What I find is that people tend to vastly underestimate the role that path dependence has on explaining history and then work to come up with just-so stories th

What I find is that people tend to vastly underestimate the role that path dependence has on explaining history and then work to come up with just-so stories that explain the result, absent path dependency. Nobody ever sat down and rationally assessed the relative risk of motorcycles vs seat belts and crafted a law to take the two into account. Instead, what happened was at one point in time, a group of people lobbied and succeeded in changing one status quo and at another point in time, some other group of people lobbied and failed to change another status quo.