>First of all, I'm a lot less interested in protecting me from myself, so I have no interest at all in mandating pointless inanity. If somebody wants to become fodder for the Darwin awards, that's their business. And there are areas (more sleep etc.) that are unenforceable so that it would be silly to legislate them.
But they are - for truck drivers we had (and probably still have) a limit of 8 hours driving before taking at least four hours off. Enforced by a gadget on the tachometer which draws a graph of the vehicle's movements (speed by time). And cops have the key to the device, and if they see the graph was off zero for more than eight hours, they slap both the driver and his boss with a fine.
Doesn't stop them from switching trucks at the garage, though.