Government, remember, is not composed of experts in much of anything – except control and manipulation. Politicians and bureaucrats are not people who do things.

They force others to do things.

In the car world, you have the ridiculous spectacle of non-engineer mechanical imbeciles dictating functional parameters of engine design to people who actually do know how a four-stroke engine works, the meaning of stoichiometry; who understand that there is an inherent conflict between fuel economy and "safety." That the more a car is designed to meet the first objective, the less it will meet the second.

And the reverse.

Result?

The engineers are told to deliver both in equal measure – and we end up with cars that are heavy and thirsty.

It's a tragedy – a comic one, when you put it in context.