Well nothing is "safe", driving your car is not "safe". I'm curious as to whether you've been to an air race or are familiar with the areas they fly in? They seem to be further away from the crowd than aircraft are at an air show, in fact that's one of the complaints I've heard about the RBAR, not close enough for people to see the action properly.
As for his priorities, just because he got it wrong does not mean that he's full of BS when he talks about safety and mitigating risk. There's planning and preparation, and then there's the execution. His planning and preparation is absolutely designed to make his activity as safe as it can be, unfortunately on this occasion the execution of the plan fell short. That can and does happen in any activity including flying passengers from A to B.
The chances of a spectator being injured seems pretty slim, so far the incidents that have occurred have all been in the display area. Risk to spectators at air show type events normally comes from aerobatic manoeuvres done flying toward the crowd line which is why those types of manoeuvres are generally banned. The RBAR doesn't seem to be high risk in that sense.