I think there's a huge assumption implied in an analogy between airbags and user tracking. Airbags save lives. Anti-tracking guards against some hand-wavey philosophical concerns regarding privacy (in an inconsistent fashion, even... It's hard for me to buy that we need to make user-behavior tracking for ad targeting illegal in a world where user-purchase tracking for credit reporting is legal).

The motto of some people on this website when it comes to unethical behavior in tech seems to “Well, most people didn’t actively try to stop us…”

Absolutely. People don't care about this stuff and honestly, I'm not expecting them to, because I don't care about much of the world either. But I do care about this issue and so, I'd like better regulation so that the individuals' privacy is better protected, with the same level of them not caring.