[airbreather]

Similar to aviation s marine safety. Both started with a bunch of prescriptive rules that were added to as various accidents and near misses occured. As you say.

Then, in the last couple of decades there has been a move to performance based standards.

These work by the designers trying to anticipate hazards specific to the design and it's intended duty, and then providing mitigation to reduce the risk down to sn acceptable level.

This has a number of poditive outcomes, but not least is the expenditure on mitigation is directed in the most economic manner.

All this requires a systrmd approach, and when properly applied has been shown to yield superiour results.