Take a stand for safer cavern and cave diving

[phillip1]

DRSS stands firmly with this effort to increase safety for cavern and cave diving. Please sign this petition.

https://www.change.org/p/phillip-leh...edium=copylink

[cmint]

Be careful if you start demanding legislation or government involvement, you might get more than you wanted.

[OFG-1]

How odd that you firmly stand with petition that you generated.

[Choda]

Quick question, what agency are you teaching for ?

[phillip1]

Be careful if you start demanding legislation or government involvement, you might get more than you wanted.

We are NOT demanding any legislation or government involvement quite the opposite we are demanding that diving agencies uphold their own safety standards and actually sanction offending instructors and guides nothing more.

Not sure were you get that

[phillip1]

How odd that you firmly stand with petition that you generated.

If you disagree just don't sign it, and ignore this

[cmint]

It seems you have a beef with a certain agency.


Just so you are aware there was a recent incident in which a cavern instructor was reported for wearing insufficient gear and taking cavern students into the cave zone. He was not a cave instructor.


The incident was reported to what I believe is the same agency that you are talking about. They did an immediate investigation, called for follow up information and statements. They did not provide the outcome of the investigation but I did notice that the instructor is no longer listed on their list of instructors. It might be coincidence.


I'm wondering if it would be more effective to talk TO the agency rather than ABOUT the agency. It's been my experience that they will take this stuff seriously.


I think blasting petitions all over the internet with vague generalizations will just give diving a bad impression to the public and will be ineffective at best or at worst make the impression that there is a problem that needs to be solved in a way none of us would like. Not too long ago people were dynamiting caves because they thought them dangerous.

[JohnAd]

It is important to note that training agencies are exactly that--training agencies. When they get into the position of imposing rules upon dives outside of training (which they do not do currently), they run into potential legal issues. Let's take the case of Dan Carlock as an example. This article describes the case to pretty well, but it omits one important point. In this case, a club chartered a boat for a 3 tank dive, and a diver who was still in the water when they left after the first dive was missed when DMs called the roll after that dive and the next two dives as well. He was fortunately picked up alive later in the day by another boat, and he subsequently won a lot of money in the ensuing lawsuits. The part the article misses is that the DMs who blew the roll calls were not employees of the dive operator that was chartered but were instead members of the club that chartered it.

That is all important because PADI was successfully sued as well, even though as a dive instruction agency they had nothing whatsoever to do with the actions of the club's divemasters. They did not employ them. They did not supervise them. They did not know anything about the trip itself. The DMs were not paid by either PADI or the boat operator but were serving as volunteers. The attorneys for the plaintiff argued successfully that because those DMs were members of PADI, they were acting as "agents" of PADI, and PADI was thus responsible for their behavior. Immediately after losing that suit, PADI sent out word to all shops and instructors indicating that under the legal definition of the term, they are NOT an "agency," and people who are certified members of PADI are not "agents" of PADI. Their actions do not fall under PADI supervision. All their standard waivers now say that explicitly. Thus, before going on a dive with a PADI-certified DM, divers around the world must sign a waiver saying that they understand that their DM is NOT an agent of PADI.

In a recent case of a boy scout dying in a discover scuba class in Utah, the plaintiff tried to bring PADI in using the same language, arguing that the instructor (who violated just about every possible standard for a Discover Scuba class) was acting as an "agent" of PADI.

I believe that if cave diving instructional agencies were to adhere to this petition and sanction members who are guiding dives or otherwise doing ANY scuba related business other than instruction, they would be sending a clear and unmistakable signal that their members ARE their "agents" when they are performing those activities. That would likely mean that the organization would be automatically included in ANY lawsuit that resulted from improper behavior on the part of the member.

This would be especially interesting in cases in which the instructor is a member of a number of such organizations. Let's say a cave instructor maintains current membership in 3-4 agencies and has a fatality on a guided, non-instructional dive. Would it not be feasible for all 3-4 agencies to be included in the suit, and if the instructor was in any way liable, would it not be possible for all 3-4 agencies to be successfully included in the suit?

[Aotus]

Or maybe an ow diver will see it and think, "oh man, I guess that was dangerous, maybe I should look for training before asking my guide to go in a cave again"

[JohnAd]

Or maybe an ow diver will see it and think, "oh man, I guess that was dangerous, maybe I should look for training before asking my guide to go in a cave again"

I missed the context. See what?