I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. If companies could get away with making a car as unsafe as the model T, you’d probably see quite a few $10k cars on the road. But as it stands today, most cars are required by law to have all sorts of safety features built in.
As our standard of living and safety goes up, so does the price of goods because more is required to go into R&D and manufacturing.
You might try a Matrix group instead. Doesn’t require a phone number and supports more than 1000 users unlike Signal. Search is bad though unfortunately.