PADI Holds The New World's Record for Fastest OW Class

[Mlody11]

In my opinion, ScubyDoo and matts1w hit the pin on the head. If you combine the idea that rec. diving is not tech. diving and the fact that most people die doing stupid things which are CONSTANTLY repeated as being stupid in OW training, gets you to the answer to the "OW training" problem. The course is not at fault because of the actions of individuals that look for trouble, especially since they are told not to in training.

Going back to the driving - diving analogy. It is a FACT that more accidents are caused by young drivers. Did the older drivers receive any special kinds of training? No. They received the same training (maybe even less) and had to go through the "young" driver phase. Well then experience is what makes a driver better. Training will in all cases improve anything. But the question is... when you drive, do you calculate how much stopping distance you need when you increase your speed from 30mph to 50mph? We all know that doulbe the speed = quadruple the distance but what about 1.2 times the speed? 1.4? 1.6? 1.8? Do we care when we are driving? What will be your friction ratio between you tires and the ground during a giving condition? Do you care? Should you care? Yes you should in a sense that you need to know how slippery it is. (high, med, low) (we can go all the way to the atomic nature of the rubber in the tires and how their flexibility changes with temperature if you like) If you think this would be too much to teach a driver, then how much do we need to teach a diver? If we dont need to teach tme more then what will you do in this extra training? Practice emergencies?

That would help, but... How much money was spent training astronauts for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights? Im sure that there were ALOT less astronauts then divers currently. Ok, so a little more training...

So now lets take all 1million divers and force them to take 80 hours of supervised diving with an instructor. (8 hours per day equals to about 3 dives) Lets see... $200 (absolute low) for a course of 10 hours. So 10/hr. 1 million divers X 10/hr X 80 = 800 million dollars. Too much you say? Where do we draw the line between "safe enough" and "too expensive." The 200 dollar course, honestly, does not guarentee good instructors.

The more training you empose on divers/drivers the less of them there will be. It is hard to do without driving but not so hard to do without diving (at least for the non SB board members ). The industry would gradually have less and less people when you increase training standards. If we were to impose the 80 hour standard, the scuba industry would probably suffer. In the end, it is the person diving and learning. He is the only factor that is big enough to change the death rate of divers.

 

[boulderjohn]

Good points in the last few messages.

A while ago I read an article in a dive magazine that described an incident that might be illuminating. An instructor and his buddy, both cave certified, had just finished a cave dive and were packing up to leave when they saw two other divers arrive and begin to set up their equipment. The instructor recognized them as people he had just finished certifiying a week or so before. He went over to them and chatted. He made a special point to remind them that they were not cave certified and that diving caves was very dangerous. They assured him that they understood, and promised they would only dive in the open water area.

Of course, as soon as the instructor was out of site, the two went into the cave, silted it up, got lost, and died.

Every year in every school in America, students are warned of the dangers of smoking cigarettes. My own children told me that they were so sick of hearing about it that they just tuned it out. That did not stop them from smoking, although I am happy to report that both have quit.

Years ago I asked a friend how he could go on smoking with all the research out about its deadly effects. He said, "It takes a man to fight lung cancer."

Drugs. Driving recklessly. Drinking and driving. People know the risks, and they do it anyway.

Just because people do things that others find stupid does not mean that they have not been fully educated about the risks.

 

[ScubyDoo]

But the question is... when you drive, do you calculate how much stopping distance you need when you increase your speed from 30mph to 50mph? We all know that doulbe the speed = quadruple the distance but what about 1.2 times the speed? 1.4? 1.6? 1.8? Do we care when we are driving? What will be your friction ratio between you tires and the ground during a giving condition? Do you care? Should you care? Yes you should in a sense that you need to know how slippery it is. (high, med, low) (we can go all the way to the atomic nature of the rubber in the tires and how their flexibility changes with temperature if you like)

A very good analogy, and your making exactly the point I was driving at (no pun intended).. Yes, diving can be dangerous...yes divers need to be well trained...yes divers need to follow the rules...yes divers need to pay attention....BUT....one only needs to take that so far before diving for fun becomes tedious and stressful. Diving is supposed to be FUN. Its supposed to be RELAXING. Theres no need to brush up on the quantum physics of fluid dynamics, static pressures, and subatomic molecular theories before and during every dive. If your diving the Andrea Doria or exploring 3 miles into a cave...okay..sure...You'd better do some serious dive planning, gas management, more dive planning, etc. etc. etc. I dont know any recreational only divers doing that though....so thats kind of a moot point.

