Not sure if this is a spoiler, it’s been a while since I read those books, but if memory serves the only reason Zaphod survived the TPV was because he was temporarily the inhabitant of a pocket universe specifically designed to trick him, and naturally for this universe’s version of the TPV he was the most important being in it, and in telling him so the pocket-universe TPV just confirmed ZB’s own view of himself, leaving him unharmed and a little extra smug. At some further point in the plot this fact is revealed, not sure if it’s the same book, but I remember it as a hilarious deflationary moment for the character.
Besides the many other factors mentioned by commenters here, I'll add one other: drivers in the US rarely face consequences for killing pedestrians or, for that matter, other drivers, even when it's the result of willfully negligent or reckless behavior. It's such a longstanding trend that it's become a meme: if you want to get away with murder, make sure to kill your victim with a car. "I didn't see them/I made mistake" works so well that authorities just don't bring charges, because juries are so willing to accept this excuse. Perhaps because so many of them can see themselves doing the same thing.
This is how I feel about my Honda, and to some extent, Kubernetes. In the former case I kept a 2006 model in good order for so long I skipped at least two (automobile) generation's worth of car-to-phone teething problems, and after years of hearing people complain about their woes I've found the experience of connecting my iphone to my '23 car pretty hassle-free.
In the latter, I am finally moving a bunch of workloads out of EC2 after years of nudging from my higher-ups and, while it's still far from a simple matter I feel like the managed solutions in EKS and GKE have matured and greatly lessen the pain of migrating to K8S. I can only imagine what I would have gotten bogged down with had I promptly acted on my bosses' suggestion to do this six or seven years ago. (I also feel very lucky that the people I work for let me move on these things in my own due time.)