I agree with you if its recreational diving, as I can see how this can be a pain in particular if the weather is cold. I too have been pissed off with people who decide to play in the water for some time (in their dry suit), while others freeze in the cold and wind while waiting. I don't think however spending an additional 2 minutes on a safety stop would even raise an eyebrow. Maybe spending an additional 10-15 min every time might though. If its decompression diving its a whole new ballgame and all part of deeper diving. People then come up when they come up and that's just part of what deeper diving is. One cant expect people to hurry deco just because they are impatient, if someone gets the bends, well potentially that's the rest of the days diving shot for everyone as its dealt with.
I should have explained more about what I was getting at....in the deco spin for this, it was about a boat load of tech divers that AGREED prior to going out, that they would do a 25 minute long dive at 280 ( example), and then a few "opt" to stay down for 40 minutes, and are then forced to do a huge deco--meaning all the other divers have to wait an extra hour, and none can do the second dive they had planned.
In the recreational example....Charter boats in Palm Beach , will run a dive trip in the morning( a 2 tank dive trip), and then go back to the dock and run an Afternoon Trip...Some may even plan a 3rd Night trip....The NORM is that each dive is 1 hour long, max. Surface intervals are 45 minutes to an hour....For new divers reading this, if you did Breakers Reef, which is actually 37 feet deep on the large crown portion, and 55 feet deep at the bottom of the inshore ledge...you "could" manage a dive that was 60 minutes long, but you would have been expected to end your dive earlier so that the bottom time, plus the safety stop, will be 60 minutes or less. Someone like my wife Sandra could do such a dive with a single tank and have almost 2 hours of air for the dive, which would put her into deco if she was so thoughtless as to make everyone wait for her...which she would not ( she just makes us wait for her at the Blue Heron Bridge Marine Park --with her 5 to 6 hour dives there
( shore dive).
On an 80 foot dive, you will probably be running low on air, long before you will reach your max allowed bottom time for no-stop diving...which means you will probably have plenty of time to do a long stop if you want, as long as you don't run your tank down to nothing on the safety stop.
But again, we are talking about "no-stop" dive planning...and as Thal said, this was mostly about preventing new divers from uncontrolled fast ascents to the surface from the bottom. It could also help prevent blasting up into the bottom of a boat overhead..... There were decades of people diving without ever actually doing a "stop" on a recreational dive, and they did not die like flies from it. They did tend to dive shorter profiles as new divers in the 60's and 70's, as they used steel 72 cu ft tanks, not 100's or larger. However, the tables were not as "fudged" for medically unfit people in the 60's and 70's.... 60 for 60 was a normal enough no-stop table plan back then.
