Rebreather World Traitor

RAL

Spot on. What the hell has happend here? If Ya'll want CE standards to be pushed down your throats have at it. Kindly leave us, on this side of the pond, out of it. Once you let the Gov'ment get deeply involved you will not like the results.
The companies will be forced to up the price of their units as they struggle to stay alive trying to meet standards that will in all likely hood be written by some nondiving pencil-necked bureaucrat (Who will not be shy about working the angles that may produce revenue for the state). If a company continues to produce units without fixing a known flaw the courts can already hit them hard.
Ultimately what you end up with is a system where "percieved safety" (correct paperwork) overrides common sense. This forum has done more to promote real safety for rebreather divers in the last 2 years than any set of regulations can hope to do in a lifetime.
We are responsible for our own safety don't get the government involved.

RAL

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AD_ward9

Ron,

I am minded to simply ignore your diatribe, but people say that at heart you are a decent chap, so I will be frank in the hope you snap out of your trance and look at a thing or two:

1. First you mix two things up. I have not carpet bombed competitors: our closest competitor in the sports area is probably CCR Ltd. I have happily sent them algorithms when requested, and many a time have recommended people to buy their products - they make the safest eCCR out there right now. I have recommended Brent's new Inspo head to many people even though we will be head on competitors in the near future. In the commercial area our closest competitor by far is Divex: I have recommended companies go to them, and at the DAN conference and other places I publicly praised their safety procedures for rebreathers. What I have done is speak out against incompetent companies producing unsafe equipment, and focused on the safety issue in hand and avoid completely any personal attacks. Few others seem to have the guts to. There is a big difference between this and carpet bombing.

2. We have done a series of safety initiatives and shared the results. For example, a proper study of O2 sensors, batteries, published full circuits and reviews, a FMECA that has been taken up by more than one competitor. The accident list was simply one of those activities, not linked to the one below.

3. What galls you, and caused you to start this thread is that I alone on this forum was prepared to give expertise to help widows, and orphans of divers: the widows and orphans who may be in their predicament because of the silence in this industry. The silence that covers up things. Unfortunately it has crossed with bits of (2) above, but is covering up the honest truth a better alternative? You seem to prefer a one sided world, where the widow loses their beloved and has to stand hearing a manufacturer rubbish their husband, putting forth dishonest information, which whether intended or not means they avoid being obliged to fix any safety issue even where there is a strong chance of that issue having killed their husband or father. Through this whole process, the widow has to stand there, seething, as they often know the truth from other divers exactly what went wrong and who is the cause. What an unjust world that you like! Nice and cosy for manufacturers who can whistle up lots of experts to denigrate dead people or anyone who stands beside them. Well, I was not born for cosiness, I was born to do things in my life.

I can tell you something else, before I took on certain accident investigations, I discussed this with my colleagues. We knew from the facts we had at the outset that it would likely cause us to lose suppliers, some possible prospective clients (including the largest in the sports eCCR business). Iain Middlebrook kindly gave us the benefit of his experience of speaking out about things that were not right, and made sure we knew we would be attacked and slagged off, nasty reports would be written slagging me off or my colleagues, or sued, if we broke the ranks of silence that is safeguarding the income of people who cannot be bothered to do it right, which in my honest professional opinion, is killing people.

I can tell you one final thing: at each juncture in life I try to do what is right, what is honest and decent, and sod anyone who takes issue with that. Rarely is that road smooth, but it is the road I prefer. Either rebute any conclusion I meet with facts, or shut up.

You took umbridge when after I was asked what were the safety issues with the Meg, I listed them. As a Meg instructor, that ran against your commercial interests and you attacked me for it. I am glad Leon was made of better stuff.

Where companies that compete directly have done good things safety wise, I have not held back from supporting them. You need to realise times have changed: the conspiracy of silence that has threatened people in the past years belongs to a past eon. Come on, from things other people have said about you, you are decent chap so snap out of this trance and look what you are supporting.

As to RAL below: how fools live! The damage done to manufacturers when there is an accident in the USA is vastly more than that in Europe. If you make a product that fails to meet widely accepted safety standards, and someone dies on it in a manner implicating that safety gap, the lawyers will feed off you for years. Wake up, and take a decent stand.

The lack of honesty and decency in this industry from the jackals on this thread right now is disgusting.

Alex

AM

Ron

It is you who should be deeply ashamed of your comments.

