It's Not the Speed, It's the Sudden Stops!

From my local dead tree newspaper:

Stockton: "...Police said the driver of a silver Volkswagen was traveling...at a high rate of speed and did not slow for stopped traffic in front of him. The VW crashed into the back of a stopped SUV...The man in the VW was transported to a hospital, where he died as a result of his injuries..."

On the other hand, he got great gas mileage!

"Just One Child..."

Saw this cartoon over at Blonde Sagacity (ain't Gary Varvel great?), but it's not the only instance of liberal hypocrisy on this point. The CAFE standards, for example, making cars lighter and lighter, in order to achieve fuel economy at the expense of safety. Apply the "if it saved just one child's life" standard to making cars more survivable in a crash and tell me which side the liberals fall on?

CAFE Kills

I ran a link of that name in the Saturday Linkaround this AM, by Michelle Malkin. Little did I know last night when I put the Linkaround to bed, that I would have a graphic example of it in my dead tree paper this morning:

Child killed, another hurt in Hwy. 4 crash

In a detail from the photo by Craig Sanders, we see what's left of a Ford Fusion after having been rear ended by a tow truck.



Notice the back half of the car is gone. The back seat, where the government, having mandated you have a car with airbags, that unfortunately kill small children, tells you to have the children ride, so that they will be "safe". Well, safer! The toddler who died, was riding in the front seat next to the driver. Another child, riding in the back, as prescribed, is in critical condition and may not make it.

Am I against airbags? No. Should the government have mandated them? I think that mandating them before they knew of the unintended consequences was wrong. On the whole, I believe they save lives, but that is small comfort to the person who has lost a loved one to a government mandated "safety device".

But, the CAFE standards, there I am 100% opposed to bureaucrats setting arbitrary fuel standards, contrary to the laws of physics, expecting car manufacturers to make their cars more fuel efficient, typically by making them lighter, without necessarily being correspondingly safer.

Getting the best fuel economy you can is a great idea. Having government impose arbitrary standards that do not take physics or current state of the art technology into consideration is bad policy. (The same goes for arbitrary EPA standards as well.)

And if the government wants to give tax breaks for surpassing current standards, great! Let the manufacturers have an incentive for their R&D. But don't arbitrarily assume that if you were able to achieve a certain percentage improvement in any given year, that the exact same percentage can be produced by government fiat. At least, not at the expense of overall safety.

That child's life, those children's pain and suffering is not worth the price of fuel that their Ford Fusion or any Ford Fusion saves in it's life time because it met some arbitrary government standard.

Maybe the government should be getting out of the way of energy producers so the supply can go up and/ or cutting federal taxes on gasoline so that consumers can afford to buy safer cars, rather than be continually forced into smaller, lighter cars?

In a tie, the win will generally go to the type of car your legislator drives (or is driven in), rather than the one he wants you to drive.

Quote(s) du jour

"CAFE is a solution in search of a problem."

-Dr. Robert W. Crandall, Brookings Institution

"The evidence is overwhelming that CAFE standards result in more highway deaths."

-Charli E. Coon, J.D., Heritage Foundation

Welcome to the CAFE of Death. My name is Barry, I'll be your Waitperson

(Originally published July 29, 2011)

In anticipation of new CAFE standards, Honda introduced a new model, the Honda Accordion* today...


*Not a Honda

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.

Don't hold your breath waiting for your favorite Congress Critter to lead by example on this any time soon. Anyone want to bet that government limos won't be exempt from CAFE standards? Or will the fleets just have to make more wind up cars to offset them? Part of that "shared sacrifice", don'tcha know?

Update : From edmunds.com (for every Doubting Thomas and Willie):

"The cold hard facts show that smaller, lighter cars are generally less safe than larger, heavier cars."

"...According to the IIHS figures, there were 96 fatalities per million registered vehicles for the small car category. That figure drops to 62 fatalities for the midsize class of cars and 64 per million for large sedans."

The two highest fatality rates are for small cars and small pickups.

See also:
CAFE Standards Kill: Congress' Regulatory Solution to Foreign Oil Dependence Comes at a Steep Price

H/T Rob Port

Welcome to the CAFE of Death. My name is Barry, I'll be your Waitperson.

In anticipation of new CAFE standards, Honda introduced a new model, the Honda Accordion* today...


*Not a Honda

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.

Don't hold your breath waiting for your favorite Congress Critter to lead by example on this any time soon. Anyone want to bet that government limos won't be exempt from CAFE standards? Or will the fleets just have to make more wind up cars to offset them? Part of that "shared sacrifice", don'tcha know?

H/T Rob Port