Does "safety level" mean the same thing as "level of safety"?

Does "safety level" mean the same thing as "level of safety"?

I suspect that the former is used as a technical term, with exact definitions of different safety levels. This would be similar to biosafety level, which talks about biocontainment of hazards. In such a scenario, it's describing what (or how much) safety precautions are required.

By contrast, I think that "level of safety" is a vague term, which you would use to describe a "high level of safety", or a "low level of safety", such as in this news article College Prep School Demands High Level Of Safety. And that it means that something is either safe, or unsafe.

onelook.com doesn't have an exact match for "safety level", nor for "level of safety".

Is my suspicion that the phrases have different meanings correct?

The COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) shows American English having a preference for level of safety over safety level by 3.5 to 1. Records in the BNC (British National Corpus), by contrast, show their use as being more or less equal.

We may speculate on why that might be so, but my own intuition suggests to me that the two expressions would be used in different contexts, with level of safety having a more specific reference and safety level a more general one. For example, the BNC has this extract illistrating level of safety:

Thermostat is the first level of safety. Set to operate at around 60C to 65C. Energy cut-out is the second level of safety and is set to operate at 85C to 90C to turn off the boiler or other source of heat. Temperature/pressure relief valve is the third level of safety and will discharge water (through a second tundish into a safe and visible place) if the temperature of the water reaches 95C.

Compare that with this, illustrating the use of safety level:

But the pound found a safety level and was firm against the mark and the dollar.