They do, in theory. The Blow-Out-Preventer, basically an automatic cap, it installed in-line on every well currently being drilled.
Yes, it failed but there is no guarantee that "this cap" will succeed in the case of another BOP failure.
Yes, it failed but there is no guarantee that "this cap" will succeed in the case of another BOP failure.
That said, Rachel Maddow compared this gulf oil spill to the gulf oil spill of 1979 by using news clips from then, and the sad part is, the new technology we used for this spill is the exact same technology they used back then. Check it out:
The thing about mandates is they are easy to write. It's the enforcement that has the problem. If you look at every airplane crash, exclude pilot error and rare weather events, you will find the remainder were due to lax maintenance. Federally mandated lax maintenance.