I agree...up to a point. It appears that irresponsibility played a part in this collision. The driver...and maybe the city too.
If you want to conduct your life in an irresponsible and dangerous way to yourself...okay with me. Wanna free climb El Capitan without ropes? Wanna play Russian Roulette with your 9mm? Wanna swim solo from San Fran to Honolulu? Be my guest. If something bad happens, I won't be overflowing with sympathy.
However, if your irresponsible and dangerous actions endanger others around you, there most likely will be legal penalties. Unfortunately, these aren't imposed until after the fact, when innocents are either injured or dead. And there's no way to determine if a person will be acting irresponsibly in the future. The ideas from the film "Minority Report" aren't reality...yet.
In light of all this, it seems appropriate for gov't to take reasonable actions to protect the non-involved, bystanders, and innocents. If the engineering and urban planning folks are aware of design criteria that afford improved safety to citizens of a community and considered "best practices", and they fail to incorporate those criteria into the urban design, they are negligent IMO.
And here's a little known fact - most government entities have immunities from lawsuits built into their charters. So if they act in a negligent way that injures you, you have no recourse. You can only sue a government entity if they agree to allow it.
And then there's the other side of the coin. When gov't steps in to create laws, codes, and regulations to protect the citizenry from the irresponsible actions of a few, they are accused of creating the "nanny state".
So where's the balance? No one knows. The balance point is different for everyone depending on which side is taking money out of your wallet.