 

[Atticus]

What are these poorly trained divers doing?

Are they pancaking into the bottom due to poor buoyancy control? Controlling a descent is a required skill.

Are they running out of air? SPG awareness is a required skill.

Are they getting beat up in bad surge? Environmental awareness is stressed in the classroom.

Are they losing their buddies? Maintaining buddy contact is a required skill.

 

[Storm]

I give up. eepwalla

I hadn't realized we found Zanadu.

Perfection has been achieved. :wave-smil


We need never evaluated dive training ever again.

Seriously guys this is what you all sound like. There is no room for improvement. It's perfect, and even if there is room for improvement, the industry shouldn't make the attempt as it might inconvenience some, and may even (EEK) lower the industry’s sales a bit, and they can always spin the worst back on the diver and take no responsibility upon themselves

You want to equate driving to diving, bring it on. The graduated system in place in Ontario, while not the best, is definitely an improvement over the systems (some non existent) used by most US states and other Canadian provinces. Spend a few days going over the stats from the various DOTs; the graduated system has a proven success in reducing new driver accidents.

Here is a prime example of folks in an industry saying, we can always do better...

Before hunter safety courses were introduced we had more hunting accidents than we do today. We introduced a more stringent course, and a new hunter mentoring program, and we reduced those accident numbers to the point where we hadn't had a hunting accident fatality since 1963.

Another example of trying to do things better.

But I guess the dive industry is above the concept of continual improvement

The strive for mediocrity continues.

 

[Atticus]

<snip>Let me very clear on this. I am not saying that the current level of is directly placing students in danger. Yes, there have been incidents, but they are in the vast minority. The basic training curriculum addresses the safety issues, but IMO does not go into the proficiency side regarding the act of diving. (Mainly trim, buoyancy control, various fin kicks, and diver assistance/trouble recognition.)

Storm - I see the basic open water certification as a way for people to get started in the sport. It teaches them how to dive safely in an environment similar to the one they were trained in. If they wish to dive in more advanced environments or do more advanced dives then they need to seek additional training through formal classes, mentoring, etc.

I don't think the system is perfect, but I do think it teaches them the basics and enables them to get started. I agree with your statement that I quoted above -- that it gives them the tools to avoid putting themselves in danger.

The biggest problem divers I see are the ones taught by instructors that don't hold up their agencies standards. It's not uncommon to see instructors interpret mastery to mean "yup, did it once after four tries". The word mastery suggests to me that the student can do the skill on demand without difficulty. This has lead to me complaining about the amount of pool time allotted for my classes, and is one of the reasons I don't teach public classes much anymore.

Trim: I agree - this is generally not addressed in open water classes.

Buoyancy control: This is a required skill, both hovering, and controlling descents.

Various fin kicks: If students learn one fin kick well that (to me) seems sufficient to get them started.

Diver assistance: NAUI requires scuba diver/open water students to perform a rescue from depth in confined water, not unlike what is required in a rescue class.

 

[Atticus]

Storm - I re-read several of your posts. Is your issue with the RSTC minimums or with the agencies standards?

I think NAUI at least has a reasonable program for producing quality entry level divers. I am not trying to slight any other agencies program here -- I started with PADI and feel like they did a good job of giving me the basics.

 

[Storm]

Storm - I re-read several of your posts. Is your issue with the RSTC minimums or with the agencies standards?

I think NAUI at least has a reasonable program for producing quality entry level divers. I am not trying to slight any other agencies program here -- I started with PADI and feel like they did a good job of giving me the basics.

Atticus,

My issues are with the RSTC standards. I'm neither an agency devotee nor basher. In my business I get the fun of dealing with various standards and protocols, including, ISO, ANSI, CCITT, ITIL, etc, so I know that in order to get competitors in the same business to all raise the bar, you have to raise the standards that they must adhere to.

