You notice that we don't make vehicle drivers have ongoing education or proof of driving hours.
Since there are no scuba police going around giving citations to bad divers, the driving analogy doesn't work all that great.
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You notice that we don't make vehicle drivers have ongoing education or proof of driving hours.
I dove on two boats this week for the first time. I was asked when my last dive was by both ops. One of them had the question on the release waiver. Neither asked me for my c-card which was surprising, but I did have to write my Padi number on the release.
Sure, this information could be falsified... Not sure why I'd do that.
Everywhere I know in America teachers are required to participate in some sort of learning every so many years in order to renew their certifications or licenses, and they can be revoked. Both my teaching license and my principal license expired long ago, and if I wanted to go back into either job, I would have to go through some significant hoops.
That is, of course, controlled by the government, with tons of funding in place to control it. Even so, in Colorado getting a teaching license confirmed can take 9 months because of the huge workload and the lack of personnel to take care of it all. PADI issues approximately 900,000 certifications a year world wide. Can you imagine what they would need to do to monitor it all? Where would that money come from? It would come from fees paid by the divers, of course. Now, can you imagine the howls of protest from people screaming about money grabs if they were to require people to go back to their instructors and get recertified every few years?
I don't know about open water certs but I think instructors should show some proof of continued teaching or continued diving.
But I think….I haven't checked for years…..that all I have to do is resume paying PADI and I can resume teaching, even though I haven't looked at an instructor manual for over 10 years. You could say I'm a little out of practice in the teaching area. I don't think I'd kill anyone but I honestly feel I need to brush up a bit before taking on any open water student.
Drivers licenses are issued by states in the US so there are 50 constantly changing requirements. Periodically taking a test is probably a good idea since they add new traffic laws at mind-boggling rates. I had a neighbor who had to take the written test recently so it is probably 75 here.
Are there any countries in which there is a legal requirement of having a license to dive?
Agree. But I believe there is something in place. If an instructor (or DM) becomes inactive (thus not renewing PADI membership--why pay for it?) he/she has to take some sort of refresher to start teaching again. I believe it also has to do with how long you are away from teaching. If the instructor is teaching all along they are also diving regularly anyway.