How important do you think that binding rules and laws are?
Fairly important depending on what behaviors or human tendencies those laws are meant to constrain. Consider the importance of structure and ethical guidelines in childhood, especially during the delicate stage of personality formation under age 10. During this phase of life, children look to model, imitate, and reproduce the language, ideas, concepts, and habits of their parents, teachers, older siblings, and most pointedly their peers. Cognitive development throughout this part of childhood mirrors the environment, in my opinion, more than anything else, so consistent, reinforcing, and a safe (or affectionate) environment that mirrors those morals or ethics is extremely important for either lawful, or at least conscientious upbringing. Through adolescence and into adulthood, many cases have set precedence for laws that essentially prevent human mistakes, crimes of passion, deter dishonesty or misuse or abuse, or simply enforce order.
Do you think that people more often observe and respect rules and laws or seek to find some sort of work around or just ignore them entirely in favour of something else such as personal authority or charisma?
I think that most people respect the spirit of the law, even if they overlook them situationally. Traffic laws are important, but since many are self-enforcing, there is a high chance that they are ignored or broken when there is little danger of being caught. A moral interpretation of laws conflates a function of civil society with individual goodness, which I think muddies the ethical boundaries of individual and citizen. Running a traffic light is not a morally reprehensible crime - but colliding with another vehicle who's driver was under the assurance that others were trained in safe use of their vehicle and observing traffic laws meant to prevent such accidents, is. Many laws are snapshots of a particular culture or style of thinking: gatekeeping laws like the prohibition of alcohol, exploitative models that allowed slavery, or more modern examples of civil rights and gender protection. I remember reading a Supreme Justice once stating that laws are meant to predict and mold the general population to new, progressive, or just values that benefit human rights overall, and I think in a perfect world responsible lawmaking is exactly that. The elephant in the room that will always stymie rational, progressive lawmaking are the myriad opinions, values, religious outlooks, and ancient hard-coded traditions of human culture. As long as laws reflect the current era and evolve organically with people, they won't become, what Weber called an 'iron cage,' that exist simply for brutal control. If dystopia is its symptom, roundatable rulemaking is its opposite. In the same sense, people will follow laws naturally if they reflect their relative values. The contradiction here is that as culture changes and new laws are enacted to fence in human nature so to speak, it's that very elephant that decides the rules, not idealized notions of progress - this is the tool to shape (or at worst, control) the human condition.