We all get hot under the collar over this issue, over baggage, over ‘behaviour’ (even when it can all be classified as ‘normal, human’), over people not watching what can be a god-awful and, to the passenger, meaningless, safety demo (the present BA one is trash and I refuse to pay attention to it for its interminable length).
Evacuations are not the rushes-to-death we consider them to be. They are generally benign events, or non-events.
Evacuations aren’t killing people. We can all afford to be rather more realistic and less precious.
Added to which, many of the tests generated unbelievable results in the first place. But that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has realised that the most important thing in aviation is money.
The growing problems of obesity etc will become a matter of survival of the fittest if the chips are ever down - in the incredibly unlikely circumstances of a proper life-or-death evacuation, while making my escape I plan to show no quarter to those who’ve already given up on themselves. That said, I very rarely travel other than extremely close to an exit.
Why the DoT have a bee in their bonnet, I don’t know, but I guess others do. For the likely consequences, I refer you to the most important thing in aviation, above.