I want the previous @kyriacos back ! This here is seriously muddled thinking ! A bit like failing to see that the forest is actually made of trees ... "The government" doesn't exist. The government is made of people and one of them could be you, or your cousin, or your mom. The way your "mom the government official" behaves when at the office might surprise you (in a negative way).

The reason is that to government is a social construct and works as a system. The fundamental truth is that people respond to incentives and if the incentives are badly aligned the resulting behaviour will appear stupid. The officials who are responsible of poor road design or bad policy has no incentive to get it right - instead he has an incentive to make his life and work as easy as possible in order to be back home at 5pm because he's paid the same thing anyway. So if he can get away with an idiotic road design, why not do it since it's less effort and it won't affect him personally anyway ?

The answer is not to take advantage of the system - that is reckless and implies disrespect and uncaring toward your fellows in society. The answer is to do whatever in your power and suitable to your situation in order to try to improve the system design. That could be signalling bad decision-making, suggesting improvements, getting involved in politics, etc.

One person doing that has little influence but if the "improvement" religion spreads, then it can do wonders - this is how most advanced societies have pulled themselves up by the stings of their own boots: gradually, seeing that other people voluntarily refrained from absuing a fragile system, other members of society reciprocated and this resulted in a virtuous circle