you do have a very good question, with the expansion of airlines and mostly cheap air travel the skys are filling up with every more aeroplanes and the old guidlines of distance and altitude may have to be adjusted. Here in England they have to computerise most of air traffic control becauses the numbers of planes and becoming impossible to handle with man power alone. I feel within the next ten years governments will be clamping down more on airlines prehaps by taxing the number of planes they have in the sky, to detere expansion.

As for the case of the Titanic i believe they were going too fast to turn away, as for the time of year and seas they were traveling they didn't expect any icebergs. Experience can sometimes override common sense.