> but it's cold hard physics

It is if you assume the car is a vintage box car from before the 80's where you might or might not have airbags at all. New cars are designed to crumble and deploy airbags to absorb that impact so that the squishy humans inside the car don't experience anything nearly that high. Nowadays the biggest risk is speeding, as it negates the advances in car safety.

> a 5 mph increase in the maximum state speed limit was associated with an 8 percent increase in fatality rates on interstates and freeways and a 3 percent increase on other roads

https://www.iihs.org/topics/speed#effects-of-speed-limits-on....