> Car companies are in the business of selling whatever makes shareholders the most money, and you can't legislature away bad decisions.

You can ”legislature away” socially bad decisions, at least at scale, by sufficiently shifting incentives. You can also “legislature them in” the same way.

E.g., you can create a light truck loophole in safety and economy regulations nominally intended, but not carefully bounded, to exempt vehicles with commercial use, and thereby incentivize manufacturers to expend enormous resources on propaganda to create demand for a new class of personal vehicles that fit into that loophole, shifting the market so that even after the loopholes don’t work the same way, the demand remains.

My point wasn't that legislation has no impact, of course it can move the needle. Many people will follow the rules simply because they prefer to, and others will because the legal punishment is enough of a deterant.

My point was that jumping from some people have wrecks because they drive drunk/high/distracted/tired to we need more legislation doesn't make any sense. If we want to inform the public of the risks of driving impaired we absolutely can do that, it doesn't require laws and punishment to help educate people.

Assuming we can legislate away bad decisions is effectively agreeing that we'd prefer the state is powerful enough to take away any decision we may want to make but that they disagree with. Why not just expect the government to help research the risks and inform us, trusting us to make the best decision for ourselves?

I don't think the assumption is that government is legislating away anything. The decisions are still up to the people, but the reward or consequence will be the byproduct of the legislation. Get a DUI, lose your license for 10 years. Have an incredibly good driving record, get great benefits(not the 5% off your insurance premium).

> and you can't legislature away bad decisions.

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.

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 the ultimate accountability would be with the driver, but a) there is little to no accountability left on the road anymore and b) changing widespread behavior patterns is usually a top down thing. You can certainly legislate in a way that either rewards or punishes types of behavior(good/bad driving), or nudges car makers to scale down models/increase safety. Higher gas prices were enough to get me out of a big truck.

Similar to a separate thread here, I just can't get behind the idea that we as a society are helpless without governments "nudging" us in what they see as the right direction.

First and foremost we need to educate or population better, but from there the government should rarely need to go beyond good faith research and trusting it's people to generally make the best decision for themselves.