[Genesis]

Quote: (Originally Posted by RonMicjan)

Honestly Karl, Im not trying to paint you a bad guy, only trying to get you to see the other side, meaning, not everyone is as smart as you, I believe you are smart enough to know that you dont know everything, some are not so gifted. I was impressed as hell to see you actually put a working CCR together from scratch, kudos to you and I told you so at DEMA.

Thank you, and I do see the "other side." I just find it indefensible.

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Problem is, you want to change a system that admittedly has its faults, to one of relative chaos.

No. I do not believe that most people would eschew instruction if they were not forced. There are clear injustices in the current system, such as forced full-price crossover classes. That the industry has not taken care of this on its own, and that the monster has continually both grown and expanded radically in cost, invalidating people's supposed credentials along the way, is proof that self-review will not work.

The only alternative is a paradigm shift.

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Most folks have no problem with paying an instructor to teach them what they dont know. .....flying an airplane or helicopter, operating a PWC or boat. Sure, some can be self taught, but would you honestly go buy a second hand parachute, have a buddy take you up in his plane and jump out?

I might fly an ultralight without formal training. That's legal, by the way.

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How about you be honest about this Ron? MANY people perform dives with zero formal training. I know many of them and have dove with more than a few. They're all still alive. Sure and I do too, but again, not everyone is that smart

It doesn't matter Ron. You don't have the right to make that determination, nor to force those who are to pay you money.

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TDL sells doubles without proof of a technical certification. Virtually any shop will sell you a deco bottle without seeing a deco card. None of this was about diving OC, it was about diving CCR, which is a whole different animal

Disagree entirely, having now dove on both OC and CCR. Diving is diving. Yes, my buoyancy currently sucks bananas by my standards on a CCR, but I remember when it similarly sucked on OC. In both cases I breathe in and out and I am carrying my supply of breathing material with me.

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There are hundreds of cave dives made every weekend at Vortex alone by open water divers. The gate is at 300' and 110' down. You cannot make a free ascent from there. No way no how.
So why did Sheck have to write a book, and the mexican government make several federal laws about cave diving? Ask Matt from protec about that, he lives there and takes this quite seriously, the government isnt going to jump in if there isnt people dying and someone making noise about it

I can't help govenrments that are nannys. And oh, by the way, before you crow about the Mexican Governments laws, they were indirectly responsible for a major incident down there which resulted in death. I'm sure you read about it - a team far too big, with a guide, all done "by the book" and half the team did not make it out.

Guess what - that same guide is still diving there professionally. So much for "government fixing it by regulating things."

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This is simply not rare and yet the "body count" isn't what's always predicted. It just isn't! Because its not as prevelant as you are insisting, where is your poll? Did you sit and count? checking everyones cards as they geared up?

Do you need to check someone's card to know if they're a forking idiot when you see them at 110' of depth and 300' back in a hard overhead with one $10 flashlight? I have lost count of how many people I have personally seen under those conditions at that one site.

Fewer, as a percentage, have died than have been killed on the Megalodon.

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So that means you're not a good judge of your ability as an instructor either! Hmmmm.... Thats why Leon is the ultimate judge of my ability as an instructor

But he's not a good judge of his ability either; thus not one of yours. You can't make a statement like this (and truly believe it) and then exempt certain people!

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If instructors did not get paid for their time, what kind of class do you think the students would get?

I have no problem with instruction or people paying for it.

I have a major problem with the use of force.

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Bald assertion not supported by the evidence. Ah, yes, but where is your evidence that the system doesnt work? I see 4000 members on RBW, a good majority who have been trained by certified instructors and are quite happy diving. Yes, we have had some fatalities, but from all the evidence I have seen, and heard of, its mostly been diver error. Instructors fault? maybe, but maybe student doing things they ought not of. go read the DAN report of dive accidents, lots of folks beyond their training.

I see a system that has produced deaths that should not have occurred. I also see a system that protects instructors from things it should not.

The latter I do not believe we can fix; the former we can.

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I wasnt there, was a bit young to even care, but some old timers have related the stories. Why else did training agencies bother to get started, if no one saw a problem, why start a business from it. Two of the first agencies were not for profit, the YMCA and LA County. Do you think they were out to break the bank by selling scuba instruction? Dont be silly, they wanted people to dive SAFELY!

The YMCA started offering dive instruction in 1959. There was no death problem in 1959. They did it because people wanted to take the class.

The "death issue" was invented out of whole cloth Ron. Its a convenient lie.

Sheck's blue book was a great thing. That, plus signage, would have accomplished nearly all or all of what "mandatory training" does, but without the problems. We did not have to go further - that part was purely money-driven.

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Have we saved lives? I'm not so sure! Of course you are not, you dont have any evidence either way. Just the desire to argue and push only what Karl wants.

If you want to argue for restricting someone's freedom the burden of proof is on you. I need prove nothing in support of freedom.

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I believe that if you smoke, eat yourself to obesity, drink yourself into the grave, or dive a CCR without training, you are taking a chance on killing yourself. No one is stopping you from doing any of these things, that doesnt mean we shouldnt try.