Promotion of rebreather safety is never a bad thing. Whether or not there is commercial gain, is irrelevant. Alex has put his weight behind improving safety and should be applauded for doing so.

Any fair trial deserves the opportunity for multiple parties to give their expert opinions in order to promote objectivity. Certainly if the naive masses would open their eyes, they would see that the real reprehensible practices are those of manufacturers who deploy every tactic possible to produce an end scenario which enables only their own biased "experts" to provide evidence/insight. This appalling practice can only be stopped by outside experts, whom are prepared to stick their head above the parapet, should they be qualified to do so. One inquest a year is hardly the mark of an ambulance chaser, nor someone looking to destroy competitors or influence commercial outcomes. If it saves one life or enables insight into any lessons to be learned, then bring it on.

If people believe there is a hidden agenda in Alex's practices then they can choose to buy units that have known design faults and complacent manufacturers. Those of us who are switched on (no pun intended) know fine well that manual units have much fewer failure points, attract more disciplined CCR divers, produce less deaths and require less rigorous safety promotion. Just assess how many people have died on manual rebreathers compared to electronic rebreathers.

If a Doctor, or any other professional gives an expert opinion, they are not denigrated by their colleagues as a traitor or accused of working towards commercial gain. The role of an expert witness is to provide contextual insight in order to assist the practices of corroborating or refuting fact, evidence, expertise or professionally qualified opinion.

You must be judging others on your own low standards, because only a short time ago, you freely and willing elected, of your own volition, to steal someone else's idea and rush it to market, for commercial gain, despite knowing that blood and sweat and tears had gone into a much safer and superior product. That is dirty politics by anyone's standards.

Instead of calling people traitors, perhaps it would be a more productive use of your time to support the endeavours of people who are truly passionate about improving safety protocols and standards in rebreather diving.

The sheer level of gross stupidity and ignorance demonstrated by several parties on this board (particularly CE thread) in respect of the real rebreather status quo, is simply mind-blowing. Absolutely staggering.

Threads like this are abhorrent and completely misaligned with the ethos of improving rebreather safety and should be removed in keeping with the spirit of the primary objective of this forum, which is dissemination of information to enhance awareness of safety and promote good rebreather practice.

Regards

AnneMarie

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RAL

I make no money zip, nadda from any of this. Do you? As you point out, thank you, manufactures already face great peril if they make unsafe crap. One of the amazing things about sport diving is that it has remained more or less unmolested by government regulations. If having a problem with inviting the devil in makes me disgusting then I wear that badge with honor.

RAL

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The sea does not care about you.

AD_ward9

Glad to see all the signs that I am doing something right: the people I am offending this year are so much more steamy about it than last year!

Falsehoods no-one worries about. It is revealing the honest truth that hurts People are red blobbing me in protest, thick and fast! Wow, what an acolade!

Alex

Dave Sutton

The functional difference between a professional and an amateur is that professionals, by definition, are compensated. Lawyers, Physicians, Accountants, and Engineers: All earn their livings in their professions. None work for free. When it's time for an expert witness, the chances are that it'll be a paid professonal doing the work, not a volunteer. The bottom line is that if you're not doing it for a professional fee, you're probably not sufficiently expert to be found an expert in open court. Remember that "experts" are not allowed to testify until their bona-fides have been established in open court, and that the other side has ample opportunity to challenge seating of an expert. Their resume, publications, experience, and every aspect of their involvement is challenged. Many are simply not seated at the end of the day. The last time I testified, it took them (get this) Three DAYS of (!!) challenges before I was seated. This is just part and parcel of the process. Experts are expected to be compensated: They are also expected to speak the unvarnished truth under oath, and everything they say is open to challenge. It's not a position that one can be footloose in. Trust me here: It's a place where one treads VERY carefully with ones opinion, as the opinions given by the expert are not taken as fact, simply as "qualified" opinions and without being able to establish absolute credability in court, the expert can do far more damage to the case of his employers than imaginable. I've done several aviation cases as a qualified expert, and I can tell you this: I've never seen an industry expert on either side of the case ever make a statement that was not accurate, no matter what side of the case he was advocating. Sadly, I've not found that to be true with so called "experts" provided by the Government (FAA), but that is to be expected, and their opinions in the end were not found credable (which tells me that the system works).

There's plenty of amateurishly designed crap in the diving word, so let the chips fall where they may. It can only help in the end, painful as it might be now. If Alex is off base, it'll be found out in court. And the best part... we'll all be able to read the testimony. So maybe we ought to let the process take place and then Monday-Morning quarterback after the game is done? Maybe he's doing us all a favor... maybe not. Let's wait and see.


