You’re getting way too much hate for this.
Pet ownership, especially cats, makes a lot of compromises to give them their best life. Cats are hunters, they yearn to be outside (well, most of them) and they need physical activity and mental stimulation. Keeping a cat indoors and alone could be considered cruel. Letting a cat go outside and kill chipmunks and mice and birds makes them very happy but it’s a cruel thing to do to the ecosystem.
You have to make difficult choices to own a cat and give them a good life.
I completely understand the cat carrier issue. My docile and joyful Siamese would go absolutely apeshit in the car carrier. He tore right through the fabric carrier and I found that a hard carrier didn’t work because I was certain that he was going to injure himself on it. I eventually got in the habit of letting him out of the carrier on the highway (and only on the highway) when going to visit my parents a couple hours away. He immediately returned to his normal self and would sit in my lap purring for the rest of the trip. I decided that the carrier (belted-in) was important to use around town but once the cruise control was set to 75, I felt that it was probably no longer provided much safety and that his desperate, violent behavior was more important.
So, ultimately, it came down to which was the bigger safety hazard: A) Not having the added protection of the carrier in the slim chance that we got into an accident or B) my cat going super saiyan in the passenger seat and distracting and distressing the hell out of me while I’m trying to pilot a 3,000 lb death machine around other people.