So many of the great (financial) success stories of our sector are about startups stumbling into an untapped demand, and then running with it for as long as the money lasts. Nobody sets out to build a bridge – they build a 2x4 plank, and then realize that rather a lot of people want to walk on it.
We know about static analysis, fuzzing, unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, Continuous Integration/Deployment/Delivery, etc., etc.
It's just that maturity costs a lot of money. 95% of the software produced just doesn't need that and the client can't even afford it.
More than that, even in the case where damage does happen, most people would rate physical damage higher than non-physical damage, for example monetary loss.
There are institutions that rate what the damage actually means.
That's a difference between contractors, people, groups, teams, projects, etc. It has nothing to do with the "disciple of engineering" software or otherwise.
I've seen shitty mechanical engineering projects, but hey, it was cheap, so I don't blame the customer! (We're fighting the shit someone churned out from the software side.)
No one expects to go to a mechanical engineer and ask for a new car, 4 wheels, blue color, 200 horsepower, and a week later "could you just make it 8 wheeled, thanks" and a week later "could you also make it so it'll be fast even when run on a mix of vomit and vodka", and so on, yet it's the norm in software.
And we somehow compare it to bridges, because a lot of software is "critical infrastructure".
Put the two together, and it's no surprise it seems that software engineering is not mature enough.
It simply means some kid (or a team of expensive consultants), who knew nothing about long term risks of the combination of attention fatigue and shitty UX, said yes. Lowest bidder and all that too. Or because this was mission critical it never occurred to the procurers that a UX guy/gal should look at it.
I mean the problem in other fields were solved by a brutal trade off toward a draconian prohibition. You can't practice medicine/law/civil-engineering without a license in a lot of states/countries.
But of course you can give CPR, you can help your relatives sort out their pills. You can talk about laws/statutes/regulations with anyone.
So where would we draw the line? Maybe official/public procurement projects must have a process requirement clause, describing good engineering discipline (clear problem statement, analysis of the problem, analysis of aspects by the relevant domain experts [such as UI/UX, security, network, hardware, etc.], general specification, implementation plan with risks identified and testing methodology outlined, used development methodology [SCRUM, KanBan, whatever])?
This doesn't require setting up big and bureaucratic a trade guild, but if something bad happens we can look at the [pre]filed papers and determine who fucked up. The procurers, the experts, or the dev team.
The difference is that I don't then promise a municipality that I can build them a bridge that can take their citizens across a river, even in case of a 100 year event. Or an early warning system that can save their citizens from nuclear holocaust. This is the difference in maturity between software "engineering" and real engineering disciplines.
You're free to experiment with your own resources but as soon as you make a promise to the public or your customers you should be required to meet your promises in all circumstances.