Byrne's Eye View

Drivers get more reckless when they have to wear seatbelts, because they feel safer. Depending on which data you use, the resulting change in total accidents either underwhelms or swamps the safety effects of seatbelts. This works the other way, too: on icy roads, drivers slow down and drive cautiously, drastically reducing fatalities. This leads to an obvious conclusion: the way to make driving safer is not to mandate safe behavior, but to mandate behavior that feels as unsafe as possible compared to how safe it is. If people think that driving with an eyepatch makes them 300% more likely to get in an accident, but it really only makes them 10% more likely, mandating eyepatches makes driving much safer.

Now, consider: people don't judge lawmakers based on how effective laws are, but on how effective they seem. So lawmakers have no reason to pass a law that, as far as their constituents know, makes driving 300% more fatal. In fact, they have exactly the opposite incentive: to pass the laws that appear the safest, but that cause more accidents so there's a further need for safety-generating legislation.

Public elections are perfectly designed to produce what is literally the worst law imaginable. QED.