How often do you run a line?

[Oister]

Does anybody find it ironic that in Florida, if you're riding a motorcycle you don't have to wear a helmet, but if you're riding in a car you have to wear a seat belt?

It's the same in PA

[FW]

As far as landowners reading comments on the forum... Let's find out who they are and close their accounts...

They don't need accounts to read this forum, or the main forum.....

[aainslie]

So let's go over these silly strict rules.
1. be trained in cave diving and stay within the limits of your training, any comments?

2. Use only one third of your gas for penetration and keep a third in reserve for emergencies, now this I really do not agree with, I think it is not conservative enough. I you are diving to thirds and your buddy looses all his/her air at maximum penetration, you do not have enough to get out.
So on rule #2 I say thirds +30 bar

3. Always use a continuous guideline to OW, now I really fail to see what is so strict and silly and why people would break this rule, I say ALWAYS run a line, period.

4. Bring at least 3 sources of light one primary and two backups, now given today's super small sized lights why not bring at least 3?, I always bring 4, one primary, one backup primary and two backups and they are all very very small and take up no room at all. And anyway rule #4 is further reinforced if you don't violate rule#3 in the first place, if you run a line to OW you should be able to get out in more or less the same time from anywhere you are with no light or viz.

5. No deep dives in caves on air, now this is something I do not do, but I can understand that super experienced deep air divers feel they can safely do this, but you are talking about a few people and NOT the general cave diving community.

Now I am talking about swimming dives not scootering which I know nothing about, but as to regular cave diving what does anyone think is wrong with theses guidelines? I think that if cave diving were to start today you would have the same amount and types of accidents as you did in the early days.
The only real difference is light size and tank valves, the hazards are exactly the same.

What cracks me up, Phillip, is some of the most vociferous complainers on this thread themselves push these rules.

Rule 1 - Forrest and his Home Depot Special. He clearly thinks that he's sufficiently clever to self-train on the device. He seems to think Rule 1 is silly.

Rule 2 - a special case of the Rule of Doubles (patent pending) and I agree, often insufficiently conservative. Hence, silly.

Rule 3 - someone just pointed out to me that Kelly can clearly be seen doing visual jumps on some commercially sold videos (cavex2 I believe). So Kelly - What's good for the goose ain't good for the gander? Or do you think that's a silly rule, Kelly?

Rule 4 - seriously, only 3? I take 2 on my helmet, a couple more in pockets and on my harness, and a primary. Why only take 3? They're cheap, and with LED's they last forever. What a silly rule!

Rule 5 - well, sort of obvious. No deep air is an agreed rule in every area of diving. Silly to apply it to cave diving.

How did it happen? Were they diving doubles without an isolator?

Knowing it happened without knowing the root cause doesn't help much. Would more gas have helped, or could they have had 10x the cu ft of gas and still lose all of it?

I see a lot of people asking for help turning on a valve...if you can't reach your valves, the solution is to fix that, not add more gas. If you can reach your valves, the solution might be more gas, but solving the problem always beats a work around, IMO.

James, it's a fascinating story. I'm going from memory but I think the basics are here. When the (I think) freeeflow started, Exley's buddy THOUGHT IT WAS EXLEY and started swimming to him to give him air. By the time he'd worked it out he was empty. Underwater it's easy to make this mistake. A nice aspect of modern training I think is that your immediate reaction is to isolate - it makes it automatic. But it's a nice example of where having a buddy can have unintended negative consequences.

i've been thinking about this, and i think i get what andrew's saying. lemme put it another way. if i'm wrong, i'm sure he'll correct me!

*if* we were starting to cave dive *now*, with current equipment, would we come up with the exact same rules stated the same way? or - if we look at deaths in just the last 5 or 10 years, would we come up with the exact same rules?

if we were just starting to cave dive *now*, for instance, would we have a 3 lights rule? or a 2 primaries rule? or what? because the lights are so different & more reliable now than earlier, but smaller. maybe 2 primaries makes sense now & not so much when you had to carry motorcycle batteries. maybe 1 primary & 1 backup. maybe the rule wouldn't be different.

*but*, if we were starting fresh with recent incidents, would we have the same rules? more rules? stiffer? laxer? more 'if a then b but if c then d'? he's not calling for no rules. he's calling for making sure the ones we have make the best sense for now.

a very off topic analogy - if you've ever taken home ec or learned to cook from your grandmother, i bet you were told to crack eggs one at a time in a dish before putting them into whatever you were cooking to make sure they were good. that made sense when your eggs came from a local farm & might really be last week's just found today instead of today's egg. but when was the last time you had a bum egg from the supermarket? it's happened once in my presence in 40 years. to me, that's not a big enough risk to clean an extra dish every time i use an egg. maybe to you it is. but that's an old, hungover rule example. maybe the rules would be exactly the same. but what if we're chasing problems that don't really exist in that form anymore?

no answers from me, just a restatement of the question.

