You can bench at home pretty safely if you setup a bar thing at chest height (forgot the name). If you also leave the ends off the weight you can usually escape. Maybe not a good idea to bench 600 pounds, but If you are a normal Guy benching a few hundred it seems fine.
Set them up at the right height and your bar will be allowed to bounce off / touch the rib cage (where the movement should go, at least according to eg Rippetoe (1)), yet leave the area further up protected. You should be able to easily wriggle out; verify with bar only first.
My squat rack has numbered holes, this helps my setup time when switching J hooks from squats to bench.
