[yawpitch]

Take all the safety items that do actually contribute to the S-Class sticker price, now mandate them in all cars. The price of all cars goes up, sure, but also the cost of a car that’s as safe as the S-Class is goes down. What you’ve done is decreased the cost of having the more safe option while eliminating the less safe option, precisely because most of those currently premium / luxury items simply haven’t benefitted at all from economies of scale. The airbag example proves the point, inside any country that mandates them. Are there cheaper and more dangerous cars available without them? Sure… but not inside the borders of any country that cares about the survival of its citizens.

We should all live in countries that mandate extremely high safety standards and spend their time worrying about how to raise the average income to compensate, rather than in a country that accepts unreasonable risk just to keep wages unreasonably low.