Billionaire investor Ray Dalio says underwater dives should be as safe as driving a car, but OceanGate's 'reckless disregard' of safety caused the Titan sub implosion

• Billionaire Ray Dalio said OceanGate's "reckless disregard" for safety caused the Titan sub's implosion.
• He tweeted that industry safety standards have made ocean exploration as safe as driving a car.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio is furious at OceanGate after its sub imploded near the Titanic, claiming the lives of five passengers.

Dalio, who founded an ocean exploration organization called OceanX, said underwater dives should be as safe as riding in an airplane or driving in a car, but OceanGate's "reckless disregard" of safety caused the Titan sub implosion.

Dalio wrote a lengthy Twitter post on Friday sharing his thoughts and mixed emotions about the underwater tragedy near the wreck of the Titanic.

"I felt both a deep sadness for those on the expedition and their families and great anger because I knew that the tragedy was due to reckless disregard for tried-and-true safety protocols that have made manned submersible exploration extremely safe," Dalio wrote.

He alleged OceanGate flouted safety protocols, including that it "created its own experimental vehicle with materials avoided by others, decided to bypass the certification processes designed to assure safety, and chose to ignore the warnings from many experts within the submersible community."

He continued on to explain that, unlike the Titan sub, submersibles that follow proper protocols have not "experienced anything like this over the last 40 years, with millions of people having gone on many dives for many years, including dives that were much deeper than this one to the Titanic."

"In other words," he added, "Submersible diving, and the ocean exploration that it provides, has been safer than flying on a commercial airplane or driving in a car."

The US Coast Guard announced on Thursday that, after a 4-day-long search for the missing vessel, it had found underwater debris belonging to the Titan sub, indicating that it had imploded. All five passengers are presumed dead.

OceanGate did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on Dalio's post.

OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, who was the pilot on board the Titan at the time of the disaster, had previously said he ignored rules about safety because they were stifling "innovation" in undersea exploration, going as far as saying that safety precautions, at a certain point, are "just pure waste."