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Are you saying consumers lives matter more than researchers?
by jart 3y ago
Are you saying consumers lives matter more than researchers?
- plewd 3y agoResearchers are aware of the risks they're taking. Consumers (who don't really understand the dangers of the environment they're about to enter) just blindly trust that they're in good hands, and in this case it seems like they were deceived about the trustworthiness of this vessel.
- jacurtis 3y agoIf using the term "consumers" broadly speaking, then I would agree that they assume trustworthiness of the vessel. When I drive my car onto one of the Seattle ferries, I pay my ticket and as a consumer I have total trust in the safety of the vessel, that they are following all safety protocols and that it is inheritely safe. I don't know how this thing carries hundreds of passengers and 80 heavy cars across the waters, but I trust that the company I bought the tickets from knows and has taken proper precautions to get me safely to the other side reliably. But this trip to see the Titanic is completely different. This was an experimental trip on an experimental vessel (they signed specifically to that affect). Anyone who thinks that journeying down to 13,000 feet to see the titanic was going to be as risk free as crossing the Puget sound or going to disney world is crazy. The sheer reason they are paying for this trip is because it has been relatively impossible up to this point. They are breaking new frontiers by doing so which is by its nature inherently risky. There has to be known risk involved here. It isn't a ride at disneyland. This was serious. I am sure they didn't actually expect to die, but they had to know that there was a realistic possibility of that outcome.
- ehnto 3y agoNo. Consumers/the general public are less aware of the risk, and as another reply said more likely to trust a company on it's safety. They aren't marine engineers so they have to. That's why it's a regulated industry. Researches are making an entirely different risk/benefit calculation and it's useful to society that they can make different risk tradeoffs. Key example, astronauts. In that is an implication that research is more important to society than a holiday activity.