I think this is a cowardly and inaccurate belief and agree it is what it driving changes across all areas.
It is the institutional flaw of democracies and free markets. People (demand) are capable of acting irrationally and emotionally leading to a reduction of individual and public good.
Throughout history you find the people who believe this are not the ones who's safety is sacrificed in pursuit of some grand project...
I’m assuming your OP thinks “better safe than sorry” is stupid because it doesn’t actually help you make decisions.
I would much rather drive on a bridge of someone whose motto is “do it right.”
This isn’t the Apollo program. We know how to make safe bridges. It’s not a matter of being cautious and talking to every stakeholder. It’s a matter of hiring actual engineers,* letting them work, believing them, and then giving them the resources to monitor construction properly.
It means sometimes rejecting a lot of bad material and holding the project up for 8 months.
It does not mean “lean safe” and cross your fingers.
* meaning licensed engineers. The word engineer has I guess been made meaningless by thousands of people writing code and calling it “engineering”. It used to mean someone had completed training as an engineer.
Better safe than sorry MEANS do it right. It means that human life is more valuable than material wealth.
If you are hiring amateurs to build your bridge, or you are “crossing your fingers”, then you are not being “better safe than sorry” — in the sense that what you are doing can not be an implentation of “better safe than sorry” that can be reconciled with the broader cultural context in which people use the phrase and discuss it.
This is not accurate on both accounts.
First, material wealth can be converted into quality of life in multiple different ways. Consuming additional millions to push death rates down by a few percentage points is taking away from other places, ostensibly hurting others.
Second, better safe than sorry does not mean do it right. Mistakes will happen, and acting like nothing will ever go wrong is a fools errand. Planning for failure is a significant portion of project management and engineering in general. The goal is 0 mistakes, but severe negative overreactions in response to failure can have a net negative impact.
A friend of mine was just hired as a project engineer at a construction company. He was confused since he has no engineering experience. Turns out, at this company, it means you are training to be a project manager.