The difference between a regular idiot doing a dangerous job and an engineer doing a dangerous job is the engineer knows which parts of the job he's risking imminent death on. There may often be no other difference.
My fiancee has a couple degrees while I just graduated high school. She's incredibly smart but I'm definitely more street savvy. She grew up a bit sheltered.
Genuinely asking, I'm just an engineer... with very very bad grades. Passed was enough for me.
Once a professor asked me if I wanted to take the exam again because it was clear that I knew more than what I showed on the exam (a lot of 2 + 2 = 5 mistakes, I was fairly good at that and owe most of my low grades to that). I asked him if I passed, he said yes. Fuck that shit, I'm taking that grade and parading it across town, wooohoo 🥳.
As they say, a PhD is about learning more and more about less and less. Some of the smartest people at conferences I've attended legitimately risk death crossing the street.