I'm not sure I understand what you think is incorrect; your explanation seems to align with the common interpretation.
Here's the article I was thinking of. Totally worth the read, aside from discussion of Murphy's Law...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/03/the-les...
"Keep in mind that it is also competitive, and that if one of its purposes is to make money, the other is to move the public through thin air cheaply and at high speed. Safety is never first, and it never will be, but for obvious reasons it is a necessary part of the venture. Risk is a part too, but on the everyday level of practical compromises and small decisions—the building blocks of this ambitious enterprise—the view of risk is usually obscured. The people involved do not consciously trade safety for money or convenience, but they inevitably make a lot of bad little choices. They get away with those choices because, as Perrow says, Murphy's Law is wrong—what can go wrong usually goes right. But then one day a few of the bad little choices come together, and circumstances take an airplane down. Who, then, is really to blame?"
Of course, regardless of which way you interpret Murphy's law, the law itself and this alternative are both hyperbolic exaggerations. The main question is more of which way of looking at it is more useful.
In terms of thinking about safety, it seems like both points of view have something important to say about why paying attention to unlikely events is critical.