A provocative question for sure. Does a dive computer keep an idiot safe while diving?

Unfortunately, nothing will keep an idiot safe while diving. Idiots diving are a textbook example of the theory of natural selection at work.

All kidding aside, the dive computer is a valuable, and soon to become indispensable tool for divers. The move is afoot in the dive industry to leave dive tables behind and teach only computer aided diving to recreational scuba students. Many shops, including the one I teach in, are offering the dive tables only as an historical reference.

Using dive tables most divers have been able to dive safely because they did what they were supposed to do. They paid attention to their bottom time and air supply. They set an are return point and stuck to it. They learned navigation skills that would allow them to find the exit point when they were ending their dive and they properly calculated their air ascent point and arrived safely back aboard the boat when they were supposed to.

With the advent of the dive computer nothing really changed about diving. You still must pay attention to depth, bottom time, air supply and location but, because the computer is accuratley tracking bottom time, depth, in some instances, air supply and surface internal, there is less chance for error. The diver simply looks at the computer to determine when to come up and when to get back in the water.

Idiots on dive tables tended to ignore bottom time and air supply. As a result they overstayed their no decompression limit and routinely ran out of air on the dive. This sometimes resulted in an unsafe ascent rate and to make matters worse these same divers didn't keep an accurate record of their time out of the water for a surface interval. Sooner or later, failure to pay attention to what I call, the critical information (depth, bottom time and surface interval), made accurately working a dive table to figure bottom time on your next dive next to impossible and resulted in a diving accident.

Dive computers very easily handle the critical information but you still have to remember to pay attention to the computer.

There is more to come in this article on dive computers so please check back.