Also not an engineer but watching a real-world example of that thought process was fascinating during NASA and SpaceX's design process for Dragon Capsule, that contained a requirement that the capsule needed to have a statistical probability of loss-of-crew less than 1:270 flights, which is the alternative design measure in TFA.
One challenge was NASA's modelling of in-orbit micrometeorite strikes was complex, and there were concerns that extra complexity to provide redundancy and armor would make an overall less-safe vehicle.
“Blindly striving to achieve a statistical loss of crew number may drive you to design a system that is less safe" -Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operation [0]
One challenge was NASA's modelling of in-orbit micrometeorite strikes was complex, and there were concerns that extra complexity to provide redundancy and armor would make an overall less-safe vehicle.
“Blindly striving to achieve a statistical loss of crew number may drive you to design a system that is less safe" -Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operation [0]
[0] https://spacenews.com/commercial-crew-vehicles-may-fall-shor...