Why a famous disaster forced safety reform

A successful rescue by Californian could have delayed reform by seeming to validate a fragile system. A later failure might then have been blamed on individual mistakes because the same arrangement had appeared to work once. Titanic's celebrity, the London-New York route, its heavy loss of life, and the damage to national and corporate prestige forced sustained public attention and formal inquiries. The resulting changes made lifeboat practice, radio requirements, and distress signals more robust, revealing systemic weaknesses that a quieter disaster might not have exposed.