It's a good thing that we have finally defined "low save" for the sake of argument, but I think it is equally important to define "risk," as the original question was "what is Safe Enough" for the community.

Risk as the Air Force defines it at least, is the intersection of probability of an event occurring and the consequences of that action. One side of this debate is arguing that flying faster when thermalling low or proper training reduces the probability of an accident occurring, while the other is arguing that the consequences of doing that are dire...both of these statements are entirely true, and are not mutually exclusive. This conversation is just debating the two different axes of a risk matrix.

So if we are trying to actually answer Bob's initial question, the real question is how much total risk is the soaring community willing to accept?

Chart below for those who are unfamiliar with risk matrices:
http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_we...sk-matrix.html