jay Personal opinion here, but the way I see it is this: a regulatory body - which may or may not be the government at municipal, state, or federal level - can set certain requirements - sometimes as a guide (i.e., "you can choose to do this since it's a good idea"), sometimes as a recommendation (i.e., "you really should do this but we can't force you to do so"), or as a standard (i.e., "you don't have a choice anymore - you must do it this way"). In some areas, the public regulatory bodies - meaning the government at various levels - tend to have a laissez-faire attitude toward business in general, in the hopes that more business will come their way, yielding the inevitable tax dollars to fund other things in the community. Other areas think everyone is guilty until proven innocent - or at least have enough bad experiences to bring the hammer down and they tend to set stricter regulations. It is interesting to note that the more populous regions tend to be stricter, whereas where there are still "wide open spaces" there is less regulatory interaction. Perhaps this is a case of "out of sight, out of mind"?
As to insurance: their first priority is to make money (for themselves), which generally means not paying out on claims if at all possible. As a result, the insurance company sets requirements that are at least as stringent as the regulatory body - and sometimes more so. One example of the "more so" is the requirement that costly "critical" spares be kept in working order to limit loss of production (which can often be part of the claimed damages from an incident). Companies are also interested in keeping profits: with the virtually no limits on maximum financial damages due to warranty or compensation (read "machine fails" for a manufacturer, and "people get injured" for an operator), it behooves the company to do everything it can to prevent that unwanted outflow of capital. Thus the "sharing best practices" approach between companies in similar industries - particularly petroleum and chemical industries, but other industries as well. Some industries even go so far as to have their own "standards" related to safety and performance - most often a direct result of "lessons learned". An example of industry-specific standards in this vein is the group of API (American Petroleum Institute) standards related to mechanical, electrical, civil, and process engineering.
Converting energy to motion for more than half a century
