slackercruster
Contributor
sorry put up only one photo of it
Why are experienced divers getting killed and injured lately?
- Thread starter pilot fish
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mtg
Guest
texdiveguy:Can someone recap the previous 67 pages,,,,I missed out---
pilot fish and dherbman are squabbling in this thread like they seem to in every other one they get into
. Maybe they should get a room
mtg:pilot fish and dherbman are squabbling in this thread like they seem to in every other one they get into
lol, you're right. 43 posts for me, now 44. I feel dirty. I need to confess.
pilot fish 106
H2Andy 50
catherine96821 45
Diver Dennis 44
dherbman 43
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pilot fish
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mtg:pilot fish and dherbman are squabbling in this thread like they seem to in every other one they get into
If he has a goal, it might be that? :11: Not happening. Sorry.
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pilot fish
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allenwrench:
Can't tell the size of that bottle. Will it get you up from a 100 ft with a safety stop? Most of the ponies Ive seen just get you to the surface, which is a blessing when you are OOA. There is a thought that it might prompt you take extra risks.
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pilot fish
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drbill:
I hear that from a lot of seasoned divers, such as yourself, that things divers got away with, or just never had a problem with, suddenly leading to a severe accident or fatality. It must be panic and it spirals downward from there? None of us REALLY knows how we will react in a crisis till it is upon us. Do you think it might be divers that have hundreds, thousands, of dives think it will never happne to them ,or is it that they never practice basic drills, recovery, etc?
drbill:
Can you give some examples and explain how it was determined that they died due to overconfidence?
For clearity, What do you mean when you say "normally accepted limits"?
Other than a heart attack or something, of course, can you give us an example of a totally unforseen problem that a diver trained for the environment would not have a recovery plan for?
pilot fish:
That's funny, I know quit a few very seasoned divers and I haven't ever heard anything like that until just now.
I wouldn 't jump to the conclusion of panic (though it's a very real danger for all divers) because we can easily find cases of experienced divers being killed where there doesn't appear to be evidence of panic at all. In some cases it's pretty clear that the diver(s) involved actively worked towards a solution right up to the end.
I also wouldn't expect an experienced diver to have the attitude that it isn't going to happen to them. Most "experienced" divers have in fact had real problems on real dives so they absolutely know that it can happen to them.
You've kind of been pointing a finger at "technical diving" in this thread and the one thing that I'd point out here is exactly what technical training consists of. One part is learning the actual techniques and procedures which are aimed at avoiding problems. All the rest of the training is focused on dealing with problems once they occure. Sheck Exley (who did of course die on a dive) said in his book "Caverns Measureless to Man" that his approach to cave diving was to assume that the cave was out to get him. I think that most technical divers, whether cave divers or not, would echo the sentiment. I'd say that most of us, or at least the divers that I know are somewhat perinoid, if anything, and are looking for trouble under every rock and from around every corner.
Since you mentioned the "it'll never happen to me group" lets look at who some of them are. A couple of posts ago I mentioned the rec divers on dives like devils throat and down deep in the blue hole (though I could come up with MANY other examples that we see every day). I doubt many of those divers have trained or prepared for the kind of problems they could encounter in an overhead environment at 130. That is the perfect example of 1, not knowing what could go wrong and 2, being convinced that it isn't going to go wrong them. Now the thought of "recreational divers doing those dives scares the hell out of me precisely because I have been trained in most (if not all) of the things that can go wrong, how to avoid them and how to respond if I do fail to avoid them. You see, I know for a fact that the coral cave that so many divers swim so casually through is going to try to kill them and if they aren't ready when it does it will take them as easily as drowning a new born kitten. They can't even put up a fight because they haven't the tools with which to defend themselves.
pilot fish:
With proper gas management you should be able to do a safety stop on a pony. As long as that is your only problem.
steveann
Contributor
catherine96821:
I'm not sure if this has been said already, since I'm too lazy to actually read all the posts, but there have been studies done on this phenomenon, and it is a common trait across all walks of life. the probability of an incident occurring rapidly lowers as you go from brand new to more experienced, mostly due to increased skill level, then rises slowly again towards that initial level due to increased confidence (read cockiness/risk taking) and deterioration of initial skills. If you were to graph this, it would look like a bowl with a really steep left side, and a fairly shallow right side (time going from left to right.)
It just goes to show, if you're a newb or a scuba god, you're screwed. Medicority is the place to be
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