My understanding is a lot of that is just that consumers didn’t want them. From the first source I found on this:
Safety-conscious car buyers could seek out—and pay extra for—a Ford with seatbelts and a padded dashboard, but very few did: only 2 percent of Ford buyers took the $27 seatbelt option.
This is not surprising to me given that, even after the installation of seatbelts became mandatory, it was decades until most Americans actually used them. Competition encouraged manufacturers to ‘cut corners’ on safety in this instance precisely because that was what consumers wanted them to do.
Good points, to play devil’s advocate it did take many decades for auto manufacturers to include seat belts by default.
It seems safety policy sometimes meets resistance by production / profit motive, despite clear evidence of cause of death.
My understanding is a lot of that is just that consumers didn’t want them. From the first source I found on this:
This is not surprising to me given that, even after the installation of seatbelts became mandatory, it was decades until most Americans actually used them. Competition encouraged manufacturers to ‘cut corners’ on safety in this instance precisely because that was what consumers wanted them to do.
Ah yeah thanks for informing me.