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kevin
you & steve are absolutely right & one of the tools to fighting ignorance is
the exposure that it gets on this list. from both sides of the issues. it
really is important IMHO to have the newbies & "oldbees" here all sides of all
issues. i still have faith in human intelligence to choose for themselves the
direction to go.
some will choose poorly & some will choose wisely. all in all with all the
"accidents" occurring in the sport the death rate has remained relatively
constant over all of these years.
that says a lot about all the areas that everyone is complaining about.
consider that the population of divers & degree of difficulty of dives has
escalated over the past 25-35 years.
i for one do not want the ins co as the people to "Monitor" anything to do
with diving. these are the guys who have said for years that diving falls into
the same class as skiing-car racing & other contact sports. these people are
intersted in making more money from individuals. it is in there best interest
to have us pay higher premiums -wether justified or not. the death rates in
diving as bad as they are (one is too many !) is less than accidents in the
home or people that drive in cars. so i for one am very reluctant to give them
any assistance in interposing themselves further into our sport.
there is always room for improvement & we should strive for that goal. i hope
we all get there before one of us expires from writers cramps ;-)
hank
In a message dated 8/28/98 1:06:39 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
Kevin@So*.co* writes:
<< Steve Lindblom wrote:
>They were
>killed either by their own incompetence, or by the mainstream tech agencies
>that certify incompetent instructors, and by the mainstream dive shops that
>sell tech gear without having any understanding of the special risks it can
>involve.
YOU HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD BROTHER.
Students are dying. I hear about it and read about it over and over. Open
water students and Trimix students alike cannot breathe salt water for some
reason. The system is not working. This is a call to arms for all of us to
try to come togther and formulate a solution.
(Out comes the soapbox )
We need to start hold accountable the instructors and agencies and diveshops
that are "slopping" divers through their sub-standard courses. We need to
take that personal responsibilty we always talk about and identify and
eliminate the instructors/agencies/diveshops that are adding to the body
count. Too many instructors and way too many dive shops are simply motivated
by the almighty dollar.
There is nothing wrong with earning a living in SCUBA, its what I do. But I
see too many instructors out there teaching sub-standard classes to large
groups of divers. The biggest enemy to diver safety is the profit motive.
Sell, sell, sell. Sell the gear, Pack the boat, Pass the student, Fill the
class, Give 'em their C-card and push the next class and tell them about all
the additional gear they need to buy. These are the reasons I no longer wok
for dive shops.
Although there will always be divers that go out there and kill themselves,
if we can at least stop the student deaths during training we would be
taking a big step forward towards improving both recreational dive safety
and technical dive safety.
When I hear about a student dying while in training, doesn't that send off
ALARMS AND BIG RED FLASHING LIGHTS in your heads ??
Instructors won't do anything about it. ( Ostrich sydrome - head in sand )
Dive shops won't do anything about it. ( Code of Silence - won't rock the
boat )
Agencies won't do anything about it. ( Quality Assurance hearings are few
and far between, obvious Standards violations are never followed up. )
So, what are we gonna do about it ?
I am not the type of person who will just identified a problem and then ask
other to solve it, so what are WE gonna do about it ?
A national STROKE database ? ( Internet access and light advertising for new
divers and old divers to periodically check it out )
A campaign to de-certify STROKE instructors ? ( Nail the agencies taht
issuing instructor cards to these idiots )
Form a new technical agency, and set the standards of excellence back up
where they should be ?? ( Rigorous standards and top drawer courses that
would turn the big three into dinosaurs )
A blitz on the three or four major insurance agencies that offer
professional underwater liability to rigourously moniter their insureds and
not insure STROKE instructors and STROKE dive shops ??
WHAT DO YOU THINK, YES YOU ?!?
Please, I wanna hear from those of you that post three times a day and those
of you that have been lurking for years.
Lets stop arguing about the problem and lets put or heads together and
formulate a gameplan.
I am charging you all with the personal responsibilty that we love to talk
about to take some to solve this problem. I think we all agree that personal
responibility is a severly undervalued commodity in out society. But isn't a
new diver taking personal responsibilty by selecting and
agency/diveshop/instructor for continuing education ? Whether it be PADI
Advanced or IANTD Technical Gas, if they make to effort to pay for, purchase
gear and train, aren't they taking personal responsibility ?
And one last request, this is a sincere effort to solve a problem to what is
see is a solvable problem. Keep the flames to a minimum and the fresh new
innovative ideas to a maximum.
My soapbox is now back in the garage.
Kevin
" You'll never miss the water,
until the well runs dry . . .. "
as sung by Bob Marley
[\]
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