Certainty vs Flexibility

Visited Macau recently, the following scenes form the future Light Rail station caught my attention:-

 

Hoarding and the adjacent protections are poor.  People are likely to get hurt if there are any accident of falling objects... which happens a lot on construction sites.

Hawker in the van is selling drinks and snacks to a lot of the construction workers... business was good!

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Back in HK, people complain about the escalating construction cost for infrastructures, yet a lot of those cost was used to ensure "zero accident".  For example, just compare the flimsy hoarding above with the hoardings required by the HK Government (a covered hoarding with concrete footings and a lot of steel supports), and you will know where the money went.

Similar for the hawker above... when people complain about the rising food prices in HK, they tend to forget the licensing requirements, hygiene control requirements, etc. in HK to ensure that the food is safe.

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HK craves for CERTAINTY (e.g. near zero accident, you expect the food you eat in a restaurant is safe, etc.), yet there is a huge cost behind.   Most of the other places in the world works based on FLEXIBILITY which allows for a more vital environment, but people face greater chances of accident (e.g. food from illegal hawker is cheaper but you get food poisoning once in a thousand times.)

Which side do we want? Is there a third way to achieve both?