Importance of Safety Over Quality

Though talking to other engineers that I have known it seems to me that engineers focus more on satisfying the customer more than the safety of the customer. This idea to meet deadlines and to deliver a product faster, better, and with better quality neglects but safety seems to be not included in the part of quality. Is this a result of laziness or just a result that money and time limits are more important than the well being of the user?

Shouldn't safety be an important part of the whole process of a quality product? Isn't it amazing that companies have to do recalls for certain products. It seems to me that the product didn't seem to take customers safety into effect. The company instead focused on the quality but not the safety of the product. It seems that safety should be the number one concern in design of the product. If safe along with quality the company doesn't lose on internal and external costs.  Not only that the company losses legally.

The risk of not having a safe product seems to not outweigh the reward. Even though the product is out fast has good quality if the product has any safety risk the company could lose more money then would be made. First, a company could have to recall the product that was created and fix the design flaw. Second if the product harms a customer the company could have a lawsuit filed against them. Through having to fix the problem and deal with all the internal and external cost alone the company will lose money. These problems along with the possible money lost in the lawsuit don’t add up for the little money that could be saved from making a product with great quality and safety. An alternate option to would be to add a warning label to identify the hazard that could happen with the product. These are important things that cost companies lots of money.  The well being of the customer seems to be put behind in design and manufacturing of a product most of the time. Instead, shouldn't the well being and safety of the customer be put first instead of just quality of the product? 

-MG