Time Bomb Ted
I guess you're new to aviation, or at least it seems that way from your naive understanding of how safety works.
Perhaps the simplest analogy is that of cleaning your teeth. If you cut back on doing it, or overuse the toothbrush, or use cheap or too little toothpaste....NOTHING WILL HAPPEN RIGHT AWAY. But it will one day. And then it will probably be painful.
This goes for regular maintenance, safety systems, training, risk analysis etc etc. It is not a requirement that there be dead bodies all over the place before you can lay claim to the idea that something was not properly thought through.
And by the way....why not take life rafts off passenger jets too. They weigh a lot and have rarely, if ever, saved a life. Get rid of a lot of stuff I suppose and the sun would still come up.....for a while.