What you seem to be unable to understand Peter, is that OW Divers should be trained to dive in the 'normal local conditions.' Whether or not divers should be trained to dive here at all is another topic for discussion.
I've been mulling this over. Obviously if you're taking an OW class out to a North Atlantic coast shore dive for their check out dives, you'll give them info. to conduct the dive safely. Following up Peter Guy's input, you'll hopefully pick a time and place where conditions are suitable for them.
But not everyone intends to dive local conditions. You may personally only choose to train people for that level, but it's not clear to me all agencies should have to support that position.
Put another way - let's say that you decided that to achieve adequate competency to dive your local conditions, a PADI or SSI diver would need to complete all these courses:
1.) OW.
2.) AOW (deep, night for low viz., drift for handling current).
3.) Rescue.
4.) A Distinctive specialty focusing on tides.
Now, by your philosophy, instructors in your area could then refuse to hand out OW cards to students who met basic OW requirements for the agency (including some who just want to dive the Caribbean), and wouldn't hand out even an OW card until the student had completed the equivalent of all the above?
I'm glad you offer rigorous, comprehensive training, but requiring it across the board seems like overkill, considering the diving a lot of people do.
Richard.
---------- Post added January 4th, 2013 at 02:10 PM ----------
so, back to post #9 - The folks here (who are the caring dedicated ones) are going to say "we do it right"......
How do we get to the other 20%? One avoidable accident is one too many......
It seems that way when there's a dead body to hold the discussion over, but it reminds me of car wrecks. If you cut the speed limits in the U.S. by 25% across the board, for example, I suspect annual fatality rates would drop. But who wants to drive that slow?
Discussing the value of human life is often dicey. For example, who many people is it okay for bears to kill? None. Though fatalities are very few, as long as there are substantial bear populations, once in awhile, one will kill somebody. We could exterminate black, brown & polar bears in the U.S. and prevent some human deaths, but we don't. A rare few human lives are part of the cost of having bears.
My examples aren't great, but my point is, by practice if not admission, we accept some level of fatalities. There will always be 'even one.'
Richard.