We live in a technical society. All of the technical rules and regulations are made by anonymous organizations funded by Big Business. They constantly lobby to increase the cost and complexity of everything from electrical wring in your house to the structural integrity of your automobile. They use safety as an excuse to make things more expensive for us all.
This is done completely out of sight, of even the U.S. Congress; which, after all, is made up almost exclusively of lawyers. No engineer would dare blow the whistle on his peers because he’d never get an engineering job again, or worse. The meek shall inherit the earth.