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> cannot vet the safety of your device Meh. The release forms were pretty clear. And if you aren't capable of judging the technical merit - well, that is a dec

• rtkwe 3y ago
  Except basically all release forms include clauses about "risks of serious bodily injury or death" with the understanding that the people running whatever experience it is have done their job and are mitigating those risks. Instead Mr Death Sub here active ignored experts and violated tons of safety rule in favor of making money taking passengers down.
  • tartoran 3y ago
    Yes, the risks are still there even with no safety violations. I bet it didn't say in the waiver forms that the viewport was only certified for 1300m and that they were going way lower than that. That should have been in red and bold text. A lot of people aren't qualified to asses risks and trusted the adults who unbeknownst to them were just wishful thinkers.
    • stickfigure 3y ago
      > viewport was only certified for 1300m The 1300m rated viewport was on the (retired/rebuilt) 1st gen sub, not the one that failed. If you pay attention to the photos, the Titan has an obviously different viewport. If you are this mistaken on such a simple matter of fact, please look inward and maybe reconsider being so assertive and judgmental.
      • giantrobot 3y ago
        Oh, so they got a class rating for the sun and we can readily see all the paperwork about the equipment on this particular vehicle? I'm sure you'll be along soon to link to that documentation. You won't because it doesn't fucking exist because there was zero certification of the vehicle. There's no way for potential customers to verify any safety claims of the sub.
        • stickfigure 3y ago
          The sub was classified as experimental. That literally means "not certified". Everyone, including the people who signed the release forms, knew this. You can, today, buy any manner of uncertified experimental aircraft and fly them in general aviation. What is the surprise? Experimental vehicles are a thing. If you don't like them, don't fly/float on them.
          • PepperdineG 3y ago
            >You can, today, buy any manner of uncertified experimental aircraft and fly them in general aviation. No you can't. Experimental aircraft have to get certified by the FAA.
            • rtkwe 3y ago
              In the US there's only really one category can carry a person and is unregulated and unlicensed by the FAA and that's Ultralights [0]. <254 lbs dry excluding safety and floatation devices, <5 gallons of fuel capacity, <55 knots and there are strict restrictions on when and where they can fly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_aircraft_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_aircraft_(United_St...
    • rtkwe 3y ago
      There's an implicit assumption that the providers/operators aren't being actively negligent both by the customers and backed up by the fact that negligence can pierce these kinds of releases in most cases.
• ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
  > I think the good lesson here is that if you aren't capable of judging the risk of something, you shouldn't participate in it. A completely unsustainable philosophy. There's a threshold past which a customer certainly would be tricked, and it's possible this situation passes that threshold. We are in situations constantly where we are paying for the guidance and expertise of someone more experienced than us to navigate potentially dangerous situations. > It doesn't make the world a better place by trying to eliminate every possible source of death. Straw man.
• monkeynotes 3y ago
  It's not reasonable for regular people to understand the scale of those risks. I've watched video of a previous paying customer talking to Rush about the risks noted in the waiver, and he downplays it so much, almost mocking the very notion that the risk is unreasonable. Imagine being told that the gluing of titanium to carbon fiber is a risk, but the guy telling you that is saying it's no big deal - just innovation. How are you supposed to have any meaningful understanding of that risk? Like is it a huge red flag or just a YOLO issue? I wouldn't know, I'd have to defer to the "experts" who I am entrusting my life to.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    These by definition are not normal people. If you can afford a $250k ticket to the Titanic, you can afford to be properly informed about risk. Hell, you could literally hire your own engineer for a full year to evaluate that risk, go over things, and have money leftover to hire a lawyer to go through the CYA forms. >I wouldn't know, I'd have to defer to the "experts" who I am entrusting my life to. We shouldn't consider someone an expert just because they run a business. Stockton was clearly not an expert in any of this, except maybe marketing. Shouldn't at the very least, rich people be expected to have some personal responsibility? They have no excuse.
    • monkeynotes 3y ago
      Just because you are wealthy doesn't change anything. How are you supposed to know that the fact the pressure vessel isn't certified is a massive red flag, and not just a way to innovate more quickly? Rush painted industry safety as holding everything back and did not properly communicate that you should probably have an independent engineer review the risks. I mean, he was willing to go to the wreck with you, isn't that a hard endorsement of the risk being mitigated? Again, watch some videos, he downplays the risk all the time. It's a form of manipulation, like buying a junk car from a used car salesman. Yes you could have a mechanic look at it, but it's such a great deal, if you walk away someone else will snap it up. All along the salesman is neglecting to mention the wheels are glued on because the bolts sheared, and the brake lines are held together with duct tape.
    • 3y ago
• rand846633 3y ago
  Hardly reasonable and practically not possible, the ideas that every person needs to understand every risk: Ever took any medication? Without the according PhDs??