Then you do not believe in personal autonomy ("we shouldn't try.") There is no further point to debate in this case, because your position is staked and your worldview is not based upon individual rights.

Mine is, and that's a difference that cannot be reconciled. We will have to proceed from a position then of appealing to what you do believe in, which I still think I can do and make my case. Please read onward.

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Obesity, smoking and alcohol are so far out in front of everything else that until you're ready to pass the laws to make those illegal you're barking up a tree. Right, but the diving industry doesnt have billions of dollars to pay for lobbyists, so we put our money into training instead

No, you put your efforts into the use of force! And, you put your efforts into shielding yourself from the just results when or if you screw up.

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So where do you get off trying to give force of law (and you would if you could, wouldn't you?) to what you believe? Dont put words in my mouth, and stop being purposely dense, I support training, not laws about such, go read where I say I dont WANT the government sticking its nose in my business.

You just got done saying that you think you have the right to try to keep me from killing myself. How do you intend to do that - except by the effective force of law?

If you have every dive boat demand a C-card, you have created an effective law, whether it was actually passed or not. Yet you didn't do it with public debate, a public vote, or a representative government. Indeed, the agencies do all this in secret, behind closed doors, and most even bar their people from talking publically before decisions are made!

That is utterly indefensible Ron.

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Funny thing is that when you look at the statistics we still get people who cack themselves cave diving - they just have cards now, where they didn't before. Have we really fixed anything? yes, we have given them the "Blueprint for survival" done our best to teach them the correct, safe way to accomplish a task, its their own take from there if they want to use the knowledge

So why do you think you have a right to force someone to take the class? As you said, the signage and books are there. Why should I not have the choice whether to read and follow them?

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Pushing for freedom is not pushing someone to do a thing. It is advocating for the absence of force. You, on the other hand, advocate for the imposition of force. NOT. Again, no one stopping you from doing your thing, but the manufacturers dont want you killing yourself on their inventions, so they ask you to get trained. no bodys fault but your own if you die on the K1

But you support people telling me that I can't dive that device on their property. In fact, you belong to organizations that lobby business owners to do exactly that.

Don't tell me you support free choice when you belong to organizations that push for the exact opposite!

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Then take responsibility for your instruction. You, the agency(s) you instruct for, the firm(s) that build the units you teach on and the shops you work for all refuse. I take personal and moral responsibilty to do my utmost best in training a CCR student to be proficient in their operation of the unit so they can best be prepared for the eventual failure of said unit and have it be a simple bailout rather than a life threatening emergency

You refuse to take responsibility Ron. The waiver you shove under every student's nose is proof of this. It is, in fact, an explicit disclaimer of responsibility.

Talk is cheap. You can talk all you want but when you shove paper under my nose all that previous talk means exactly zero.

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Never mind that your approach has resulted from collusive actions that are suspect under US Law at best and has come along with a blunt refusal to accept legal responsibility for what you teach. The only law you have stated had to do with IBM bundling a service contract and technical support with a server. This is a FAR CRY from life support systems and training someone how to keep themselves alive. Just because you have run a big company, doesnt prepare you to care for someones basic heartbeat.

Collusive actions taken with the intent to constrain the marketplace are per-se illegal in the United States. A threat to withhold any training for a given unit unless that manufacturer forces all purchasers to buy training is damn hard to justify.

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"Its a small price to pay." To you, of course - you're not paying - you're collecting. BS, see above sentence on what I have INVESTED into training

Yep - you invested with the intent of making a return. That was my point..... You didn't spend anything. That's for others, and you are happy to impose it upon them.

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Second, you still won't accept responsibility for the quality of your class. You still insist that I sign a waiver that says that I won't sue you even if you are actually negligent and teach me bullship, and that is the proximate result of my death! this is not my insistance, it is the agency who provides my materials and qualifies me to teach and agrees to hire representation for me should a suit come about.

Always looking for someone else to blame.

Let's see what this release would permit you to do, shall we?

• You could show up drunk for class.
• You could take a few hits off the crack pipe before getting in the water.
• You could dive with Diabetes, uncontrolled, and risk a hypoglycemic blackout.
• You could dive with Angina, a clear warning of a heart attack.
• You could teach something that has been disproven by a leading authority on diving (e.g. DAN), without consequence.
• You could (through negligence) fill a student's tank full of carbon monoxide.

Any of these could get someone killed. Yet your waiver says that if you do any of the above, you're not responsible.

That's what you demand I sign to take a class from you. You won't tell people up front that's what you're asking them to sign, but in fact it is!

You don't think so? Go take your release and shove it under the nose of a real lawyer and ask them. I have.

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There is no way I could afford to pay an attorney to represent me in a wrongful death suit brought on by a relative of someone who may have died that I trained years ago. any one can sue for any silly reason, I pay for insurance that pays for the attorney in this instance. Karl, please get your facts straight on how this system works, prior to your blanket condemnation of it. They insist I have a waiver signed if I want them to back me up, only a fool wouldnt get a student to sign the waiver.

