Posted by MHK on January 17, 2001 at 12:52:41:
In Reply to: Cop Out posted by seahunt on January 16, 2001 at 20:32:36:
It seems to me from this side of the aisle that this entire exchange has by in large been your hurling accustaions respecting the lack of applicability to west coast diving, and I've spent a fair amount of time explaining why we do what we do. So this time I'd like to approach this from a different angle and take issue with some of our practices that you take excpetion to, and believe it causes DIR to be inapplicable.
For example, you cite the buddy system reliance in DIR as something that west coast diver's are unwilling to accept and some have even argued that it is safer to dive solo, so let's examine that principle. The buddy system is designed, and encouraged by every major certifying agency so why you single out this as a major disqualifying factor defies logic. The soundeness of a buddy is designed to ensure that should a problem exist you have a fresh set of eyes, a second set of hands and a potential air source, now you have countered with proper redundancy you can eliminate the need for a buddy. We have beaten this issue to death but to suggest that suggesting a buddy disqualifies a system from application on the west coast is just plain silly..
You take issue with the suggestion that we don't recomend a console and this is a disqualifying factor. Nonsense.. As you stated you don't use one, and the gauges can just as easily be reorganized so as to render the console useless.. You complain that hunters may be inconvienced by the fact that a gauge is wrist mounted but have yet to try this yourself, so as a result of your speculation you denounce the practice.. I hunt every weekend and I am not the slightest bit inconvienced in my hunting habits because I have a gauge on my wrist that allows me to access important information simply by looking at my arm.. Again, your point is silly...
You take issue with the fact that we say use a drysuit when diving steel tanks. You justiify this practice because *you used to dive twin 72's all the time absent a bc* and thus believe that you could ascend.. You presuppose the fact that you are conscious and/or any other potential problem that could arise.. Could you solve the ascent problem, more than likely yes, but then again by avoiding the practice and using AL with wetsuits and a drysuit with steels it's an issue that I don't even have to concern myself with.. The problem is solved before I get in the water..
You take issue with our suggestion to eliminate the need for a computer by spending additional time learning the decompression theories thereby avoiding the need for a computer.. You continually ignore the fact that we keep saying over and over and over that if you lack the capability that you wrist mount the computer, and then again cite this as a disqualifying factor.. Are you suggesting that west coast diver's lack the capacity to learn??? What is wrong with asking divers to learn more about decompression profiles so that if a computer fails they'll still have the ability to continue there diving day???
Your logic is confusing, on the one hand you want to add all these potential additional failure points to a dive and then counter with contingeny plans to offset the added risk but then you don't want to take the time to learn the models thereby avoiding having to spend several hundred dollars on a computer..
You have failed in every material point that you have raised to indicate why DIR doesn't apply to west coast.. Frankly, it seems as though you have invested a great deal of time and effort digesting the system and the sum total of your objections simply don't rise to the level of a serious critisim.. All your disqualifying citation simply amount to inconviences that you believe are too cumbersome to implement.. That choice is yours to make but it simply doesn't mean that DIR is less than adequate for our diving..
On the surface you point out that there are very many minor details within the DIR system that in all candor seem insignificant at each level, but when coupled together ( ie; take the system as holisitc) they add up.. Dan Rostenkowski ( former Chairman of the House and Ways committee ) once said that you save a billion here, you save a billion there and sooner or later your talking about real money..
Well the same thing applies to DIR's mindset, you save a failure point here, you save a failure point there and sooner or later you'll add up to a safer diver.. We could go back and forth all day, line by line, and I'll suggest something and you could counter with a different suggestion and what it seems to me as I noted in another post is that you are more willing to accept added failure points coupled with a contingency plan that may or may not work when you need it the most.. I simply prefer to stack the odds in my favor and not in mother nature's..
Every aspect of the DIR system has been tested under the most demanding of conditions and rather than view that in favorable terms you somehow believe that because it works at 400' means that it doesn't apply to recreational diving.. I'm baffled by that logic..
I fully recognize that some of the older generation of divers are set in there ways and may be less than willing to embrace new technology and it seems to me most progressive steps diving has taken has been received with great resistance.. For example, since you keep arguing in favor of computers, I'm sure that you recall the resistance to embrace computer when they first were introduced.. The outcry was that diver's would get bent left and right ( ironically enough one of the earliest computers introduced was the Bend -O- matic), Nitrox has withstood a firestorm of criticism only to be later viewed as beneficial and even the bc was frowned upon initially by some.. Diving is one of the few sports that I've been involved in where the participants fight progress so strongly, but then yet are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on useless crap like spare air..
In concluding as I noted above I believe that in summary our biggest difference is that you are willing to begin a dive with added failure points and believe that you are skilled, practiced and/or redundant enough to solve any problem.. The DIR starting point believes that rather than start that dive with added failure points we'd rather begin with less and have that in our mindset..
Later