At best that legislatures away the car makers' bad decision of selling cars without seat belts and airbags.
My point was that you can't legislate away drivers' bad decisions. At best you can leverage the fact that many people would rather follow the rules, and that punishment will compel more to comply.
Yes, we are all helpless and changing anything is just too hard to actually do. 100 people die every day in car accidents, but literally nothing can be done about this without changing something so that means literally nothing can be done.
I'm kinda really fucking sick of this particular American mindset towards cars, school shootings, gerrymandering, corporate greed, and basically everything else that sucks about our society.
I never said nothing can be done. I'm raising the view that solutions, and even government intervention, doesn't have to mean legislation.
Research and education is a huge help, for example. What I can't get behind is the idea that we're all such helpless children than only government punishment can keep us from ruining everything. What happens when the authority given to that government lands in the hands of a person or pay with whom you fundamentally disagree?
Of course you can. Seatbelts and airbags don't sell cars nor make shareholders money, they're only there because they were forced by legislation.