"We should all promote turning at the lowest speed possible this would make things much safer."
DEFINITELY NOT !! There are too many people making up rules and regulations and making spurious claims about the safety of this and that. I do not usually use the term amateur regarding woodturning, preferring to say hobby turners as not all hobby turners are amateur but it should be remembered that there are 2 types of turner. Hobby and professional. But some of the claims here are obviously amateur. We all have different ways of doing or achieving an end product, sometimes the professional turners differ in their opinions but that is no reason to promote a method. I was taught to turn at the highest speed I can comfortably work at and as a production turner you will not last in your job long by turning at slower speeds. At the moment there is no chart available that can properly tell you safe turning speeds, think why this is for a moment, bearing in mind that if H&S feel there is a need one would have been produced before now. Turning speed is subjective, in as much as each and every piece of wood is different therefore each and every piece of wood that is mounted on the lathe should be......wait for it..........risk assessed. This does not mean rheams of paper with different gradings and hollow sounding results, what this means is you mount the piece on the machine, whilst you are doing this you are looking at it, feeling the weight and looking for defects you are looking to see which side is heavier as this will affect balance you are touching it to feel the moisture present and how loose the bark is. You are doing all this in a split second or two when first handling the wood. This is called experience, it is not something that you can read from a chart, to some extent can be taught but the best way of learning all about it is to ......experience it. This experience will take the form of things like reducing speed to prevent chatter on a bowl or thin spindle but it must be weighed up with, in my case, the need to earn a living in a reasonable time for each job.
There is no easy answer to this all I will say is what we used to say in the forces.....get some in!