Tourist,
I take your point about exceptional do or die miltary scenarios - the "liability" I refer to is the person who does not pay due regard to the implications of breaking the limits. Having moved from the military environment to international civil and military training, I was amazed at how few people out there have ever looked at a performance graph; how many people think that if you have 12 seats, you can load 12 people in, and how many times have I ever seen anyone do a weight & balance calculation? - Not very Many!
It is these people who are the liabilities.