Is it the same phenomenon as people buying massive phones even if they're literally too big for their hands to easily use.
The only practical way to solve collective action problems is through government regulation, and government regulations do not take into account bystander lives.
In the US. In the EU pedestrian safety is accounted for in their ncap rating IIRC.
In terms of Samsung's phones, Galaxy S II was tiny and bad, S 22 ultra is OK, wouldn't want anything smaller.
Cars are a different topic, but with 2 small kids, small cars are useless when transporting all of us. Very bad safety, storage too tiny and thus not usable for even weekend outdoorsy trips. Now I am not advocating for oversized US style SUVs, but some storage is required and making cars taller like crossovers or european style SUVs sucks for many reasons (high center of gravity and thus bad handling, higher consumption and maintenance costs, more permanent noise in higher speeds).
RE: Cars, I tend to think fair enough when kids are involved (although I think they could still be a lot more compact without actually losing much space inside, Japan seems to manage with much smaller vehicles) but it feels like virtually everyone of my parents generation has bought by far the largest car they ever had now that they're retired. I've one aunt who has a car she basically has to climb into, had quite a bad fall getting out of it one time and still doesn't want to downsize because she "wouldn't feel safe" driving something smaller.
A lot of this is regulatory arbitrage. The whole concept behind CAFE was idiotic from the start and recent tweaks to the rules haven't fixed the fundamental problem. If we want people to burn less fuel then just tax the fuel instead of distorting the free market by putting weird mandates on manufacturers.
The station wagons available in the 1970s had some actual "utility" in that you could use one to carry a family of 5 plus dog and cargo, and tow a boat trailer down a rough dirt road to a lake. Now newer station wagon models have sacrificed that utility in a misguided pursuit of fuel efficiency and styling so they have become useless to a lot of American consumers.
Unfortunately this is politically impossible when you've got people like Grover Norquist who will primary anyone he thinks had a hand in raising taxes.
When you scare most of congress away from using the tool of higher taxes, what you wind up with is massive deficit spending and misguided 'carrot' incentives when the 'stick' of raised taxes is taken away.
The iPhone mini bombed so there aren't really options even on the resale market outside of absurdly small secondary devices and feature phones.
People definitely prefer to buy larger phones, and that's ultimately all that really matters. Similarly I feel like a lot of car purchases could have a cycle of a person increasingly bumping up the size they're looking at because a much bigger one is only a few percentage points more.