This brings up another (related) tangent.
Our dive club deals with issues of liability frequently, and the one thing that has been stressed by various legal advisors over the years is that once you start requiring certain equipment, the club liability goes way up in case of an accident. The implication is that you are making decisions about what is safe diving and what is not, and then you allow someone to dive with you, it suggests that you have confirmed them to be OK to do that particular dive.
For boat dives, all requirements are deferred to the captain. For shore dives, we don't even assign buddies, since we don't want to be in the position of vetting divers.
So not only is this an annoying requirement of the dive club, without a significant safety consideration (IMHO), but it may actually make things worse for the club legally in case of an accident.
