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Notes -
It's not hard to come up with support for a minimal version -- every mechanic worth their salt has had some customer come in with a car where the brake pads have dissolved, the tires are bald, and the frame is about to fold in half, and the customer decides that they'll just drive it home. There's a libertarian argument that these problems solve themselves, and it's not wrong, but no few of these people end up taking out innocents with them. There's a pragmatic argument that the costs are huge and the benefits small, and it's probably right, but it's an ugly one to make.
The trouble's that even accepting that minimal version, it quickly turns from a 'is this car remotely safe' into a 'does someone who only buys new cars like how this one looks', or even a 'how do we get a guaranteed easy job for a handful of schmucks who can't be trusted with a wrench'? And even people who do recognize how bad the ugly versions of these programs get don't care that much about them, so it's a hard political problem.
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