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On8/27/98 8:34 AM, Mike Zimmerman wrote: >As much as you like to pass the buck around it has to stop >someplace. And that final place is with Joe Diver. Life is >harsh, but it allows no alternate end destination for >that buck. It stops. With me, with you. Not with OMS, not >with a cork tanks, or lead sleds, not with the guy who >mis-mixed the tank you were too lazy to analyze. > >If someone jumps in 200' water without knowing if their inflation >systems will lift their gear that is their fault for not taking >the proper precautions. Mike -- I rarely get involved in finger pointing arguments like this, but you and Thomas Easop are as much extremists as the people you're criticizing, only you want to point the finger at dead divers. Not going to get much opposition there. New technical divers -- heck *all* new divers -- ask dive shops and instructors for equipment recommendations all the time because the people who run the shops hold themselves out to be *experts*. That's what an instructor is by definition -- someone who knows more than you do -- and, more importantly, someone you can rely on to show you the right way to do that something new. I think it's obvious that you don't hire an instructors to teach yourself something you already know. With respects to Alan Pelstring and the families of the Palm Beach divers, Jane Orenstein went to an experienced technical diving instructor to get proper training and equipment advice -- and his expert advice was wrong -- even you'll admit that -- and it lead to her death. John Claypool went to Andre Smith, another expert with vastly more experience than Derrick McNulty, for proper training and equipment advice and never returned. These people did exactly the right thing -- they went to agency trained "experts" in the field of technical diving for proper instruction and equipment rigging -- the only problem was that they went to wrong "experts." >Dan you can make everyone in the world dive the gear you want them to. >If they dont have the intelligence to reason it out for themselves though >they will simply find other ways to die. As they say "nothing if foolproof, >fools are too ingeniuous". Mike - you can't expect every new diver to know more than their instructors when they walk in the front door -- it's not reasonable. By your reasoning, accident analysis boils down to this: new technical diver -- you hired an expert instructor who trained you wrong and set you up with equipment whose flaws contributed to you death -- well that's too damn bad. It's all your fault for listening to experts and buying equipment in the first place. Do you read medical texts before you go in for surgery? And, hypothetically, if your doctor removes the wrong kidney while you're under general anesthesia, is it your own fault because you were too lazy to stay awake and monitor the surgery? No one here -- not even Alan Pelstring and he deserves tremendous credit for this -- has said that Jane Orenstein wasn't responsible for her own actions. You set up that straw man. The point is that Jane isn't teaching technical diving -- and never will -- but the guy who led her to cliff edge and said "jump, it's safe" still is -- as are others still promoting steel stage bottles, bungie wings, and other practices that are known *to us* (a small group) to be unsafe. As much as I disagree with Dan Volker's position about censoring uninformed/contrary points of view -- and I strongly do on a list that was designed for open discussion -- the man is making an important point: the dive business is slow to react to change and is set up to promote business first -- i.e., sales and training -- and safety second. And the only way to change it -- certainly the fastest way -- is to send a strong, clear, and uniform message about what's right and what's wrong. Your not going to change anything by blaming the victim and ignoring the shared responsibility of training agencies, instructors, and equipment manufacturers and retailers to stop unsafe equipment and training practices. *That's* how a self-regulating industry is suppose to act. Best regards -- Bill -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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