You may wonder how anyone could sign something like that. But I submit that millions of us sign something much like that every day, and to a certain extent people have become desensitized to such waivers, which are seen as TL;DR cover-your-ass legalese. The majority of such waivers lie in the medical field and involve procedures and surgery, and a related phenomenon is warning labels on drugs.
The Titan waiver was three pages long; were those pages fine print? Was most of the verbiage boilerplate blabity-blah? We see that quote highlighted and isolated; did they? And what does “may be constructed of…” mean? Was it or wasn’t it? We know that it was not; did they?
Those of us who would not even consider voluntarily going down in a submersible of any sort – and I am one of those people who would not – would also not sign such a waiver, but we wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place. Nevertheless I have signed many medical waivers equally frightening and quite long. The possibility of death is listed there, even for my cataract surgery, plus plenty of other dire possibilities. Sure, I know that most people don’t die of eye surgery, but you know what? As far as I know, the people who have gone down in submersibles to see the Titanic – even this particular submersible – have not died until now. Granted, the n is tiny, but it still would give a false sense of security and might make such a waiver seem to exaggerate the risks as waivers do.
I would submit that waivers for inherently risky activities like this one should be more enforceable than waivers for everyday stuff.