You make it sound like customers don't care about safety. If company will deliver better customer satisfaction they will get more profit. If anything I would trust a for-profit motive more than a feature forced by regulations.
From 2000 to 2010 Toyota used cheap materials in their cars that made cars accelerate and crash. It's estimated that 89 people died due to this in the US alone.
Your blind believe in "the market" is simply wrong. Without regulatory oversight, this might never have come to light and you would still see Toyotas running into barriers or Fords burning after an accident. Just you wouldn't actually know about it because it's relatively rare.
Manufacturers' optimisations for making their cars enticing to you does not mean they have to put a lot of thought in making their cars safe for _others_ on the road.
Safety Regulation is there to make sure those constraints are given a high priority in the design of equipment so it doesn't kill you, your passengers or the people around you.
It does if it is important for customer. And even if it doesn't - it doesn't mean they will make it dangerous for pedestrians. Furthermore, regulations come from what market innovates. An imperfect analogy on why regulations don't always bring best results: having side mirrors is incredibly important safety regulation. That is of course until you can introduce better safety by not having them, but regulation prevents you from doing so (cameras)
If a car costs $1,000 less but would catch fire in an instant when turned on its roof, people would opt for the money, I guarantee you that, because when was the last time you car was upside down?