Journalists and lay people have a very poor understanding of risk and risk management. Engineers can build to any safety standard deemed desirable, but then society might not be able to afford it.
Doctors might be able to spend millions of dollars to keep one person alive with extraordinary care, but can't afford to do that for everyone. Engineers face the same dilemma every day. They can't afford to build everything "bullet proof" so someone has to decide how resources are allocated. Usually that someone is a politician holding purse strings who has no way to assess risk/benefit of most expenditures and therefore responds to political pressure from special interests.
Any idiot (yes, I include lawyers and journalists here) can can come in after something fails and assess blame. The hard part is looking at something BEFORE it fails and deciding if it needs to be fixed and how much the fix is worth.
The very best consulting engineers in the world make about $200/hour. You can go through the phone book in any Podunk town and find dozens of divorce lawyers who make two to three times that much. What does this say about our society? You want to come down hard on engineers? Prepare to get in line when you want a seismic upgrade on your apartment building, because bright people can always find a less risky and more lucrative way to make a living.
Well said.
Nothing in engineering (or life for that matter) is risk free.