Much as President Obama and other liberals may think natural laws for things like physics and economics don’t matter, the reality is they do and nowhere more so than on American highways. The president reportedly has secured agreements from Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, Honda and Hyundai to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy fleet average standard to 54.5 mpg by 2025. The new standard will be reviewed in 2018, but that won’t change the fact that automakers will immediately have to embark on efforts to lighten and downsize all of their models. Those that can’t be made sufficiently small to reach the required fleet average will go the way of the Model T.
It is inescapable that more weight means lower fuel economy, so heavier vehicles will have to go. So prepare to say goodbye to sport utility vehicles, pickups and minivans, the very vehicles millions of American families and businesses must rely upon every day. Even when lighter vehicle materials like aluminum and carbon fiber can be used instead of steel, the only SUVs and minivans that will survive will still have to be significantly smaller than at present, and thus far less practical for consumers.
By far the worst result, however, will be the fact that thousands will die because Obama, fanatical Big Green environmentalists, and their allies in the federal bureaucracy care more about removing micro-amounts of emissions than they do about the safety and convenience of people on the roads. We know this because the fanatics persist despite the fact that for years government and private sector researchers alike have documented the terrible correlation between CAFE, lighter cars and highway deaths.
In 2003, for example, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated that for every 100 pounds of weight taken out of a car weighing under 3,000 pounds, the death rate goes up more than 5 percent; the increase is slightly less than 5 percent for those weighing more than 3,000 pounds. Two years before that, a National Academy of Sciences study estimated that the lighter vehicles required to satisfy CAFE were responsible for as many as 2,600 highway deaths in one year alone. And in 1999, a comprehensive multiple regression analysis by USA Today of the government’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System data concluded that 7,700 people died for every one additional mpg attributable to CAFE regulation.
Many CAFE advocates claim the government can simply mandate additional safety equipment to counter the greater danger posed to occupants of lighter cars and trucks, but in doing so they concede the point that their favorite federal regulation exacts a terrible toll in return for comparatively meaningless benefits. But none of that will be mentioned today when Obama announces the new standard at the Washington Convention Center. If CAFE standards were produced by a public corporation or small business instead of the federal government, the families of those killed by the regulations would have a prima facie case for a class-action lawsuit.