Well, it's not just about new equipment,although it is in part. I think two things have made me feel that the rules need updating. 1) Currently, it's EXPERIENCED divers that are dying; 2) As this poll shows, and even the most casual empiricism corroborates, people break them all the time. Why is this? What should we do about it?

[FW]

.... He clearly thinks that he's sufficiently clever to self-train on the dievice.....

Slip of the tongue (er keyboard)?

[aainslie]

Slip of the tongue (er keyboard)?

Oops... corrected.

But do you have an answer? Why are you personally OK with breaking that rule?


...Or do you perhaps think it needs modifying?

...Or are you above it?

[phillip1]

Ok I misunderstood your calling the rules "silly" and I agree with you that an even more conservative approach is needed to the "rules".
However if people are breaking basic cave diving rules that are the absolute bare minimum in safety standards then there is a very serious safety issue with the mindset of such people, and if they are breaking very basic bare minimum rules I unfortunately doubt they would adhere to an even more conservative approach.

[jj1987]

James, it's a fascinating story. I'm going from memory but I think the basics are here. When the (I think) freeeflow started, Exley's buddy THOUGHT IT WAS EXLEY and started swimming to him to give him air. By the time he'd worked it out he was empty. Underwater it's easy to make this mistake. A nice aspect of modern training I think is that your immediate reaction is to isolate - it makes it automatic. But it's a nice example of where having a buddy can have unintended negative consequences.

So it's a training issue that's being told as if it were a gas issue? I don't see what the motivation for that might be.

BTW- I know this is taught currently differently by various instructors. I think isolating should be a secondary concern if you're team diving. If you're team diving, alerting your buddy should be the #1 goal, as you can always get out with their gas (if you planned well), saving your gas should be the #2 goal. Fortunately with light signals, these are near simultaneously accomplished, but I would hate to know that I isolated and forgot to signal a buddy, causing buddy separation and gear failure on the same dive. The opposing view, I guess, is that you save the gas ASAP and then let your buddy know it's time to exit.

This is where accident analysis get's interesting. Reminds me of a story recently where a diver died right near the entrance of a cave because his isolator was closed and even though the SPG (should have) read full, he got on o2 real deep because he thought it was his last option. I've heard lot's say that was a clear case of diving beyond your training, because the system required 100 post full cave dives to get in and the diver was intro. However the cause of the accident was a situation not a direct result of that system and could of happened in OW. Not sure if the training was done in doubles or not, but I guess my point is I observed several people jumping to the conclusion they were diving beyond their training level, when that's not the CAUSE of the accident. It almost seems that accident analysis is often "let's figure out how to fit this within the 5 rules, or consider it a medical incident".

I think we need to reevaluate training in many areas, as we've all seen or heard about classes that make us scratch our heads. I for one, would be a HUGE fan of having the student initial next to each of the required skills stating they were completed, and turning in a short summery of each dive done during training that's sent in when the instructor files the paperwork for the certification card.

[Kelly Jessop]

Rule 3 - someone just pointed out to me that Kelly can clearly be seen doing visual jumps on some commercially sold videos (cavex2 I believe). So Kelly - What's good for the goose ain't good for the gander? Or do you think that's a silly rule, Kelly?

Safety diver on each dive that put in ALL jumps. The videographer didn't want the detraction of a reel placement,except at Cow. The safety diver put everything in,and the plan was choreographed such that if the safety diver couldn't complete a part of his task,the whole dive was dumped. I hated this when a couple places had to reshot,but in retrospect I appreciated the safety diver. Hence due to the proximity of the safety diver,and working as a well choregraphed team,I had a continuous line to exit,and this was needed for the nether reaches of Bonnett.

[Sludge]

A nice aspect of modern training I think is that your immediate reaction is to isolate - it makes it automatic.

Any instructor that teaches that "your immediate reaction is to isolate" doesn't really understand how doubles work. Of all things that go wrong with gas delivery underwater, something that would be solved by isolating probably happens 0.00000001% of the time.

(I've never heard of it happening.)

[cloudboy55]

A good solution to this would put a "T" at all the popular circuits (loops) like the "Merry-Go-Round" at Little River.

I support that idea.