medical expenses.

The Discover SCUBA programs promulgated by PADI and other agencies provide a number of key safety features:

1. They define a specific list of eligibility criteria, including swimming skills and medical clearance
2. There is a curriculum of classroom material that participants are expected to understand before entering the water, covering important things like the risk of pulmonary barotrauma and AGE, usually expressed as "don't hold your breath."
3. They define a set of skills instructors must have, among them observation skills, rescue skills, and ways to identify common mistakes.
4. They specify a confined-water training session with specific skills the student must demonstrate before progressing to open water.
5. Instructors obtain real-world experience working with and observing students, in a role as DMs or assistants, before taking responsibility for their own students.

Now, there are accidents -- fatalities -- that occur because instructors sometimes skip some of these steps. Probably the most common example is instructors who rush the confined water portion of the class, or conduct it in adverse conditions where they cannot physically control the student. Discover SCUBA itself does not enjoy as good a safety record as actual dive training (for Open Water Diver or other agencies' equivalents), even with the curriculum, the instructor certification, and the institutional controls.

Can you do as good of a job as that system?

Thanks for pointing out something I always say I've heard about DSDs. I have brought up the ratios of instructor to student numbers often, and that I'm not even a real fan of the standard itself (4:1). Unfortunately, I would guess that most DSD candidates are completely unaware of the ratios and standards.
My friend told me her total training from her experienced husband was "Here, put this thing in your mouth and inhale".

 

[doctormike]

This is something that I mentioned in another thread. A lot of the focus here is on legal liability. But remember, a good instructor brings more to a DSD than just insurance. Instructing is a unique set of skills, and instructing new divers or non-divers is probably harder than teaching tech diving, where you can choose to only train the best of the best.

There are lots of amazing divers with thousands of complex dives in their log book, deep into wrecks or far into caves, who would be terrible instructors for a new, nervous diver. On the other hand, there are amazing instructors who are patient and skilled at teaching and watching for danger signs on a DSD who might never have been in deco.

So to answer the OP, I would recommend a good instructor if they want to do a DSD.