Unfortunately, they are as likely to say, "Nothing bad happened, so it is a completely safe operation. "
NTSB CONCEPTION HEARING - THIS TUESDAY @ 10AM
- Thread starter Ken Kurtis
- Start date
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Sad to think the crew got off the boat including the captain and everybody they were responsible for died. Guess we’re gonna have to leave it up to the insurance company’s once again to force compliance. I’m sure after the insurance company in this case reviews what led to the accident and after paying out millions, will make changes in the industry and make it tougher for operators like this to get the required insurance to operate.
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I would like to see liveaboard reviewers utilize a safety checklist and include a description of each item in the review. This does not have to be pass/fail, but one could use the overall description to help make decisions. On the other hand, the checklist could be used to generate a safety score that could be used to compare options. The description would still be needed to see how a specific boat gained and lost its points. Certain safety attributes may be more or less important to a given diver. Of course, the details would have to be worked out...
Safety briefing, exits, fire/smoke alarms, charging, roving watch...
John Bantin
Contributor
I believe the company was only insured for up to $1 million so that after all the expenses of recovery of the boat, there will be nothing left but chump change for those who might need it.
So true. I wonder how many people ever give the safety on those boats a thought.
I did. Twice I was on a boat configured exactly like Conception but a different company. The first time I was so excited to be on the trip that I didn't give safety a second thought. The second time I started thinking that the boat was a coffin if it flooded or burned with people below and was glad when the trip ended.
Statistically I was safe, but never again.
I’m sure all the divers must’ve signed a waiver, but if the boat owner failed to operate safely I guess they would have to sue them.
The topic seems to have shifted to the issue of distributing the cost of safety improvements to the fees paid by customers and whether or not the customers would be willing to pay the added costs. I would like to tell a story about that concept, fudging the facts enough that people who know my area cannot guess the names of people involved.
If you look carefully at PADI safety standards for student supervision and understand what the OW dive sites in the USA midwest and Rocky Mountain region are like in terms of visibility, you will realize that providing supervision within standards can be a challenge. Students cannot be left without a certified professional watching over them at any point, and the ability to watch over students is heavily dependent upon visibility. I assure you that standard is frequently violated because not enough assistants (DMs or AIs) are assigned by the dive shop on OW dives. Yes, it is possible for it to be done within standards with the inadequate staffing usually provided, but doing it is very difficult, both time consuming and exhausting for the instructor who must do a shuttle run to and from shore with divers being supervised.
In one case I know, instructors at the shop asked the owner to provide another DM for the OW dives, but he refused, saying it would cost too much to do that. DMs are notoriously poorly paid. The dive season in those regions is not that long and most students do their OW dives on vacation trips, so there aren't a large number of OW dives being done. I was in a gathering in the shop owner's home one evening, and I assure you that the price of one, or maybe two, of the wine bottles in the decorative rack in his living room would have covered the entire cost of the additional DM for the entire year.
In other words, the entire cost of providing an important safety measure to protect the lives of the students could have been absorbed by the shop owner's decision to have one less multi-hundred dollar bottle of wine in his living room. If a student died as a result of this, the blame would fall upon the instructor who violated standards.
When you distribute the cost of a critical safety feature over all the passengers for a year or years, it will frequently have no real impact on any potential customer's decision making. As I suggested in my example, it could even be absorbed by making the owner slightly less wealthy.
If you look carefully at PADI safety standards for student supervision and understand what the OW dive sites in the USA midwest and Rocky Mountain region are like in terms of visibility, you will realize that providing supervision within standards can be a challenge. Students cannot be left without a certified professional watching over them at any point, and the ability to watch over students is heavily dependent upon visibility. I assure you that standard is frequently violated because not enough assistants (DMs or AIs) are assigned by the dive shop on OW dives. Yes, it is possible for it to be done within standards with the inadequate staffing usually provided, but doing it is very difficult, both time consuming and exhausting for the instructor who must do a shuttle run to and from shore with divers being supervised.
In one case I know, instructors at the shop asked the owner to provide another DM for the OW dives, but he refused, saying it would cost too much to do that. DMs are notoriously poorly paid. The dive season in those regions is not that long and most students do their OW dives on vacation trips, so there aren't a large number of OW dives being done. I was in a gathering in the shop owner's home one evening, and I assure you that the price of one, or maybe two, of the wine bottles in the decorative rack in his living room would have covered the entire cost of the additional DM for the entire year.
In other words, the entire cost of providing an important safety measure to protect the lives of the students could have been absorbed by the shop owner's decision to have one less multi-hundred dollar bottle of wine in his living room. If a student died as a result of this, the blame would fall upon the instructor who violated standards.
When you distribute the cost of a critical safety feature over all the passengers for a year or years, it will frequently have no real impact on any potential customer's decision making. As I suggested in my example, it could even be absorbed by making the owner slightly less wealthy.
Just as a reminder, the customers who boarded the Red Sea Aggressor after the Conception fire specifically asked about a roving watch and were absolutely, positively assured that there would be one. How were they to know at that point that the crew was absolutely, positively lying to them?
My wife and I were to be joined by another couple on the Cayman Aggressor this past May, but Covid delayed that until this year (maybe). We asked about the key safety features, and they absolutely, positively assured us they would have, among other things, a roving watch. We absolutely, positively are not counting on it. That is why we paid the extra money to book the cabins above deck, from which we can jump into the ocean with the crew in case of fire.
And this, my friends, is why I won't book an Aggressor boat any more for any groups that I take out.
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