I think seatbelts or airbags are better analogies.

And both seatbelts and airbags are mandated in the US.

Of course saving lives isn't the ONLY metric (perhaps all personal vehicles would be banned if that were the case), but we make reasonable compromises all over the place in the direction of saving lives. I think the discussion is just over what people generally see as "reasonable". And public opinion can change drastically over time [0], due in part to the popularization of studies like this.

[0] https://www.wpr.org/history/surprisingly-controversial-histo...