[emarsden]

Historically, the fact that lives of the public are clearly on the line was part of the argument for allowing partial delegation of safety oversight. The idea has been that any engineer/manager making these decisions will be regularly flying themselves/loved ones, so is going to be suitably cautious. This differed from the situation in coal mines for example, where the miners exposed to the risk were socially/culturally disjoint from engineers/managers.

[keenmaster]

Right, that’s just bonkers logic though. When the stakes are higher, controls should be stronger.