Maybe it's worth having a worse system that actually is there.
When I was an intern I got to help change the blinking red light on top of a 50 story building. It’s a big deal that was scheduled weeks in advance and probably involved two dozen people, a special lightbulb and a bunch of coordination.
Even among the team working it plenty of “how many X does it take to change a light bulb” jokes were told.
But consider than a pilot depends on certain things being there when things go wrong. If the weather is bad and there’s issues with instruments, seeing that red light is the difference between life and death. There are potentially dozens or hundreds of people on a plane and if I recall correctly up to 4,000 people in the building.
When life is at risk, the standard for engineering must be higher.
How did you prove that?
If its more often, does an outage need to be detected? How do you detect that lightbulb went out?
How much does that cost?
Doesn't matter; that's not a comparison that's relevant to any decision here.
How many additional crashes per year are prevented by the high-cost bulbs, and how many additional dollars per year does it cost to install them on every building?
Maybe the 10 $10 light bulbs need to be replaced once a year and they cost $150 / year. Maybe the one $10,000 bulb needs to be replaced every 15 years and costs $900 / year. Once you've gotten to that point, at least you know what the cost difference is.
Then you can either ask "how many planes would crash into the Chrysler building every year if it was using 10 bulbs from Home Depot, compared to the one bulb it's currently using?", and compare that to $750. In that case you'd get an answer that told you whether the Chrysler building should use a special bulb. Or you could ask "how many planes would crash into buildings anywhere in the world every year if they all used 10 bulbs from Home Depot instead of what they currently use?", compare that to $750 multiplied by the number of tall buildings in the world, and you'd get an answer that would tell you whether it'd be better for every building in the world to use commodity bulbs or for all of them to use the bespoke bulbs.
But you'd never ask "which costs more, one fancy lightbulb or one crashing plane?". That won't tell you anything.
If/when it happens the professionals who deal in this stuff will say something mundane like "this system prevented ten close calls before we actually had one slip through, that's pretty great". And they'll replace the $5 lightbulb and move the "check the bulbs" from the monthly maintenance checklist to the weekly checklist. And you'll complain much like you're complaining now.
The irony is that the reason the safety numbers are that good is because aerospace is one of the only 5+ sigma quality/safety industries.
The fact that the absolute numbers are low does not change any calculations that follow from that ratio.
So you decide, scre the airplane, a will save my life, and jump out. Only it fails to open, it was an unreliable parachite, bought by someone like you. They thought,'better a 50/50 parachite then no parachute?
So now you are plummeting to you death, thinking, that if you did not have the confidence of 'I have a parachute' you woupd have never attemped the barrel roll in the first place. And you would have done your utmost to steady the plane, and probably would succeed. And you would not waste time packing it and fuel carrying it around with you.
Your entire hypothetical is unlike the actual scenario, where this is being recommended.
Of course you have different solutions to a completely different problem — but what you haven’t addressed is why this is a bad solution to this particular problem.
If there's a safety mechanism that may or may not work, coming to rely on it is suicidal.
If there is no safety mechanism in the first place, you (hopefully!) never become complacent in the first place.
So it's better to either have a safety mechanism that will absolutely work every single time or nothing at all, than one that may or may not work and invite complacency.
