Never said "X at all costs" but thanks for trying to speak for me. Going forward, please note that my preference is to speak for myself, as should you.
I'm not sure why you took such offense; it's a reasonable interpretation of the words you spoke for yourself:
> there is no such thing as excessive "playing it safe"
As you noted in your other comment:
> I'm asking them to "play it safe" when developing components for the car so the car doesn't kill me while I'm in the car.
As in the old adage in computing ("the only unhackable computer is one that isn't connected to anything"), there's no way to ensure that the components of a car don't fail, even while in routine use. There is only more or less likely that they won't fail, and of course, less and less likely to fail is more and more expensive.
We might say that the only uncrashable car is one that sits in the garage and never goes anywhere. Obviously, that would be playing it safe excessively, since it would defeat the purpose of having a car to begin with. But what about less obvious cases? Toyota recalled millions of cars for their "unintended acceleration" issue. The merits of that particular case aside, how much more would someone pay for a Corolla that would be progressively less likely to have safety issues? At some point before infinity, it would be considered excessive.
I think the sliding scale of how safe is playing it too safe is a discussion very much worth having.
