Complain about the safety equipment if you want, with 40,000 deaths and 600,000 injuries a year it's no wonder the government has to keep you from doing stupid things.
Every day I read about someone that was ejected because they didn't want to bother with the seat belt.
There is a place for these people:
http://www.darwinawards.com/
It's not safety equipment
specifically that I object to. But I do object to vehicle designs being dictated by the government based on lowest common denominator drivers and worse case scenarios.
When I say "cocoon cars", what I'm referring to are heavy inefficient automobiles that have so isolated us from the physics and real-world effects of operating a motor vehicle that one can be lulled into a sense of security that belies that fact that we're piloting two tons of steel, iron, plastic and rubber down the highway.
The padding, thick doors, heavy bumpers, power steering and brakes - all work to give a driver a sense of security that is out of line with the true physics of operating a car. It's my contention that this sense of security leads to complacency because the driver is not sufficiently physically engaged in the act of driving.
And that is precisely why I like smaller cars.
Maybe I'm hardcore, but I'll take manual brakes, a non-assisted rack-and-pinion, a tight seat belt that
I control the tension over and no AC, and the associated awareness that driving such a light, nimble vehicle gives me, over hydraulic assisted steering, power brakes, passive restraints, and 900 lbs of extra equipment that is only there for the worse case scenario.
And if natural selection prefers the comfortable, unaware driver in the 4000 lb pickup/sport ute/minivan over the proactive, aware, engaged driver in the in the 1800 lb econobox or sports car, then it's unlikely we'll ever see a 100 MPG car.