As a counter, my intuition is that masks also remind people of the risks and actually encourage safe behavior. I feel this in myself, a greater awareness of the pandemic, a nudge towards being more careful. Extending your analogy, it's as if the seatbelt reminded people that there are some pretty grisly accidents out there, and maybe they should take it easy.
Both effects probably exist, not sure what wins out, and how much it matters.
It doesn't.
There’s your answer then
fwiw, I wear a mask when I HAVE to go out for groceries, and avoid going out on unnecessary errands (shopping, dining out)
even if it encourages risky behavior, there's no evidence that it does it enough to translate to higher spread overall, which is what matters. As long as the net impact doesn't increase transmission, they're not a problem.
The worst neighborhoods for COVID over the summer were ones that were known for poor mask compliance, anyway.
As an analogy, I'd explain it like this. What if in the process to encourage people to wear seatbelts, drivers who did that then felt entitled to drive even faster thus resulting in even worse accidents and more frequent ones at that. Of course, no driver would actually think like that.
While I wear my mask, I do wonder about its overall effectiveness especially if in total we all engage in riskier behavior that we wouldn't have otherwise if we simply lived with the basic fear that you have to stay away from everyone.
Masks "help", but maybe they "help" most by thinking of them as not a help at all. It's a tough paradox to encode into public health messaging.