you are right, i am a college professor and sometimes get in lecture mode. sorry about that. sometimes it seems important to make a point when in fact it's beating a dead horse. thanks for bringing me down from the soapbox.
-skip
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you are right, i am a college professor and sometimes get in lecture mode. sorry about that. sometimes it seems important to make a point when in fact it's beating a dead horse. thanks for bringing me down from the soapbox.
-skip
Not that being a college professor is a bad thing, especially in this economy.:grin:Quote:
Originally Posted by skip
not a bad thing anytime really, but the college eliminated 100 tenured faculty last year, and without the stimulus package threatened 100 more per year until things improve. they call them surgical cuts, and seems the state law is written that tenured faculty can be fired in times of "economic distress" without respect to seniority, for the good of the university. who reads the fine print?Quote:
Originally Posted by contender
you can bet we are all kicking up our level of productivity trying to show how much we are needed!
-skip
Bummer for you tenured guys. My company just laid off about 500 engineers, not a one with tenure. Guess they can't feel as bad since they didn't get that guaranteed for life position ...Quote:
Originally Posted by skip
On topic. Finding many dead divers over the years with no gas in their tanks and many times no continuous line to the surface probably indicated that at least one of the basic rules was broken. You, in the academic world may think this is not causation, but as an engineer in the real world I'd believe that either the divers had poor gas management or got lost due to no continuous line. Either breaks the rules. Sometimes empirical data really is the answer.
I am. Those are excellent motivations. I hope you were being sarcastic.Quote:
Originally Posted by skip
WJH
Here is a true story that happen about 10 years ago to this date. There had been what some would call a "cave in" at Madison Blue but it was not the ceilling comeing down but the sides of the wall collaspseing close to Horse Shoe Bend. Mike Bruic, who at the time operated the springs did a check on the line and found the main line buryed under the sand. He ran a new line over the pile of sand and tied it into the main line at both ends. Me along with (I won't use names) a popular cave instructor alone with a popular wreck diver (who has wrote several books) had planned to dive Madison Blue so Mike Bruic asked us to check the line.
I was the diver in the middle of the team with the cave instructor leading. When we came to where the wall had collasped Mike's new line was now buryed in new sand for about 15 feet. We could see the gold line on the other side of the pile of sand so we did a visual jump and continued on our dive.
Comeing back out things did not go according to plan. When the team approched the Half Hitch area we were looking at a white silt cloud. Going over the sand pile should be no problem and pick up the main line on the other side so into the cloud goes the wreck diver and I was to follow with the cave instructor to bring up the rear. Somehow I ran right into the wall. Went straight to the ceilling where it was clearer and could see two lights shining my way. Somehow the cave instructor had passed me and holding onto the gold line.
Back on dry land we talked about the STUPID mistake we all made by not running a jump over the sandpile. The following weekend two divers were lossed in the same part of the cave.
Fred
Glad to see this debate continues.
Kelly, Ken, et al - you guys always give the NEGATIVE examples of changing the rules. Let me give three POSITIVE ones (that I've given before but that keep getting forgotten):
1) I found out to my very real concern that no one knows how to dive siphons. A lot of people said "dive sixths". Turns out that, for example, diving a system with Ginnie like flow, you cannot dive sixths - in fact you're done after about 400 PSI IIRC. Furthermore people continually dive no flow caves on thirds. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But no, Kelly et al jump onto the OTHER side, talking about how irresponsible I am to suggest the INVERSE. Oh well... in the interim, let's just keep being dangerous in still and syphoning systems.
2) Sure, I jump without a reel sometimes. But sometimes I go ABOVE this. I've mentioned something which, IMNSVHO, I think was a bloody good idea - in a very complex system with 3 or 4 way jumps and/or intersections, mark BOTH SIDES of intersections with cookies labeled "in" and "out". This saved my ass on a particular occasion where the conventional system would have put me on an infinite loop, uncertain about how to proceed. I shifted teh "in" marker over one, continued, and finished just fine. It generally made my life much more pleasant, making my traverse faster (in total dives to achieve it) AND safer. becauae I "broke the rules" by coming up with something BETTER than the rules.
3) The recent accident has brought up the fact that many instructors teach people to attach a light to the line, with a message, when leaving the cave on a lost buddy incident. What a great idea! Another example of an ad-hoc rule unlikely to enter the training manuals because.... well, just exactly how much has changed in the training manuals in the last 10 years? There was a rewrite of the CDS ones, but that seemed to me more editorial than a serious rethink of what cave divers need to know, and what they don't. Little has changed in 20-30 years.