• Renaud 3y ago
  They actively sought tourists. Made them believe the system was safe, sufficiently enough to persuade them to get on board and pay $250k. Had the company not be deluding itself and be more responsible, they would never have opened the sub to the public. A test pilot or an astronaut are highly technical people who really understand the risks they get into. And they know that dying is not an unlikely event. Expecting a 16 year old to be technically competent to know he shouldn't have boarded that death-trap is disingenuous. You can only be capable of judging the risk of something if you're told the honest truth about the actual risk, or if you have enough inside knowledge to assess that risk. Dying because you've been tricked -lied- into thinking it's safe enough, is a high price to pay for anyone. Saying it's alright to die because you've been tricked is pretty callous. With a company owner who shrugged off safety to the point of deluding himself, do you think the passengers had any honest way of knowing how unsafe that sub really was and make an informed decision? It's easy to say they should have done due diligence after the fact. It's like blaming passengers from boarding a doomed flight with a maverick pilot who thinks loading the plane by 300% is alright because nothing ever happened before.
  • stickfigure 3y ago
    Not a single one of these customers walked in off the street. This is not a mass-market product, it's incredibly bespoke. It's so new and experimental that nobody knows exactly how safe it is. That's why it's literally classed as experimental. There was no trickery here - hell, there are tons of stories from rich folks who declined a trip because they didn't think it was safe. There's a long tradition of rich people getting themselves killed with experimental toys. Usually it's general aviation. Did John Denver know the risks of having the fuel tank selector valve over his left shoulder? Obviously not, or he probably wouldn't have crashed. But we let people buy and sell airplanes anyway - or at least, we did up until the 80s when we sued aircraft manufacturers into oblivion. I'd rather live in a world with general aviation and a small but steady stream of deaths, rather than a world with no deaths because we've eliminated general aviation. I ask you personally: Would you fly on a hypothetical next shuttle launch? Because I think most HNers would, even though the shuttle has historically had about a 2% failure rate. Which, if the 50 dives claimed by the oceangate website is correct, is on par with the Titan.
• comrh 3y ago
  Humans are terrible at judging risk though. I don't think I could accurately judge the risk of driving to the grocery store, let alone a trip to the Titanic.
• omginternets 3y ago
  >The release forms were pretty clear. And if you aren't capable of judging the technical merit - well, that is a decision too. You're deciding to take a leap of unknown risk. There's an implicit assumption that the risks are somehow reasonable, or at the very least, that the other party isn't being reckless or negligent. If you ride a roller coaster after signing such a disclaimer, it's still reasonable to expect that people are tightening the damn bolts. And it's insane to expect both roller coasters to remain a viable business and individual riders to check that they are safe. At best, your attitude makes it nigh impossible to conduct business.
  • smileysteve 3y ago
    People have died at theme parks, and just as relevantly at local fairs because people aren't "tightening the damn bolts" and because parks didn't hire engineers. How many elevators skip on maintenance and inspection during Covid. Only a few states have roadworthiness inspections of vehicles; and Tesla autopilot may have driven into a truck; Or we could talk about texting while driving and drunk driving that endanger others, yet 60%/30% of Americans admit to it regularly, while 30k people die.
    • omginternets 3y ago
      And?
• vkou 3y ago
  > The release forms were pretty clear. They are the same release forms that you'll see when you pay some college kid $90 to take you down some cat 3 rapids. The difference in risk involved in those two activities is many orders of magnitude. As is the difference in recklessness and 'yolo' mindset of the vendor. A release form isn't an excuse to operate your firm in an unsafe[1] manner. [1] 'Safe' is defined 'as safe as can be reasonably made, given what we know'. The Titan did not meet this criteria.
• rfwhyte 3y ago
  No, WE need to be MORE "Judgey" because one of the critical elements you're conveniently leaving out here is WE spent literally tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of OUR tax money searching for a sub full of rich, arrogant CEOs and Tourists who may have spent their own money going down, but who offloaded / externalized 100% of the responsibility and expense of any potential search and rescue effort to the taxpaying public. OceanGate had no rescue plan! Their entire "Plan" for what to do WHEN, not if, something went wrong, was to call in the coast guard / navy and have the taxpayer fund their rescue and from where I'm sitting this whole oeuvre of dangerous, rich-guy-ego-stroking vanity bullshit is an egregiously entitled abuse of the commons that should regulated out of existence with extreme prejudice.
• giantrobot 3y ago
  > We need to stop being this judgy. People should be allowed to make decisions - including the decision to trust someone else The important distinction is whether people can make an informed decision to trust someone. If you're going to take non-expert passengers on some experimental craft and using loopholes like labeling them as "crew" I don't think you can say they're really making an informed decision.
• wkat4242 3y ago
  I don't know. People take all kinds of stupid risks all the time. Life is dangerous, you are guaranteed to die. Some people might just figure that a once in a lifetime experience is worth it even knowing it's dangerous. I'm not sure a full risk analysis is really needed here. As long as the participants knew there was a real risk they'd die, perhaps it was worth it to them.
• flangola7 3y ago
  You can't waive gross negligence. Those waiver forms will be tossed aside the moment they come front of a judge.