Dave

.

PhilSiswick

This is one of those things that I am very ambivalent about. On the one hand, I think that, while there is no pressure to improve, many manufacturers will continue to add capability at the expense of proper safety engineering. That pressure comes from a) the market, b) regulation or c) litigation.

I don't think that the market is big enough to drive change and many of us demonstrably make a range of compromises to dive the units that we do. A number of people have cogently argued that while we do that in ever larger numbers, the units will not get better, but as you ask, what do we dive in the meantime?

Regulation we have, in part, in the EU. The debates about the outcome of that are among the most heated of those on here. I'm for it, but apparently that's only because I'm pro-protectionism (and therefore probably anti-American) . In the meantime, many people are happily diving units that have never been tested against an independent (or even quasi-independent) standard. Not a good outcome in my opinion.

Finally, litigation. That seems to be where it is going. That could of course trigger a) or b) retrospectively. Reading his materials, that is Alex' aim. I'm just not sure that this is the right way to go about it, as it is so easy to bring emotion into such a case to swing an argument (right or wrong). OTOH, we probably have safer cars because of Mr Nader and other such activists, so who knows?

I wouldn't say that he appears to have - he has done so unashamedly and pretty openly. My first post was as balanced as I could be and I won't change that now. Many will be happy or unhappy - I remain ambivalent. However, people should be very aware of Alex' (and anyone else on here's) motivations before helping or hindering them. I tangled with him early on in my time here (and was panicked by his view of a leading manufacturer, their motivations and the safety of their products) and remember him from scuba-uk in the past.

In the spirit of openness - I have no axe to grind and no master to serve on this one.

Sorry for the waffle - it's late here.

Cheers,

Phil

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Phil

No comment on open circuit... it's an evolutionary dead end not really worth discussing here. Dave Sutton, 2007

I have always felt that the dive I am on is not nearly important as the dives I plan to be on the rest of my life. Tom Rose, 2007

www.hugsac.org.uk

PCDiver

It could be that you get red blobs because people don't agree with you. That doesn't necessarily mean you are right.

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onetime

On initial reading of the statement I started to take offense but then thought better of it.

For all that I hate unnecessary lawsuits what about the necessary ones? Lawsuits have resulted in safer vehicles, safer plane rides, safer car seats for children, etc, etc, etc. I've little doubt that all had expert witnesses.

Was it the fault of those expert witnesses that the events of the lawsuit occurred? No.

Could some of the lawsuits have been due to manufacturer incompetence or mistakes? Sure.

Was there ill intent behind the manufacturers' efforts? Probably not but there were flaws in the products that caused death.

Such lawsuits changed the face of the industry in which they sued resulting in perhaps tens of thousands of lives saved. That's a pretty significant thing. Of course it would take a long time for rebreather deaths to result in that many lost lives but lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and awards of damages from lawsuits have resulted in safety improvements in just about every industry. Why should rebreathers be any different?

chunter

I don't care much one way or another on the statement made by Alex. I don't really believe in his cause, but I don't see him as a traitor. For me, there are only 2 issues that matter:

1. Government intervention on this issue seems pretty stupid. Rebreather divers generally like to modify their units regardless of whether it is in line with current government stamps of approval. Should the government dictate that this shouldn't be done either? Does this just end up as an excuse for manufacturers when there is a fatality? Besides, did the CE stamp prevent any of the early Inspiration deaths?

2. Rebreather diving (or any kind of diving) is dangerous. Anyone that thinks it isn't is foolish. We all accept some amount of risk when getting in the water, and no amount of litigation or product improvement will stop that. While I feel very sorry for anyone affected by a rebreather death, the death is always (in my very humble and probably stupid opinion) the diver's fault. Even if I die from a faulty solenoid, or crappy electronics, I know that malfunctions happen, and that is an accepted risk in my department. This is true even if there is nothing I could have done to avoid it. What happens too often is that the diver is willing to accept that risk, and the widowed family is not. Unfortunately by the time it is an issue, the diver is no longer around to indemnify the rebreather manufacturer. Do the widowed families of parachute makers claim damages when a parachute doesn't open? Do other families go after motorcycle companies when there is a fatality? Death sucks...and if you want to minimize your chances...don't dive a rebreather.

Aloha,
Charlie

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"Hobgoblin is a cool word."
- Charlie