As a design engineer, the most regulation there is, the better. Even if it causes headaches sometimes.
Bullshit. There needs to be some regulation, but there is already way, way too much regulation in the world and much of it does nothing BUT cause headaches. Over-regulation ruins products that could be good, and takes perfectly good products that worked off the market and replaces them with crap. Want a specific example? Try using one of the idiotic CARB-compliant portable gas (petrol) cans that are mandated across the USA now. They are not allowed to have a vent (because vapor may escape) and they are required to be "child proof". The result is cans that blow up like a balloon if left in the sun then spray gasoline vapor everywhere when you manage to release the nozzle, an act which usually requires 3 hands. Then because there can't be a vent, as gas pours out the air has to go in the nozzle so they go GLUG gurgle gurgle GLUG gurgle GLUG and dump gas all over the place when trying to fill the small tanks on portable equipment. If you want to use one to put gas in a car forget it, the stupid nozzles won't fit properly in a lot of car gas fillers, and if you do manage to get it in they flow so slowly that your arm will fall off trying to hold the thing up. They are absolutely useless garbage that accomplish the exact opposite of everything they the new regulation was supposed to do. It's so bad that an array of companies sprouted up selling "water jugs" and nozzles for said jugs which are quite obviously gas cans but can't be sold as such. I HATE excessive safety regulations, I'd roll back a huge range of regulations given the chance. If you want to buy some overly regulated headache inducing piece of crap that is your right, but don't force it on me.
IMHO, the US doesn't have a problem of excessive regulation, but of poorly-designed legislation.
But first, a lot of legislation
isn't what people think it is. Your example of the gas cans is a perfect one. The law itself is not nearly as draconian or unreasonable as you make it out to be.
The CARB regulation requires the cans to seal automatically and to be made such as to reduce permeation of the fuel. It does NOT ban a vent:
A portable fuel container system may incorporate a secondary opening (i.e. an opening other than the opening needed for the spout) provided the secondary opening is not easily tampered with by a consumer, and it does not emit hydrocarbon vapors in excess of the amounts specified in this procedure during fueling, storage, transportation, or handling events.
Any secondary opening that relieves pressure and improves fuel flow during dispensing shall be normally closed and must automatically return to the closed position when released.
Source:
https://www.arb.ca.gov/consprod/fuel-containers/pfc/pfccp501.pdf (the certification requirements)
https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/consprod/fuel-containers/pfc/pfcreg2016.pdf (the regulatory order itself, which references the certification requirements and gives them power of law)
The regulation places limits on vapor escape, requires it to be self-closing, so people don't accidentally leave it uncapped, and specifies that it may not leak. What the law doesn't do is tell manufacturers
how to implement those requirements. What this means is that some manufacturers will take the easy and cheap route by making some shitty product with no vent.
But it is possible to make compliant cans that work just fine:
https://www.jlconline.com/tools/trucks-equipment/gas-cans-that-actually-work_oIn fact, the regulatory order itself expressly allows for manufacturers to apply for an exemption from what little implementation details are given, if they have an "innovative" design that accomplishes the same goals a different way than the law envisions:
The Executive Officer may exempt a portable fuel container from one or more of the requirements of section 2467.2 if a manufacturer demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence that, due to the product’s design, delivery system, or other factors, the use of the product will result in cumulative TOG emissions below the highest emitting representative portable fuel container system in its product category as determined from applicable testing.
This seems to me to be a very sensible, reasonable law, written such as to
not prescribe a particular product design.
In other words, don't blame a law (which itself is perfectly sensible, both in intent and expression) for the shoddy work of crappy manufacturers who are simply too lazy to get it right.Meanwhile, remember that safety and environmental laws are
written in blood. They're not there for shits and giggles, but because they're needed to prevent harm. The fact that millions of easily-avoided workplace injuries happen each year shows that the need for such regulations is real. Similarly, the abominable state of the nutritional supplements industry demonstrates precisely why medical products need strong oversight. Those are just two examples.
I do, however, agree that regulations need to be done
right, and that means a) making a sincere effort to weigh the benefits of the change against the negative consequences, and b)
being willing to quickly and decisively rescind or modify a regulation if it has unforeseen negative consequences. But the latter is something governments in USA are almost never willing to do. So bad regulation, instead of being rescinded, gets more and more crap slathered onto it, with lawmakers digging in their heels rather than simply saying "hey, this didn't work out, so let's undo it, regroup, and do something else".
What I am absolutely against are the kinds of regulations (the kind usually snuck in as "
pork") designed to tip the scales for a particular company or special interest group, or more broadly, anything designed only to be anti-competitive, without significant merit of its own.
One that I believe has finally been corrected was one that forbid employers from providing iced or chilled water to their workers. It had a huge impact on me and my fellow workers as I worked my way through school in and outdoor steel fabrication yard where we didn't really know how hot it was because the available glass bulb thermometers went to the top and popped. Something well over 120 F. It finally was recognized that the rule had propagated from a time before mechanical refrigeration, when ice came from lakes and ponds cut and stored during the winter for summer use. And when no real provisions were made to assure that the ice wasn't cut from animal latrines or contaminated by rodents in storage.
Citation needed.
By the time the US started passing food safety and workplace safety laws, ice harvesting was already dead, since mechanical refrigeration had fully replaced harvested ice with manufactured ice.
What is true is that ice water can be dangerous in extremely hot environments. For that reason, some employers might have chosen to not offer it. That or they were cheapskates.
I don't have a citation, this is from my teen years. It was in osha early days and I was told that their first rule sets were just a union of all the state safety laws. And included this archaic law from one of the northern tier states got swept into the mix. As to the dangers of serving iced or chilled drinks, if it is a problem every restaurant and fast food place in the southern tier of states is killing people right and left.
<sass>Honey, I lived in the deep south until I was 12 (and in Maryland for 10 years)… I know all about those sticky, sweltering 100˚F-in-the-shade-and-90%-humidity summers!

Anyhow, I said it
can be dangerous, in that it can cause problems if drunk too quickly. My mom grew up in Miami and says she had a high school classmate who died from chugging lots of ice water after getting heatstroke playing sports outdoors in the summer. They were taught to be careful. Of course, deaths are very, very rare. But chugging ice water can also lead to
light-headedness and
stomach cramps, and it actually
rehydrates the body more slowly than more temperate water.