I see a lot of questioning as to why this isn't required by regulation around this topic. I have no idea, but my intuition would be that it simply never occurred to regulators to require that door handles work? That door handles be accessible? Could it be that simple?

It reminds me of the rise of SUVs leading to more rollover crashes in the 90s.

Before that, NHTSA didn’t run rollover crash tests - they added rollover crash tests in 2000 in response to SUVs.

Regulatory and safety agencies are usually reactive, and can’t anticipate every market change.