You said something interesting: "... modern life requires accidents like this."
This is a completely baseless claim. It is entirely possible to have both a technologically advanced civilization and simultaneously one that doesn't have catastrophic industrial mistakes like this.
Is it? Because at the very least, modern life involves the mass production of plastics, mining of various minerals, and the use of copious amounts of energy. That last one is only kind of solved (as long as everything works and nothing breaks), but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that there is any feasible substitute for the first two.
The solution to the first two is reuse. With enough energy, some form of recycling of becomes feasible for pretty much anything. No oil? Just make plastic from atmospheric CO2!
Is it a solution if the masses refuse to trade cheap convenience for more expensive and burdensome products/processes? Theoretically yes, but realistically no.
How would we know such a society is possible? There's zero proof of that to date. Errors and inevitable catastrophes are part of the cost of a highly complex technically advanced society run by humans.
have we tried adding "make no mistakes" to the humans' prompt?
Scale matters. When you have the scale that we do, you will have accidents because of the sheer number and the lack of oversight due to cost pressures. These accidents aren't going anywhere. They have been around since industrial times and will continue to be so. Please tell me how you would ensure 0 accidents - the world would be interested to know since it hasn't been discovered yet. Now please explain who's position is baseless.
Not with humans.