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Bill In your post you refer to again and again and again.in reference to accidents In Georges post he reported 15 instructor deaths in 18 months. May I ask what 15 instructors in 18 months? How many of these were related to training , how many were doing things advocated by the agencies but mostly who were the instructors. . Also everytime someone dies you guys label it a technical death, such as the two recreational divers who died in Singapore, such as Harvey in the NE. These are tragic and the are sad and they should not happen but please do not refer to them as technical diver deaths. Maybe you could use the term technical diver wannabe. IANTD has had (unfortunately) 3 training accidents since its inception(first incorporated 1985, began technical training in 1991). Not as you would mislead people to think by your reference of again and again and again. The first of these occurred when two students in a course decided to exceed the depth limits of the course and actually swam away from the instructor and the other students to do so. One of these died. The second was the WPB accident in which one instructor died and one student died in the class a third diver (he also happens to be an advanced EANx instructor) who was diving for fun and not actually a part of the course died when he descended from his deco stop we believe to assist the instructor and student. So this accident did result in a triple drowning. The third accident was the one when Jane died So unfortunately we have had three student deaths in training since our inception, one instructor with the class and one other person ( again who was a advanced EANx instructor but not a part of the training program) who took the risk of trying to help the instructor and student. A risk I think many of us would have assumed For the record do you have any idea how many recreational divers die each year and how many recreational level training accidents there are?/ Call Dan and see for yourself. Has IANTD made some modifications to its standards, yes but regardless of these they may or may not prevent all accidents? But we are trying our damnedest to stop accidents. IANTD would like to have zero accidents and to that end we do have the toughest of standards in the diving industry today. We update them each year. In fact they are so tough a lot of divers and instructors seek out less strict training programs. Our standards are open to suggestions from instructors, by submitting recommendations to the BOA; the BOA makes and reviews recommendations on standards changes and then approves or disapproves these. Then these have to be agreed on by the international licensees to be sure they comply with local laws etc. Finally the BOD approves or disapproves the changes. Slow but effective process. The skills we use are by and large developed around the process of accident analysis. Our programs are not static and stationery instead they are dynamic and evolving constantly as we search out to answer all the many questions that evolve with the more we learn about all we do in training and education. We do not pretend to be perfect but we do search for a more perfect way. Our next standards updates will be sent to instructors this month and go into effect 1 September at which time they will be published on our web page. The next scheduled one following that will be 1 June 1999. Incidentally for those on the list check standards for yourself go to each of the agencies (IANTD, TDI, NAUI, Andi,GUE,Plus for cave only NACD and NSS CDS) and read there standards and decide who you think has the most strict and skill comprehensive standards . I think all the agencies do publish their standards. Look at the skills required, look at the required amount of in water time required, look at the number of dives required, and look at the prerequisites for getting into the programs. Bill, You and company have stated IANTD pushes a given brand of equipment. Not true/ IANTD per se does not endorse any brand We have facilities that endorse Dive Rite (most likely more than any other brand as it was the first to produce technical equipment) We have facilities that endorse Halcyon We have facilities that endorse OMS We have facilities that endorse AUL We have facilities that endorse Zeagle We have facilities that endorse Scubapro and other limited technical equipment manufactures We have facilities that endorse multiple brands I personally dive a variety of brands of equipment. Just as many of the other instructors I know do. Another point is not if a product used in salt water will fail it is when. Usually the when is effected by how good the diver maintains the equipment.. I have had numerous boats, a lot of cars, several motorcycles and a couple of airplanes and all have had mechanical or electrical failures at some point in their use. Whe sky diving one carries a reserve because failure does occur. I have had BC have a problem. Just as George reported on the list about a year ago when he had a bladder failure on a BC on a Wakulla dive. He may have had other failures as much diving as George does I would tend to think that he has had more than one episode of equipment failure in his diving career. How about you Bill has any piece of your equipment ever failed?? Have you ever had a close call?? You have certainly told me about a couple of them. I have had regulators breakdown, orings blow, pressure hose blow etc. If you dive enough you will most likely have a failure of some component of your equipment someday. I have had slides in cave been buried in the lost sea cave in Tennessee etc, The walls along a passage in pic ponds in Oz come down on us and other interesting natural hazards. The idea is to be prepared for dealing with it. And you can deal with problems that may occur if you stay current on dive safety practices, keep your breathing under control, remain in reasonable physical condition, exert mental discipline and logically think through situations you may face. The foundation for these disciplines should be included in a training course. But training is only a foundation and a means of opening the door for you to develop into competent and confident technical diver or sky diver or rock climber. You cannot become an expert in one swift training program. By the time you become what most would consider you to be an expert you will have discovered that you are merely beginning to learn all the lessons that are available to you. Otherwise at the expert level you are now humble as you recognize all that there is yet to learn. There is an in between zone where one thinks they have all the answers, if they continue to grow they soon find they have learned the questions to seek answers to, that being a master is to enter the search for the truth and beyond, a life long pursuit. There is always more to learn more skill to develop more technology to grasp and new evolutions in equipment to take advantage of. Bill. I agree death is not a polite occurrence. As a training agency IANTD does all it can to minimize the possibility of training accidents and to use training drills that will hopefully enable divers once qualified to avoid or deal with foreseeable situations they may face. Each time we observe a possible weak link we start a review process to see if it can be addressed and how it should be. We try to avoid conjecture and personal opinion and therefore look factually at all the factors we can positively identify that could have contributed to an accident. At that point we attempt to address the problem via standards where applicable and by introducing additional training skills where appropriate. However no standard and no skill development can 100% avoid the occurrence of human error and until we can find a way to greatly reduce the possibility of human errors there will be diving, flying, climbing, sky diving and car accidents. But we will continue to eliminate as many risk factors as possible and to find ways to reduce human error. At the same time if you think you cannot get hurt diving then you should not dive. Breathing underwater is not a natural part of our lives thus it subjects us to additional risk. This risk is greatly amplified with depth or penetration. In our text the technical diver encyclopedia, we have a chapter listing the ten leading causes of accidents and most often three or more of these are violated when diving accidents occur. I do not subscribe to the list and only recently posted again to get people to do some self training and now this post is because I think some of your statements in regard to IANTD are somewhat misleading, Tom -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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