Originally Posted by
Pickles
This makes no sense unless the cost of an injury or death is so high (from downtime costs to legal liabilities) that you'd be willing to worry (and spend) a lot on safety to avoid it. Which is the same thing as saying 安全第一. And this is consistent with your statements that factories in the US are safer than in Japan (which I'd be willing to believe), simply from the fact that legal liabilities from accidental injury or death are probably way higher in the US than in Japan.
In the case of the JMA, they could be all cavalier about it and it turns out to be a catastrophe. They'd be in way more hot water than if they listened to you and the typhoon turned out to be a damp squib.
The dollar cost for occupational injury is mostly medical (most companies self-insure health care for their employees) and the cost of the loss of a skilled worker. Liability is covered by workmen's comp. More than the dollar cost though, I'd say the emotional cost of having a friend or colleague get hurt or killed is what drives a lot of the decision making. Plus safety is generally very cheap to implement.
IMHO, JMA is usually pretty good on the warnings, but when the media goes berserk it forces them to be to be overly cautious. In the most recent case, the media was publishing outright lies about Hagibis and it left the JMA no room for good decision making.