Cars and Roads Aren't Designed With Safety, Which Spreads Fear

I was reminded of the safety factor. You calculate the maximum stress your building or device is going to feel, and then you make it capable of withstanding 3-5 times that stress, because you're stupid and it will probably feel 2-4 times the stress you think it will.

In other words, a safe car would be designed to keep the driver and passengers unharmed even at collisions that are four times as hard as the maximum collision. I expect this would mean limiting maximum speed.

Likewise, any building next to a road should be built like a bunker. It should be able to withstand a collision with a speeding truck and suffer only cosmetic damage. Bollards everywhere at the very least. 

Roads and buildings are common enough that folk will peg how dangerous the world is on these artifacts. In other words, they will think everything is built for maximum speed and fuck health. They think planes and elevators and corporations and all that stuff are built to the standards of roads. 

A dumb safety factor is pretty dumb. You bulk up parts that are never going to fail, putting additional stress on the fragile joints. Once again, there is no shortcut to wisdom. You cannot substitute dumb rules for intelligence. 

Safetyism is not remotely worth it. It costs a ton of money and regularly makes things more dangerous. Worse, it costs glory. Because cars aren't safe, they have to look safe, which makes them hideous.

 And it seems safetyism is all repressed desire for cars and roads to not be horrible aposematic deathtraps.