General

On June 24, 2023 by Jonathan Zdziarski

Reading of the OceanGate tragedy this week has been heartbreaking, and my prayers are for the families of those lost in this tragic accident. Yet while the investigation gets underway, most in that community seem to already have concluded that this accident was 100% preventable. Stockton Rush’s alleged disregard for safety and process in the name of progress seems well known throughout their world, and this failure came as no surprise. Yet while we all want to hate on the seemingly reckless CEO that may have caused this accident, we should perhaps give pause to consider that in America, we seem entirely comfortable with sociopaths driving progress at the expense of human life, and even continue to financially support them.

Stockton Rush reminds me a lot of another, not entirely different CEO who is well known for his lack of restraint and cavalier approach to safety. According to The Washington Post which analyzed NHTSA’s data, Tesla’s autopilot was found to have been involved in 736 crashes and 17 fatalities since 2019, and has been on the rise since expanding their full self-driving technology. Over 800,000 Teslas have supposedly been under investigation, and a recent internal leak from last month alleges thousands of safety complaints. In spite of a fatality count more than triple that of the OceanGate Titan, not only does the world continue to buy Tesla, but our own government seems perfectly content with these deaths and has taken little corrective action. Many supporters of Tesla quickly jump to point out the good that such technology will do for safety once it works, but that isn’t in question. What’s at issue is the lack of process and the seemingly unnecessary urgency, much like OceanGate, to rush forward without the proper safety controls in place.

Of course, Tesla is just one small and recent example of what one might view as recklessness meeting corporate greed. Corporations operating in this pattern have worked hard to try and convince us there needs to be a balance of safety and process compromises in the name of progress. Look back over the past two hundred years, and we find this pattern repeated throughout, ironically even including the doomed RMS Titanic. We could call them trailblazers, and adopt the same mindset that men like Rush appear to have, or we could take a step back and consider that by tolerating it, we permit sociopaths the hubris of deciding the value of human life. We answer that question for not only each victim, but also for their family. Does there really need to be a balance? Is loss of human life necessary so people can make money? Capitalism has helped make this decision for us, and we tend to reward this reckless behavior instead of punish it. While we tolerate, and even help fund this risk, consider they’ve already made this decision for you and your family too – you’ve just been lucky so far.

While America seems captivated by this submarine accident, let’s not forget that it isn’t just the privileged or the risk takers who die as a result of corporate recklessness. Whether it is a poorly designed submersible, an underdeveloped autonomous driving technology or anything else, there are businessmen in this country who are – daily – taking invisible gambles with our lives in many different forms. Much like the passengers of the Titan, we probably aren’t fully disclosed on the risk we’re being exposed to until it’s too late. You have the hubris engendered by greed to thank for that.