Diver education safety organization

[vicp]

I'm glad to see you have a well thought out plan like this one. My original point was that the American system for maintaining quality instruction in its schools, with all its close checks and expensive processes, still leaves us with poor instructors. I asked how you would do a better job without all those resources, assuming you did not have a better plan. I see I was wrong. Now that I see the plan is "not to use anything even remotely resembling it" so that you can do a better job, I am ready to rush on board with this.

Or maybe not.

With all due respect John, my point was that "the American system for maintaining quality instruction in its schools, with all its close checks and expensive processes" in fact leaves us with poorly performing students and actually helps create ineffective ("poor" as you call them) instructors.

You are correct, part of my plan (the non-plan part) is not to even think about implementing anything "remotely resembling" the "resources" of the American public school system. Think about it, even if it were financially and logistically possible, it would truly kill diving as we know it. The other part (the plan part) is to have a nationally recognized non-profit cave conservancy organization disown the training business (which in fact engenders profit for member instructors) and propose/define standards that the for-profit training agencies would be willing to endorse (a consortium possibly). Then educate the consumers and let them decide what is most effective with their purchasing power. It seems to work in business (IT for example). We need keep in mind that while we like to differentiate technical/cave diving from recreational, it is still mostly all recreational (other than life/safety, military, commercial) and all of it is consumer determined.

Creating another ad-hoc populist group that would attempt monitoring, reprimands, reviews, annual physicals along with enforcement of such is both ridiculous and repulsive (to me).

Or maybe not (to you??)

I still fail to see how any of this will prevent the 95% of fatalities being untrained divers. ...
... prime example is Eagles Nest, there is no prohibition from open water divers diving the basin ... In my opinion expecting open water divers to just stay in the basin is unrealistic.

None of this will prevent the type of fatalities mentioned here, not even total prohibition. While knee-jerk plans may feel good at first, they will not work. The only chance we have to diminish these fatalities is through education and public awareness.