> Oh did they?

First one only sagged, no catastrophic failure, no deaths, no injuries.

A few more on that list were over a hundred years old. Not sure when he started holding engineers responsible.

Then you have the bridges rammed by ships, terrorism, construction accidents, a wooden suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere that had an upper limit of three and was used by seventy, etc. .

Seems as if the bridges themselves have held up fairly well.

Perhaps a less conservative bridge development culture would have resulted in more innovative bridges that could have avoided those incidents?

History shows that less conservative bridge culture will reduce costs at the detriment of safety.