The disabled Carnival Triumph was not a disaster. The lesson of the episode is about the size of the boats, which are so large that evacuation becomes only a last resort.

They are, literally, too big to bail.

The real disaster is that passengers are unlikely to have much recourse. Weak laws govern the seas, making individual causes of action difficult to win and, even worse, collective actions almost impossible to bring.

When passengers sign a cruise contract, somewhere in that multi-page document they absolve the company of most liability. Written in legal jargon, it essentially says “we own you.”

The industry, meanwhile, keeps building bigger boats, raising the stakes of any mishap. In just a decade, the average cruise ship has doubled its passenger capacity.

Regulatory overseers need to devise a new legal regime that focuses on the boats rather than the passengers. Penalties should be high enough that the industry is forced to take greater precautions against a breakdown.

— New York Times News Service