I know how it works Ron. Now tell me why any student in his right mind would sign a document that allows you to show up for class stoned out of your mind and, if you do, you cannot be held legally accountable for that act.

Never mind that the industry could fix this. I posted an example of how right here at http://www.rebreatherworld.com/rebre...ility-law.html

Its a better model. Its one the industry could support and get passed. It would protect both students and instructors, and get rid of waivers.

It would also get rid of the claim that requiring cards is about liability.

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But - remember point #1? You claim that I am incapable of judging whether or not you're F.O.S. So you want me to trust you, but you just got done shoving a waiver under my nose that says that I can't trust you! So why are you asking me to teach you if A: you already have the knowledge to judge the instruction, and B: you dont trust me?

I cannot trust you Ron. You have disclaimed all responsibility for what you're doing. I must take you at your written word, as anything else would be in the realm of insanity.

So as to why I would take a class, it is for the same reason I have taken other classes. I need a key to fit in a lock, but I do not need the class. Therefore, I am willing to pay you for a key, only because I have no other good way around it.

This doesn't make what you're doing right. It is akin to my consenting to be raped because the alternative is being killed.

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I believe in strong advocacy of instruction. I believe that manufacturers should have the sort of posture that Jetsam used to have before the agencies took an approach that I argue was unlawful (a forced tied sale in order to make any sales at all!), which was quite simply that "you're insane to teach yourself how to use this and the only warranty this device has is that it is absolutely capable of killing you without warning."

Funny how during that time not ONE SINGLE PERSON perished on his unit. NOT ONE. And yet there were (according to his web site) well north of 100 units in the field.

Not one death Ron.cant let this go... Gordon would roll over if he read this, Gordon himself taught most of these people, quite informally, but when the quantity became more than he could do personally, and the attorneys insisted, he turned it over to an agency, these people were not the "masses", they were friends, and friends of friends, and very intelligent folks, much like yourself. You obviously dont know the man, I did.

I talked to Gordon and asked him directly why he changed his policies. He told me directly that the agencies refused to issue a card for the Sport unless he forced everyone who bought any KISS unit from him to take a class first.

Now either (1) he lied to me, which he had no reason to do, or (2) he was telling the truth and the agencies basically blackmailed him, knowing that he wanted to sell the Sport to a wider audience and Gordon knew they could enforce the restriction at dive resorts. In fact, I do recall reading on the web that Gordon himself was forced to take a class when he tried to dive his own unit in some foreign country on a trip! Hoist on his own petard, he was....

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I assert that your position is not about safety.

Its about money and power.pure sillyness, you dont know me, other than 15 minutes at DEMA and here online, but you insist on deciding what my motivators are, probably taken from your own emotional makeup.

If your position was safety-oriented you would not shove a waiver under a student's nose that allowed you to be drunk on the job and get away with it.

You would instead be advocating for a solution to these problems instead of trying to blame them on someone else.

Bottom line Ron - there's a better choice.

You can find it here: http://www.rebreatherworld.com/rebre...ility-law.html

It gets rid of the problem of egregious acts by instructors and dive operators, it protects you (and dive shops/boats/sites) absolutely from liability otherwise, it codifies that diving constitutes a personal assumption of risk and the protection is statutory, which is vastly superior to anything you can get from waivers and insurance.

And finally, it is a proven approach from another high-risk recreational activity. Bluntly - it works.

Why not get behind fixing the problems instead of trying to justify them or blame the problems on others (the agencies, lawyers, etc)?

[rdmmdr]

I hope that Karl has the thick skin i thing he has. What Karl and others, including myself. have a problem with is primarily the unit specific courses after original certification. To tell a mod 3 meg diver that he has to take all three courses with his new Boris is plain stupid, or greedy. If he was safe a mod 3 on the meg. what he needs is a where are the buttons course.

Is diving inherently dangerous? yes

Should the diver be personally responsible for his or her actions? yes

Should the cert agency take some kind of responsibility for the training they provide, instead of hiding behind blanket wavers? yes

If Karl decides to put the k1 into production how many does he have to build in order to get the cert agencies to provide training? and how many does he have to give away for the "dive professionals" to offer training? A comment from the manufacturers would be welcome here.

What are the cert agencies doing besides collecting training money? nothing. And i was there when padi came out with the specialty courses they where pushed to the dive shops as a profit source.

What has any cert agency done to protect us from bad equipment? nothing

I remember in a recent post that five units in a shipment had a 100% failure rate. Where was the cert agencies here? If they had said to the manufacturer that you need a outside review of your procedures and testing before we will certify anyone on your units, that would be responsible, but no.

bad controllers, hung controller, bad designs, improper materials, and you wonder why people homebuilt. Some of us just don't trust you guys anymore.

will diving a rebreather ever be as safe as oc? no.

will requiring fourteen different certs make it safer? maybe?

is it justified? no.

If you want to make us happy, all you have to do is come up with the generic courses, a quickie crossover course for unit specific" where are the buttons". And if you want to be praised by the fringe group how about a homebuilt sign off course. If i can home build an airplane and get tail numbers for it form the FAA why can i not get a cert on my home build.


rick