I hate to say it but I've witnessed the same thing many times. Very unprofessional, and the company will blame the PIC for any mistake and let him/her hang in the wind if anything bad happens.

I was trying to takeoff from RNO a few months ago. Low layer of very thick fog, but it was probably very thin too. Tower was reporting Rwy 16R RVR @ 600' (below minimums), surface visibility 1/2 mile (above minimums). Sounds like a pretty strange observation, right? There is no RVR installed on the North runways, 34L or 34R so prevailing visibility applies. (Why the tower felt that this was an acceptable observation is another story. Every accident has a series of events, this could have been one of the preventable ones if there had been an incident.)

That reported observation made it "legal" to takeoff on Rwy 34L but when we taxied down to the runway for takeoff we could see only two runway edge lights. That's 400' if I'm not mistaken. Well below takeoff minimums for any commercial operation. We pulled over to the side to wait for the fog to burn off. As we sat there the visibility ranged from less than 200' (we could not see the runway lights at all) to 400', yet we saw 2 Southwest 737's and a Horizon Qprop takeoff without hesitation. We ended up waiting almost an hour for the visibility to come up to our observed minimiums.

What happens if the "reported" visibility is drastically different than the "observed" visibility? I believe observed visibility takes precedence. I think had an FAA inspector had been sitting in our cockpit observing, those pilots who took off would have been in for a tough hearing before the FAA. But hey, they took off on time and kept the company rolling. Besides, no executives were ever in any jeopardy, and that's what really counts, right?