The fuse is also protecting the wire. So in a car you have a big fuse (fusible link) protecting the big wire to the fuse box. Then you have a bunch of little fuses protecting the wire on each branch circuit. All these fuses are intended to last for the life of the vehicle. The only time they would blow would be on the type of fault that would require further troubleshooting. It is unlikely that you could produce an electronic current limiter that would be cheaper and more reliable than a single use fuse.
My father the mechanic used to like to tell me about an exception to the rule as an object lesson about the trade off between risk and reliability. Back in the days of breaker ignitions the ignition circuit was almost never fused. A blown fuse in the ignition circuit could strand people out in the middle of nowhere. The extra risk was acceptable to eliminate the situation where the fuse blew when the ignition might of been able to continue to work in some sort of degraded mode. It was OK that that degraded mode might involve smoke and flame.
My father the mechanic used to like to tell me about an exception to the rule as an object lesson about the trade off between risk and reliability. Back in the days of breaker ignitions the ignition circuit was almost never fused. A blown fuse in the ignition circuit could strand people out in the middle of nowhere. The extra risk was acceptable to eliminate the situation where the fuse blew when the ignition might of been able to continue to work in some sort of degraded mode. It was OK that that degraded mode might involve smoke and flame.