That's because the government doesn't particularly "care" about anything, the government isn't a person. An individual can care about something, a government is just a system, systems don't care. People care, thus people should elect representatives who actually represent their interests. Ideally it shouldn't be something the federal government handles at all, this is a matter for individual state governments, or in the case of interstate roads, a matter of making a deal between two states that's mutually beneficial. Your local representative might care about the road outside your house because he lives on the same block, if you think anyone in DC cares about whether you can get to work on time, you are mistaken. Politics have become terribly impersonal and liability is far too diluted to truly hold anyone accountable for anything. Failure of elected officials can only go so far though, often times things can't change because the regulations and requirements surrounding a project are so huge that it's just not worth the effort. The fence outside my house is a perfect example - I have ample room on my property to park my car, but I can't because there's a crossing about a meter or two further down the road. I can't knock down my own fence that stands on my own property to park my own car because the crossing is "too close" according to some ridiculous safety requirement. Now, at no point during entering or exiting the property do I even come close to the crossing, but we all have to pretend that we're stupid because a book said so. This affects multiple residents, too. The council has decided that it is more prudent to tell everyone to park half-way on the pavement, take up space reserved for pedestrians and create a narrow sphere of slowness on the road instead of letting people park on their yards, and all to no benefit in terms of safety since now the cars are even closer to the pedestrians than they would otherwise. The only way to fix this issue and satisfy the requirement is to move the crossing and its set of lights, and that's just too expensive.
