What interests me now is how safe diving with a buddy really is? Are SWB frequently turned into a happy ending due to vigilant buddies? What are peoples experiences with that? In backcountry skiing for example, every year many people are rescued from suffocating under and avalanche by appropriately trained skiing partners. The buddy system works well. Does the buddy system in diving actually work and happen, or is it more like these safety cards in planes that tell you about the safe procedure in case of a crash landing, but all they really do is create a false sense of security, since crash landing usually end up in no survivors. I would be really interested to hear of people that have or have been rescued!
This is of course my subjective view of things, but when I talk about a buddy, I mean an attentive buddy following some kind of buddy system (and most people refer to a "buddy" like that I'd say). If by a buddy you think of "just another person who I go diving with..." it is a different, and not nescessarily safe matter. So by looking at my view of a buddy/buddy-system: Yes, it is allmost bullet-proof - except of course nothing is. It is something I regard as a very safe way of diving, when talking about diving on a line, using a lanyard. BUT: You need to know how and why it is safe, AND be safe about other things also. If you do unsafe stuff, it is still unsafe and potentially dangerous. So doing line-diving, one up, one down, using lanyard, knowing what you do (like your buddy) is very safe even if you do serious depth training in my opinion. Theres a lot of relativity in that view of course. But just to make a point: If 1 out of 100 dives end in BO, and 99,9 out of 100 BO end quick and well in the hands of a buddy, that makes it pretty safe as only 1 out of 100.000 would end more seriously (just some loose number throwing).
Out of more than 40.000 competition-dives no-one died until recently. Many of those dives were very deep and near limit dives. And that guy who had a fatal accident was really not doing safe stuff, and not fit for diving.
On the other hand, if one out of 100 (or even 1000 or 10.000) dives end in BO, and going alone makes it fatal, it doesn't really make sense to take that chance. I think most people wouldn't drink beer if 1 out of 10.000 bottles caused instant death
A buddy is no guarantee, but if a BO occurs (and is perceived of course) it makes all the difference...