Several days ago, congress decided not to require auto makers to improve their
vehicle's gas mileage standards using the excuse that more fatalities would
occur due to an increase in the numbers of lighter cars on the road. I've
been wondering about this since we touched on it in another thread, and the
more I think about it the less sense it makes. First of all if car companies
were required to improve mileage, the cars that would have to be improved the
most would be large trucks and SUVs. If those types of vehicles got lighter I
would think that overall safety would improve because a collision with a
smaller car wouldn't be quite as lopsided as it is now. Second of all, some
of the most efficient cars on the road right now (barring hybrids) - Hondas,
Toyotas and Saturns are also the cars with the best safety records (SUVs often
have poor records - prone to rollovers, tire problems etc.) If we put more of
those kinds of cars on the road, I would think that safety would improve.
Moreover, if you are replacing SUVs with small but safe cars the number of
collisions between oversize vehicles and small ones is bound to come down.
Thirdly, I wonder if deaths due to pollution as well as those due to global
warming (the latter very difficult to gauge I imagine, but too significant to
ignore) were factored into the equation.
It just appears to me that whoever did the study threw the GOP this safety
bone and they were all over it like flies on feces as an excuse to continue
the 11 year moratorium on improving fuel efficiency.
Doug
