Who disagrees with DIR and why?

[jasondbaker]

I dove with a octo and short hose for several years. I did all my classes through DM with a standard padi rig. I switched to a long hose because of several practical problems I encountered with the configuration. Technical divers (the same people that brought us the octo/backup) have been using a better system since the 70's.



Except the long hose is twice as long as your octo hose. Also the primary was tested 5 seconds before handing it to the OOA diver. The same cannot be said in most cases for an octo.

If you want to assume toe octo is bad then I can assume your backup is bad and now their are 2 paniced divers as the first was out of air and took the only good air source from his buddie.

Your assumption supports donating the primary. Let's say your assumption is true: both divers have a non-functioning backup reg. Then donating the primary is the ONLY course of action.

If we create a matrix of all the possiblities (i.e., both divers have working backup regs, one diver has working backup reg, no divers have working backup regs), you will find that donating the primary works in every case. Whereas donating the backup/octo will fail in some cases. Why not simply follow a process that works in every case?

If both backup regs fail then you would have to buddy breath. Remember this from the OW pool class? This is a good skill to practice from time to time. I can understand how a diver might panic if not prepared for this possiblity. But that is a deficiency in the diver, not the process.