It's not quite so cut and dried, though. As safety measures are introduced, people tend to increase risky behavior which ends up mitigating the new safety measures.
I think that's a spurious analogy. The public has no duty to build roads such as to enable your preferred suicide technique. The public has no right to tell you how many hours you can work or not. A job is a free exchange between two parties.
That's a statement born out of extreme privilege. For substantial proportions of people, there is very little freedom involved: You take what is on offer, or you lose your house or don't eat. One side has an extreme amount of extra leverage, and some of them takes according advantage.
People died fighting for the 8 hour working day because without regulation employers simply did not give a shit if they were working people into an early grave. We have May Day labour demonstrations in large part of the world in part as a result of what is now the AFL-CIO wanting to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket massacre, and restart what was already then, in 1880's, a multiple decades long fight for human working hours.
In other instances, people burned to death because of employers that thought it ok to lock the factory doors to prevent workers from taking unauthorised breaks.
Is that an indication of a free exchange?
For a free exchange, both sides need to have reasonably equal power.
I would love to hear your thoughts. I'm hopeful that both classical and progressive liberals can find common ground in a basic income. Combined, we are an unstoppable force for human freedom and prosperity.
For example, since you bring up roads -- narrower lanes make safer drivers: http://www.planetizen.com/node/80229/another-study-shows-nar...