Look who’s trading blood for oil

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Senate Plurality Leader Harry Reid’s call to up the mandated car mileage could be the next amnesty battle. Studies show that traffic fatalities rise along with the miles per gallon, as smaller, lighter cars are less safe. The Washington Examiner said in an editorial:

Fuel economy standards don’t work

The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper, The Examiner

2007-06-19 07:00:00.0

Current rank: # 42 of 3,426

WASHINGTON -

Despite Congress’ repeated efforts to repeal the laws of physics in favor of something more politically correct, the fact remains that bigger is safer when it comes to vehicle size. Supporters of increasing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards ignore what millions of minivan and SUV drivers already know: They stand a much better chance of surviving an accident than drivers of lighter, more fuel-efficient subcompacts. The problem is that significantly improving fuel economy means cutting average vehicle weight. The curb weight of a typical family sedan can be reduced from the present 3,200 pounds to, say, 2,800 pounds. But maintaining the same level of safety with advanced air bags, refined crush zones and other technological fixes could make the lighter family sedan unaffordable for middle-class buyers.

Advocates of higher CAFE standards claim that the smaller vehicles will pollute the air less and consume fewer natural resources. As a result, from a global perspective, such vehicles will do less damage to the environment and fewer people will die or get sick as a result of emissions-related causes. But most Americans with families to transport and businesses to move see a much more immediate and concrete health and safety benefit in driving vehicles that serve their purposes without putting at risk their lives and those of their loved ones. Only through force and coercion will they trade their practical vehicles for the smaller, less useful and often more expensive “green” vehicles favored by higher CAFE advocates.

Members of Congress too often ignore such practical considerations. They’re the ones, after all, who gave us low-flush toilets, which are supposed to save water but require more flushes. Congress also gets credit for those energy-efficient top-loading washing machines that don’t get the clothes clean on the first try, according to the June edition of Consumer Reports. And the original CAFE standards following the 1973 Arab oil embargo were supposed to reduce our national dependency on imported petroleum. Yet, as Michael Lynch of the Center for Individual Freedom points out, the United States was importing 30 percent of its oil then, but more than 50 percent today.

Various proposals now before the Senate would raise current CAFE standards more than 30 percent (now a minimum of 27.5 miles per gallon for cars, and 21 mpg for small trucks, minivans and SUVs) to 36 and 30 mpg, respectively. Sam Kazman, who heads the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s “Death by Regulation” project, told The Examiner that higher traffic fatalities will undoubtedly be one of the current legislation’s unintended consequences. CAFE standards have already been blamed for more than 46,000 additional traffic fatalities, leading Kazman to call them “one of the worst and deadliest regulatory programs on the books right now.”

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