Generally speaking, government regulation has the property of producing problems like this one: it slices the world into categories, and those get set as rigid law.

But real world success comes from real time modification of categories, the merging and splitting of categories into whatever’s most useful. To kitchen designer, a cabinet is either a wall or a base cabinet. To a gunfighter, a cabinet is either solid cover or insufficient. To a cat, a cabinet is either rough enough to hook his claws into and climb, or not. To a kid, a cabinet is either a good place to hide during hide-and-seek, or not.

Categories need to be variable based on the goals at hand.

This thing with the truck design forced to fit a local maximum of value within the constraints created by those categories, is yet another example of the same thing happening.

In simpler terms, people need to be free to make decisions in order to produce value and things that work well. Excessive government regulation prevents those choices or makes their context artificial. The result can be absurdity at best, and utter failure and ruin at worst.