^ It always strikes me as odd when someone tries to claim if it lasts, say 8 years (you mentioned 2014) or 100K mi, then that's all we care about? What about the other remaining half+ of the vehicle's lifespan?
The average vehicle on the roads today in the US is at 12 years and rising, and only that low because of how easily vehicles are totaled these days. You improve the odds with careful, defensive driving.
No, I don't think engineers adequately factored for it, considering they didn't factor for it even before stop start existed - hence replacement starters are made, sold, installed, rather that it's done out of desperation to meet CAFE #s and outlast the warranty.
If one of my vehicles had a starter fail, I wouldn't raise a stink about it in a forum anyway, unless it was a big tear-down project in order to swap it out.