What Good Can Look Like
by: Gareth LockPublished on: 22/09/2026Criticising safety slogans is easy. This is the harder half: who is harmed when diving goes wrong, what they need, whose duty it is to provide it, and the five competencies I would put on the graphic instead of 'safety first'.
‘Safety First’ Slogans do not create safety, capacity or competencies do
by: Gareth LockPublished on: 21/09/2026Why 'safety first' cannot hold in an adventure sport, and why slogans and commitment statements hand divers and instructors nothing they did not already have. Drift, trade-offs and safety theatre in diving, using safety science rather than opinion.
Why did you do that?! Applying better questions to get better learning
by: Gareth LockPublished on: 18/09/2026A healthcare safety investigator built 25 questions to understand why an action made sense at the time. Gareth Lock looks at what the Local Rationality Question tool offers dive debriefs, near-miss reviews and LFEO investigations.
Looking Sideways What a dog in the dark can teach us about human performance
by: Guy ShockeyPublished on: 12/09/2026Averted vision lets us see faint stars by not staring at them. Guy Shockey argues diving works the same way. The visible error is rarely the explanation. Look sideways at what surrounded it, in failure and in success, and the system becomes visible.
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Human factors, non-technical skills and learning from emergent outcomes for the divers who refuse the bad-apple story.
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