I'd look for a different route to take, even if it meant getting to my destination a bit later.
If you did that as a bus driver I don't think you would last long in your job!
The reality is that the outer southern track was designed to avoid ice, and so Smith adhered to it, as he was required to by the WSL.
Lightoller was very specific about this when questioned during the Senate inquiry (please note might highlight in bold):
We receive our orders; the routes are laid down. As a matter of fact, these routes are laid down by some of your naval men in the United States, and we adhere to them. We have an ice route. When ice is very prevalent and we know that a lot of ice is coming down from the north and we have been notified of it, we sometimes are instructed to take what we call the ice track, or extreme southern route, coming west…they come from the company…You get it before you leave port… I have never known the route to be changed by the commander. (“United States Senate Hearings into the Sinking of the RMS Titanic” (1912), Day 5, 24 April 1912, testimony of Charles H.
Lightoller)
You can't claim that he didn't know that ice might possibly be encountered in their path.
I don't think anyone has. Smith and his officers had plotted the ice so knew they might encounter it - or might not. Ice is not a fixed position, it moves, and Smith was adhering to a course designed to avoid it. Asking him to slow down in such good visibility before reaching it would be the same as expecting a bus driver to slow down hours before reaching that hypothetical traffic jam that could appear anywhere - or disappear. Of course, once he sights it ahead he will slow down or find an alternative route. Smith had a track record of slowing down when conditions called for it.
As I've been saying, he had the choice of placing his engine room on standby in case quick maneuvering of engines was needed, or increasing and repositioning lookouts, or bothering to be out on the bridge while approaching the region as exemplified by other steamship commanders knowing that conditions that night made the sighting of bergs somewhat more difficult.
But arguably none of these things would have changed the outcome. And indeed Smith was on the bridge - the chartroom where he was last sighted is, according to White Star guidelines, part of the bridge. And he had not signed off for the night, so was still on duty. The two key officers on the bridge during the minutes leading up to collision were lost - so there is a huge amount we do not know.
Lets face it. He did nothing.
Sorry Sam, but I think that is a very unfair accusation. He had plotted ice, he conferred with his OOW on the conditions, he had left instructions if the conditions changed to be instantly notified. His OOW had ensured the lookouts were briefed and the bridge clear of light pollution. That is not "nothing." There are no doubt many other things Smith did (he may well have been already plotting a course to avoid ice once encountered) that we simply do not know about because he along with his two senior officers were lost.
To ask him to slow down before reaching the ice, to expect the unexpected, is retrospective wishful thinking of an "armchair" critic as Lightoller put it. And I think we can all do better than that and try and understand what it was like on that night, see it through their eyes, understand the context without being contaminated by hindsight and avoid rushing into judgmental assumptions.
