Originally Posted by flangehead

It isn’t about the engineers themselves, but the environment they function in. In most big (deep pocket) organizations there is a very understandable aversion to liability. The easy button for the organization is to not vary from recognized standards. That approach then hardens into a specs and standards culture as compared to a best practices and outcomes culture.

And it is not the case that all standards have a general duty clause in the preface. In my experience, the more specific the scope, the less likely that explicit wiggle room is granted.

Wide scope standards do usually have something akin to a general duty clause in the introduction. In practice that gets treated like the basic speed law in traffic regulations. It is much easier for the lawyers to hang you on a specific detail than a complex situation.