Driving is so routine, such a presence in our culture, that we take for granted the acuity needed to do it correctly and the havoc that just one misstep can cause. Crashes are not accidents; they are almost always caused by a preventable error. And this axiom also holds true for one of the greatest commuting calamities in history.
Distracted driving, dangerous speed and hubris sank the Titanic over 112 years ago.
The idea popped into my mind as my wife, Momo, and I toured the fascinating “Titanic: An Immersive Voyage” exhibit in Doraville’s Exhibition Hub. During the planning, construction, launch and journey of the world’s biggest and most luxurious ship at that time, there were several oversights and mistakes that added up to disaster and death.
As we walked through the exhibit, we learned that the biggest error took place in the ocean liner’s radio room. The radio operators were not White Star Lines employees, but instead worked for Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio broadcasting. The Marconi Company’s telegraph equipment and its two operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, operated the radio room.
Since the Titanic drew worldwide fanfare, messages to and from the ship flooded the radio room. On the fateful day of April 14, 1912, five telegrams warning of icebergs came across the radio wire. Only two of those warnings got to the ship’s navigation crew.
Did Phillips and Bride simply not care? Not necessarily. They were swamped with messages and both they and the Marconi Company got paid for each one they delivered. Slowing down that process to carefully consider the gravity of the ice field warnings made little sense to them. More messages meant more money.
Though Bride and Phillips were not at Titanic’s helm, their decisions were a factor in the deaths of over 1,500 people.
Titanic Captain Edward Smith, the exhibit explains, was supposed to retire, but White Star tappedtheir star navigator to helm the Titanic on its maiden voyage. Despite warnings from White Star brass about taking the trip across the Atlantic slowly, Smith chose to go full steam (literally) ahead. Smith believed that faster travel minimized risk, the exhibit’s narrator said.
White Star billed the Titanic as “unsinkable” – certainly its size and strength could survive almost anything. The ship’s architects and executives actually employed a strategy of using fewer lifeboats onboard, because ships of that era relied upon each other for help. They equipped the Titanic with only about half of the lifeboats it was outfitted to carry.
The lifeboats, if full, could only hold about half of the ship’s 2,240 passengers. And in their haste to escape the sinking vessel, they didn’t fill the lifeboats to capacity. About 500 more people could have been saved if they had.
While third-class passengers already saw water and heeded Smith’s call for all passengers to head to the deck, some first-class riders chose not to give up their cozy lounges and be bothered with life jackets and the chilly midnight air.
The Titanic looked impervious to the forces of nature. And maybe it would have been, if humans had made better choices.
Alas, humans err.
That brings us back to how we drive. Our vehicles are safer than ever and technology aids and guides us better every year. Yet the roadways remain unsafe, and drivers carry most of that blame. We are dangerous because we text and allow other things to distract us. And we zoom from place to place, no matter the weather or the road congestion. We act like we are bulletproof.
If the most luxurious liner of its time, the Titanic, could not overcome the errors of its stewards and avoid disasters on its own, then certainly our automobiles cannot.
Yes, this is the stuff that enters my head on a date night at a museum installation.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. Download the Triple Team Traffic Alerts App to hear reports from the WSB Traffic Team automatically when you drive near trouble spots. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com.
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