RE: Time - A question of safety?
While I have seen buddy boxes prevent a lot of accidents that would have happened in the old pass the transmitter days, I still see a lot of close calls and rekitting from people from recent solo to over 50 years of flying. The people who have the most accidents seem to be the people who have the attitude "Stuff happens, why worry about it". The people with the fewest incidents are the ones with the attitude that most accidents can be avoided by thinking about what you're doing.
Our local steel plant has a safety manager who gives this briefing. 'Nearly all accidents happen because of what someone did wrong or didn't do right. 99 times out of a hundred, the accident is directly someone's fault who may not have even been directly involved or even present. My job is to find out whose fault it was. I take pride in my job and I'm VERY VERY good at it. It's a very easy job.'
This attitude has been in place for over 20 years there. In that time the accident rate went from over 20 'accidents' a week to maybe 2 a month. Until a fatal this year, nobody had a fatal in over 4 years. Used to be several fatals every year.