Regardless of whether or not I am better buddy, the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of divers trained by the major agencies are trained to dive in buddy teams. (Or so I hear.) When a diver get's to "500-999" dives worth of experience, they are at a point where they know what they would rather do. Divers with that level of experience also will quite likely see the limitations of this so called solution and know when it is appropriate to use and when it is not. The newer divers with less experience and less knowledge who choose to implement an emergency procedure different than the one they were taught in OW classes maybe in for a surprise if the peanut butter hits the fan.
I did some math on this. I am a newb so please correct me where I may be wrong.
If I am at 100 ft and experience an OOG emergency, I shove this thing in my mouth. At an ascent rate of 33ft/min, I have roughly 3 minutes to get to the surface. Let's say that average depth during the ascent is 2.5 ata (50 ft). As I am in an emergency, let us assume a SAC rate of 1 cu ft/min. By my math, I will need 7.5 cu ft to make the ascent. Now, that assumes that as soon as I switch to this bail out system, I begin my ascent right away. In most dive planning sessions I have been through, we add a little bit of time before the ascent to collect ourselves, stow our gear, etc.
I don't mean to incite a flame war either. It just seems to me that if you are going to put together an emergency system, you should design it so that deploying the system doesn't put the diver at risk of needing to visit the hyperbaric chamber and/or put the diver at risk of running out of gas before you get to the surface.
