I feel like American society is obsessed with safety and the value of individual lives, which has never made sense to me but I go along with it out of respect.

However, when your actions have a x% chance of killing someone, and you can mitigate it with reasonable precautions... ad what value of X do you go along with?

There's a disconnect there. Either people are really bad at math and science, or they do not care about other people's lives nearly as much as they think.