Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. The socially acceptable ways to die in a car gets smaller and smaller. Things like death by gasoline fire illustrated here, or death by steering column implation[1] get reclassified from an unavoidable hazard of driving to a preventable death all the time. We've even seen steering column trauma get re-conceptualized as preventable with the passage of the Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991 and it's implementation in 1998. We'll likely see the same with deaths that are currently considered unavoidable road hazards.

The fact is that as safety technologies are developed, they have the tendency to make people reevaluate what is and isn't avoidable. As to structural columns and crumple zones, public perception might reevaluate these too. The cumulative effect is that the deaths per VMT[2] has dropped and is likely to continue to drop as advances are made. Personally I don't care so much how it's done just that it's done. It seems to be working out pretty well so far.

1. https://www.pailton.com/latest-news/collapsible-steering-col...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...