So STOP focusing on the negative, and look at the positive side of what a reconsideration could bring about.
I've pointed out another one, which keeps getting ignored, so let me restate it yet again. A couple of people said after Bruce's accident, "He violated rule 2 - thats why he died". And they'll complacently move on, having learned nothing. The rules lead to complacency because even the tiniest infringement is given as the reason for the person's death. It's like that fat fool who died in Little River - people always offer that as an example of why breaking thirds will kill you, rather than why being an idiot with poor mathematical, buoyancy and health skill will kill you.
And finally ,the one I will restate. People break the rules ALL THE TIME. But since it's taboo to talk about it, they ALL REINVENT THE WHEEL OVER AND OVER, with differing levels of success. Scary stuff. A lot of people are dieing because of an unwillingness to move forward.
To those who say that all this talk on the internet is bad - what backwards, luddite twaddle. We're human because we think. America is what it is because of a willingness to break the rules and reinvent a society.
And, what the hell, a final final. I do so pretty large dives (as do many on this board). The difference probably is my relative inexperience - I have under 200 cave dives. And yet I do them safely because I plan the hell out of every dive, and I never stop thinking. And that often results in "violations" of the rules - usually because I choose to enhance them, rarely ebcause I skip them. How many of you can say the same thing.
This complacent, head in the sand nonsense is so sad. It's like being in a pre Copernican world, watching the authorities yell "You're breaking the will of God" evey time someone uses their noggin.
Andrew, you're a citizen now. You're not allowed to say "bloody" any more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aainslie
Have you heard of,"Blueprint to Survival"? I know it probably is a bothersome,and out of date text since it does focus on the negative. Each chapter starts with a scenario that is negative,while Sheck could have been more positive ie the family has one less mouth to feed. It is hard not to be negative when you've had 3 friends die in cave diving accidents where rules violations were the precipitating cause,plus having to help recover a body in a situation that was totally preventable. I know you've got 200 cave dives where you think your rationalization has enhanced your survival,I have 1300+ cave dives where I know following the rules have saved my life on few occasions. But,I am intellectually challanged as I discovered,so what do I know.
I think maybe it is a misconception to refer to accident analysis as "rules". Sheck was looking at the data to find "one underlying cause". He never did find a single event/factor that occurred in all accidents. He found that one of three factors were in common to all accidents. The first analysis that he published suggested that if we avoid all three factors we should be reasonably safe.
There are the "rules" that Sheck formulated as a result of his accident analysis.
1 Save 2/3 of your gas for your exit.
2 Run a continuous guideline to the surface.
3 Don't dive below 155 feet.
Upon later re-analysis, we realized that one main factor that would cover more accidents was lack of training. It was put as the first "rule".
A couple of accidents that occurred later, were due to lack of light, slowing down the exit. The extra third of gas for emergencies gets used up if you are along way from the entrance, and have to feel your way out. The "three light" rule was added after those accidents.
The deep rule was modified after trimix was introduced.
Does that mean if you "break a rule" you will die? Obviously not, since many are "broken" all the time.
Andrew suggests "using your head". I agree! Doing a three foot visual jump over a rocky bottom, is much less likely to cause a problem than doing a 20 foot "visual" jump, around a corner, into a small silty tunnel.
He also says "thirds" is borderline in a no current cave, and I agree with that. I haven't turned at "thirds" in years. I agree with the former head of WKPP in that I like having lots of gas left on exit.
I do have an issue with the "logic" of diving past thirds in a high current cave. There are several possibilities that might slow your exit, and use up all your reserves. Lower visibility, from silt, loss of main light, mask fogging, etc. will slow down your exit. I have heard the argument that you have backup lights. How many people have a backup light as powerful as their main light? I also know of several incidents where that main light failed, and most, if not all, the backup lights failed as well. I have had it happen to me, and I have been on a dive with a buddy that had it happen. I have also heard reports of it happening to others. The other big possibility is getting lost. There are a couple of places where people routinely scooter in, and don't notice a jump into another tunnel. On the way out, they go into the wrong tunnel. With sufficient reserve, that usually isn't an issue, since you have enough gas to backtrack and get into the right tunnel.
The bottom line: if you treat the results of accident analysis as "rules", and follow them, you are much less likely to have problems.