I understand that stance, but when humans are the decision makers and have all kinds of other pressures (cost, schedule, etc.) it’s often not enough that people “may” die. Especially if we’re talking about risky endeavors like human-rated space travel, “may” is only one level across the gradient, and that level could be considered an acceptable risk by some. You will never drive risk down to zero, so “people may die” will almost always be true. If that’s your threshold, you will never launch.

The real difficulty is accurately gauging risk, especially when there isn’t substantial data.