Not necessarily the case here, but "go with the cheapest thing that doesn't violate regulations" tends to get combined with "this regulation is inconvenient, le

Not necessarily the case here, but "go with the cheapest thing that doesn't violate regulations" tends to get combined with "this regulation is inconvenient, let's get rid of it - if it were actually unsafe, nobody would do it" which doesn't end well for anyone (except, maybe, the lawyers).