Overconfident OW divers

[Woden]

Wow, so you're saying we shouldn't even DRIVE those old cars anymore?? Maybe I should sell some of my muscle cars, lest I hurt my self. Some people still dive with old equipment, ya know. :11:

What if YOUR SPG failed during the middle of YOUR dive, and the gauge stuck at, say, 2000psi. How long would it take you to realize? If you dive your plan, you may not know the *exact* pressure reading, but you can come pretty close, and only use the SPG to confirm. In this case, you'd be tapping on your SPG, wondering what's wrong with it, and not continuing to dive, blissfully thinking that you still have 2000 psi left in the tank. But as I said before, I wouldn't trust a newly certified diver to know this.

I don't think you read my post very closely. At no time did I ever say you should not be PREPARED for a problem like a like failed equipment. My comments were in response to people who mentioned they had had continued dives with failed equipment and responses were made suggesting that that was not so bad since we never used to have that equipment. If your equipment fails you should definitely be able to respond easily to the failure but you also should definitley call the dive. Thats the point.

I dive a plan. My SPG and dive computer are backup information. If that backup fails I call the dive because I no longer have anything to fall back on. I'm not stressed after calling the dive (while returning to the entry point) because I wasn't relying on the SPG in the first place. What if I didn't call the dive and some problem occurred which required me to drastically change my dive plan (like I had to share my air with my buddy and he was a little upset thus sucking back my air at an unknown rate). An SPG would be invaluable in this situation. I could still get along without but I would be much safer with it. So we are back to my original point, why take unecessary risks when you don't have to? What is so wrong with being safe?

As far as the car analogy...its an analogy not a homology!