What?
What?
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/31/nhtsa-re...
European airbag regulations also allow for smaller airbags that explode with less force since US regulations require automotive manufacturers to assume an unbelted driver. ECE specifications are based on people wearing seatbelts.
I don't know what your point is about airbags. Some sort of weird defence of European safety standards?
The airbag thing was a dig that Americans are too stupid to wear seatbelts :p
I thought the seatbelt thing was a dig at Americans, who I never mentioned, and blatant whataboutism, but whatever.
For the countries with the highest death rates (~80/million), which are poorer former Eastern Block countries, they predominantly occur in urban areas. Making cars 0.1% safer for Germans/French/Swedish, who have >50% of fatalities in the countryside, makes cars more expensive for the whole block, delaying the changeover to cars with massive safety features, like monocoque passenger safety cells, ABS/ESC and airbags.
Incidentally,10% of US fatalities occured where no seat belt was worn.[1] In the UK this was 30%, but with a quarter of the fatality rate. All you can say is that people without seat belts on die.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban...
It's probably way later than 2005 when pretty much every car included Bluetooth handsfree.