From what I have seen (and I see a lot of divers) the issue of buoyancy control is one not being adequately learned by many OW students today. I have watched too many new divers walking on the bottom, vertical in the water column and finning to keep themselves in the water column, etc. Current classes just don't seem long enough to acquire the proper skills.
I consider good training to be judged by far more than the serious accident rate (fatalities, DCS hits, etc.) I consider it based on the students mastery of basic skills. When I finally had to take OW in 1969 (after diving for eight years without certification), it was a three week course about four days each week. It covered "everything" up through the equivalent of rescue diver. Of course today that same course would probably run $1,200 or so and that would limit the number of newly certified divers (especially in this economy).
You can't cover the real skills necessary to become a good diver in just a few days and dives. Now students need to take AOW and should take rescue diver to get even close in most cases.
The REALLY sad thing is that I've seen a few instructors that had no idea about buoyancy control in their own diving (and I'm not referring to those involved in teaching students at the time where good control isn't always possible or necessary). I watched as one certified instructor descended out of control and crashed into a huge table coral on the edge of Half Moon Caye wall in Belize, breaking the 5' wide coral head in half and dropping a $7,000 camera over the wall in waters 5,000 ft deep. Needless to say I rescued the camera rather than her.
I consider good training to be judged by far more than the serious accident rate (fatalities, DCS hits, etc.) I consider it based on the students mastery of basic skills. When I finally had to take OW in 1969 (after diving for eight years without certification), it was a three week course about four days each week. It covered "everything" up through the equivalent of rescue diver. Of course today that same course would probably run $1,200 or so and that would limit the number of newly certified divers (especially in this economy).
You can't cover the real skills necessary to become a good diver in just a few days and dives. Now students need to take AOW and should take rescue diver to get even close in most cases.
The REALLY sad thing is that I've seen a few instructors that had no idea about buoyancy control in their own diving (and I'm not referring to those involved in teaching students at the time where good control isn't always possible or necessary). I watched as one certified instructor descended out of control and crashed into a huge table coral on the edge of Half Moon Caye wall in Belize, breaking the 5' wide coral head in half and dropping a $7,000 camera over the wall in waters 5,000 ft deep. Needless to say I rescued the camera rather than her.