With all that the Obama administration has been hitting us with of late, the news about CAFE and how it will affect us has been given far less coverage than it deserves. I wonder if Obama’s motive is to flood the field so as to slip stuff like this by us. It is certainly the effect.
What is CAFE? We’ve been hearing about CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for years, and the usual hype is that they’re a good thing.
What we’re being sold on is lower fuel consumption for our cars which will lead to less “global warming.” The science surrounding the global warming scare is questionable at best, as has been covered in many venues. So CAFE has a questionable goal from the start.
We’re also told that lower fuel consumption means lower cost, which would be a boon to consumers. But does it?
Those in favor of raising CAFE standards never tell us about the increased technology costs involved with squeezing ever more energy out of increasingly small amounts of fuel, amounting to several thousand dollars per car — to say nothing of the cost of maintaining such beasts.
They never mention the increases in taxes to make up for the shortfall of revenue from the gas tax, or the increased tag fees from states who have traditionally used weight as a measurement for registration fees.
The cost of CAFE will far outweigh the costs of buying more fuel, even at today’s inflated prices.
Also, let’s remember that those inflated prices are brought on by oil starvation, which is brought on by the misguided policy of this administration. In the months since President Obama took the oath of office, oil prices have more than doubled. Could it be that Obama’s policy of “no domestic drilling” has anything to do with this?
What would you say, though, if I told you that this “good thing” that the government is forcing on us in the name of “saving the environment” is responsible for no less than 2,000 deaths per year?
Back in 2002, the National Academy of Sciences did a study on the effects of CAFE. They found that over the three decades CAFE has been in effect, downsizing of cars and trucks for fuel economy has cost us about 2,000 lives per year.
Less steel framing and smaller size equals more miles per gallon. It also means you’re rolling down the road in a vehicle with much less crashworthiness, making you more vulnerable to every stationary object, to that semi behind you … and to the guy in the normal-sized car.
This death toll figure was arrived at long before President Obama recently upped the CAFE standards by 30% and more. The death toll going forward will be even higher.
Sounds attractive, doesn’t it?
Imagine the reaction of the oh-so-energy conscious Democrats to a private company causing 2,000 plus deaths per year. We’d be having show hearings by the dozen, the company execs lined up in the hearing room for the TV cameras like a corporate murderer’s row. The coverage would be non-stop, as it was for the much smaller death toll involving SUV drivers who never could figure out how to inflate their tires correctly. Special legislation would be enacted to “stop the carnage.” The government would air PSAs urging us not to buy the product.
However, since CAFE is a government product — and now, so too are the cars — none of that is happening. Instead of trying to scare us out of such vehicles as they have (falsely) been doing with SUVs, they’re silent on the dangers involved with cars that are built far too small and light.
The CAFE program is still in force. The government is planning to provide tax breaks to herd us into buying more of the death traps and to give up our more crashworthy vehicles. They will raise the death toll higher still.
I speak from some painful personal experience on the matter of small car deaths. Anecdotal, to be sure, but I have twice been at the scene of fatal one-car accidents. Once where I knew the crash victim personally, and once where I happened to come upon an accident before the police arrived. Both of these were situations where the person would have lived had they been driving something larger — a Prius in the first case and a Ford Fiesta in the other.
In both cases, they were convinced to value a gallon of gas over their own lives, and paid the price. And I’m left with the horrible memory of those two incidents.
I will never drive such a vehicle, regardless of the supposed tax breaks involved.
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