Doomed Titanic sub CEO tried to sell cut-price tickets, saying it was ‘safer than crossing the street’

patchymoose@lemmy.ml to World News@beehaw.org – 75 points –
Doomed Titanic sub CEO tried to sell cut-price tickets, saying it was ‘safer than crossing the street’
nypost.com

The NY Post got their hands on some pretty damning text messages where this CEO was irresponsibly downplaying the risks and cutting the ticket price for a potential prospect. I know he's dead now, but I hope some sort of regulations come out of this.

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I don't understand how this guy kept saying this sub was the safest thing, and then turned around and had passengers sign a waiver stating that death was in the cards. I would think that would make someone question whether the guy actually thought it was safe. Then again, I'm not rich and dumb (just poor and dumb lol). The disconnect is amazing.

Adding on to the other person saying “to be fair”, you gotta sign a waiver when doing nearly anything with any risk: renting a moped, scuba diving, horseback riding, zip lining, any random thing has risks.

To be fair, you have to sign a waiver when getting even the most routine surgery too (in Australia, anyway)

While that is true, and as the person below mentioned there are a lot of things with risk that have waivers, you don't necessarily see the people making you sign those waivers telling everyone that said risks are stupid to even consider, as Rush did in the texts he sent.

There already are regulations; he just didn't like them. Dude was breaking the law, and he was proud of it.

Even if he's dead, his investors and his company should still be held accountable for all this bullshit. We need to put a stop to these assholes cutting out every safety measure except the liability waiver they make the customers sign.

This guy was shopping around discount tickets in a way that makes it seem like his company was in financial trouble. Willing to take a $100K haircut on the ticket price just to get bodies on the sub?

In interviews he's said they were operating at a loss on a previous trip.

To be fair, with the way people drive in the US lately, that might be right for the wrong reason.

"Safer than [notoriously dangerous activity]" seems pretty on-brand with this guy

Safer than a toddler juggling chainsaws. What's to be scared of?

safer than crossing a street, well, yes, but that's why we want to ban cars as much as possible - people dying for stupid preventable a reasons is a trend we kinda want to stop, I'd wager

Not gonna lie, the idea of a giant squid attacking the sub is pretty funny. It’s like something out of a cartoon.