As to the whole agency thing, my wife and I both have OW/AOW c cards. We are now choosing our training selections based on the instructor, and course curriculum, and the course open water dive plans in order to get the best possible training. If Joes ABC diving from Timbuktu agency offers the best course then he gets the business...at this point additional cards from agencies are relatively meaningless, it&#8217;s the quality of the instruction we are looking at.

And this IS the rub I have. If the standards were raised across the board, any agency that followed the standards would do. I live in a large city, and I have SSI, NAUI, PADI, and for the cost of a weekend in my home town (about ninety minute drive from my front door) I can even get GUE training. Not all new divers are that fortunate. Hence the desire to raise the bar for all agencies. If a current agency is already above the new level...good for them..no changes needed. the very fact that some agencies have looked at the minimums and said "heck no we think there should be more" rasies the question...are the RSTC standards setting the bar too low?

So my issue is definitely not with a particular agency, but with the base standards.

Trim: I agree - this is generally not addressed in open water classes.

Buoyancy control: This is a required skill, both hovering, and controlling descents.

Various fin kicks: If students learn one fin kick well that (to me) seems sufficient to get them started.

Diver assistance: NAUI requires scuba diver/open water students to perform a rescue from depth in confined water, not unlike what is required in a rescue class.

Trim we agree on, as do we on some sort of basic rescue/panic diver training.

Bouyancy control, I'll challenge the industry on. I watched 2 different instructors pass students based on their ability to "hover in any attitude". Upside down, horizontal, and one who even did a pretty good barrel roll. What they tested for was simply if you could get neutral. The minimum for this should be horizontal in proper diving attitude. Allow otherwise and you're not testing to see if the student can dive under control, merely get down and bob about out of control, but at the same depth.


The fin kicks, well I can agrree that mastering one is sufficient, but considering the mud puppies and hoovers coming of the OW courses, perhaps the frog kick would be better to teach. You don't stir up the bottom, and (for me anyway) learining this kick taught be to slow down (I still can't hit warp speed with this kick), and that has increased my enjoyment (I see more stuff), and has had a small positve effect on my air consuption...slow and easy breathing from not working it as hard. My suggestion i]would be to teach the basic fin kick for the first few pools sessions, then introduce the frog in the latter pool sessions...

Anyway I've said enough on thi, and those who are entrenched will stay entrenched. Those DIs who are willing to think critically and strive for continuous improvement, will get my dollar every time...regardless of the agency (or lack thereof).

 

[Mlody11]

Storm, maybe the issue is the lack of QUALITY instructors or maybe the way we test for mastery of skills (or maybe some people just dont care and want to get hurt... although they shouldnt pass), not the program itself. I am not saying that everything is perfect and we dont need Walgreens, but I will say that raising the "paper work" bar by putting in more hours and x amounts of knowledge will not solve the problem. Perhaps we need to look at the instructor training and perhaps we need a 2nd instructor to sign off on the skills taught by the 1st instructor. Just because I have an open water cert. does not mean I do not need additional training. No one should think they EVER have enough training/experience (which one is it?) because that is when you let your guard down and that is when the accidents happen.

When I made the comment about 800 million for additional training. I wanted to say that it is wasted money for the consumer (me as a diver) because I am forced to spend money on something I am able to do right now in the current system without giving up other pleasures (thats what diving is, right? We're not talking commercial diving, are we?). Dive within my limits learn the details, task loading, trim, bouyancy, etc.. in an enviroment where I know what emergency procedures I can take which were taught in the basic OW.

No system is perfect but just because you demand something on paper does not mean you will receive it in reality

 

[Storm]

No system is perfect but just because you demand something on paper does not mean you will receive it in reality

I agree, but here's where raising the bar on the standards comes into play. Perhaps a mandatory 2nd DI confirmation might help, but the standard does not require it. If it ain't required, you won't see it in real life.

The standard does not require you to hold your bouyancy in a position that is a real life diving position. The last time I dove, all divers were horizintal, not inverted or standing upright in the water column trying to fin with their hands. The DI could have failed the student based on the premise that inverted in the water colum is not a typical neutral position, but the standard also dictates the minimum requirements for a pass, and that particlar hover is, according to the standards, a pass.

Like I said, there's room for improvement so why not try to make the improvements...so far I have yet to see a real reason to not strive for continuous improvement.