The context is "regulations are written in blood", not a multi-decade scientific experiment. Oregon doesn't know or care about the "control group" in defining i

The context is "regulations are written in blood", not a multi-decade scientific experiment. Oregon doesn't know or care about the "control group" in defining its own laws. How well the "control group" fared following the passing of the law is irrelevant to the spirit behind the law and why the law was passed (the "blood" of the past). (You can easily Google to find out that of course there have been gas station explosions since 1951 in "the control group". Would some portion of them have been prevented by similar laws to Oregon's? Who knows; Oregon probably doesn't know, it was never Oregon's intent to run their regulations as a science experiment. It was Oregon's intent to deal with issues they saw in the past safety record of gas stations as they saw fit.)