The CEO of the company whose Titanic-seeking submarine has been missing for nearly two days once said safety was a “pure waste.”
The CEO of the company whose Titanic-seeking submarine has been missing for nearly two days once said safety was a “pure waste.”
So here’s what he actually said:
I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I mean you can never go outside again to be safe but most people are gonna take a little bit of risk and go outside to get groceries or meet friends.
There is a huge difference between acceptable risk and recklessness. Reading his interviews he was a cowboy and this was an inevitability. This was in essence a murder suicide.
There’s also the concept of informed risk, which relates to informed consent, and this can be a big issue.
For example, if I ask a friend to come for a drive with me, they’ll likely say “yes” on the assumption that the car is road safe and I have passed my driving test. But if I wait until we’re already on the road to tell them that the fuel line sprays petrol into the footwell and the engine constantly misfires, then they agreed without understanding the full risks, and might have decided differently if they had all the info ahead of time.
I think any “reasonable person” would refuse to enter that sub if they were given a full understanding of the risks posed, and their likelihood.
You bring a great point and the one thing that boggles my mind in this disaster. Listening to the sub owner and reading his legal release, I can’t fathom (bad pun) signing on and saying sign me up! It’s like the same friend you mentioned told you the fuel line leaks but that’s ok, because the department of highway safety exists only to reduce profits and kill fun. We could make it to our destination or die in a fiery crash, YOLO.
I guess they thought since it’d gone down and up before it’d be fine. Chanced it one too many times.
Not unreasonable, but getting out of bed and going to the most dangerous part of our planet don’t really equate, you know? And when your own engineers are telling you you’ve made something unsafe, but you just keep going?? Well…
They also learned nothing from a previous experience where the sub lost contact and got lost for hours. There were discussions of adding a beacon to the sub but that clearly never happened.
I guess the CEO never expected cutting corners would directly affect his life.
According to that news article where it got lost for 2.5 hours, the CEO said he wasn’t going to try again until summer '23. So I’m reasonably certain the sub’s two attempts at diving resulted in one temporary and one permanent loss. The reporter who went on that successful dive and didn’t die must feel like he dodged a bullet.
Eh I think their answer is dishonest, and I’ve had way too much exposure to risk calcs at work lately. Risks aren’t born equally. Getting out of bed? Ridiculously low risk. Driving in my car? Still low risk, but higher. Skydiving? A lot higher risk, although it depends on the rate at which parachutes fail.
I agree it’s not that unreasonable of a decision to make for yourself. I’m the same way, I do things that many people would consider dangerous while out climbing.
However he was responsible for other people’s safety… and now he’s responsible for other people’s deaths.
If it were just his life in his hands, maybe I’d feel different, but he chose to pit others life in his hands. When you do that you need to care about safety.
Thanks for the quote.
The reward for a billionaire making such a trip is to brag by saying he did something we couldn’t do. Risk he took was high despite his belief.
No insurance plan exists to pay for the rescue operations of such idiotic selfish trips even after this question was discussed concerning sail boat races around the world’s seas.
On the other hand, the reward for making the groceries is to have food to stay alive. Risks of death for grocery’s trip is less than 1/100_000_000 (very rough estimate).
Let’s put our resources and energy where it is sensible.