Posted by: Barthélemy Barbancourt
on Jun 23, 2009
May 19 was a perfect day for a White House photo op. The sun was out, the Rose Garden was full, and everyone was smiling, even the CEOs of several automakers — which was ironic, because they were there to sign a suicide pact.
President Obama was unveiling, in his words, a “historic agreement” — a “harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington.” The federal government’s fuel-economy standards were being ratcheted up yet again, to 39 mpg for cars and 30 mpg for SUVs and other light trucks by 2016. That is one huge increase over the current standards, 27.5 and 23.1 mpg. And it is just latest turn in a decades-long saga known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy.
And then there is CAFE’s impact on safety. It restricts the production of larger, heavier vehicles, which generally get fewer miles per gallon than smaller, lighter cars. But they’re also more crashworthy: They have more mass with which to absorb collision force, and more space in which occupants can safely decelerate (with the help of seat belts and air bags) before striking the car’s interior. According to the National Research Council study, the 27.5 mpg standard — which was Congress’s target when it initially enacted CAFE — contributed to about 2,000 traffic fatalities per year.
That's 60,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more injured due to a stupid government mandate that has not decreased our dependence on foreign oil.
