Regulatory Compliance Bias
The Titanic was compliant with lifeboat regulations yet had insufficient capacity for all passengers, demonstrating that following laws does not guarantee safety.
THE IDEA
Recovery Measure: The Number of Lifeboats
Early designs of the Titanic by Alexander Carlisle proposed a lifeboat for most onboard, but as these plans were discussed with William Pirrie (for the White Star Line) and Francis Carruthers (for the Board of Trade), it was eventually resolved to have 16 lifeboats plus four extra collapsible boats.56 This was more than the 16 lifeboats the laws and regulations required at the time and allowed for up to 1176 passengers and crew in lifeboats at the same time.
So, why did the regulations allow fewer lifeboats than the simple formula ‘one person, one lifeboat?’ It was thought that lifeboats were primarily there to ferry passengers and crew from a stricken ship to another rescue vessel. Therefore, it did not make sense to plan to put all the passengers and crew at the same time into lifeboats after an incident, especially since this might be in the context of stormy weather if the ship was in difficulty. Furthermore, the Board of Trade was keen to encourage vessels to be built with watertight compartments, so they could ‘be their own lifeboat’ rather than having less well‐built ships with more lifeboats. And the Titanic had state‐of‐the‐art bulkheads for the time.57
This highlights that laws and regulations are not always a ‘gold standard’ to follow, and therefore, being compliant with laws and regulations (as the Titanic was) does not mean you are inoculated from something disastrous happening to you.
When to use it
A company follows all safety regulations but suffers a major accident because the regulations did not cover a specific scenario.
An individual relies solely on legal contract terms without considering practical implementation risks.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Titanic Lifeboat Capacity
The Titanic had 16 lifeboats plus four collapsibles, exceeding the legal requirement of 16 lifeboats but accommodating only 1,176 of the over 2,200 people on board. The regulations treated lifeboats principally as a way to ferry people to a rescue ship. The example shows that compliance did not provide enough capacity for everyone to evacuate simultaneously; it does not identify a sole cause of the disaster.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
In what areas of your life or work do you assume compliance with rules automatically ensures safety?
How can you distinguish between regulations that are robust and those that may be based on outdated assumptions?
What additional measures can you take beyond compliance to mitigate risks?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Beyond the Five Whys Root Cause Analysis and Systems Thinking (James C. Paterson)