You'd think some of the trucking companies would do it just for publicity, if it was cheap enough.
Then again, cars could all come with roll cages and five-point harnesses, and they don't, so there's some limit to safety equipment.
Then again, cars could all come with roll cages and five-point harnesses, and they don't, so there's some limit to safety equipment.
No roll cages historically was the result of no federal safety belt law. Roll cages are great until an un-belted occupant has their head hit the cage. "Second collision." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impact_(safety)
At this point New Hampshire is the last remaining holdout on state safety belt laws. Live free or die (in a car crash).
Even then, you still have the issue of noncompliance. Automakers don't want to end up on 60 Minutes in an episode about how their "safer car" kills some people, because some of those people were un-belted in a crash. Numbers are all over the place for people not wearing their seat belt, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10.
A ton of cars pass Euro-NCAP and IIHS crash and rollover tests with flying colors.
Roll cages were a Thing because, well, this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
Obviously not every car is up to snuff, especially at the bottom end of the market. You couldn't pay me to drive a current production GM, Ford, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, etc compact sedan.
5-point harnesses aren't really that necessary at 0-60mph speeds in a vehicle with modern airbags; the fifth strap is mostly for anti-submarining but a number of manufacturers have produced seats that are anti-submarining and anti-submarining dashboard design (both material and shape) is a thing as well.
All of it's possible, it's just a lot of car companies are cheap and consumers don't really shop based on stuff like "is there an anti-submarining design to the dash."
But that's clearly not very desirable.
And two really big trucking companies are UPS and FedEx, along with Amazon, too. Walmart, also.