Justin's Political Corner

Malkin: Newly Improved Fuel Standards Will “Cost Untold American Lives.” In a column featured by Fox Nation, The Washington Examiner, and several other conservative outlets, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin called fuel economy standards a “draconian environmental regulation that will cost untold American lives.” In the column, titled “Obama’s Sneaky, Deadly, Costly Car Tax,” Malkin pointed to research on previous fuel economy standards to claim that the new standards are “lethal”:

These lethal regulations should be wrapped in yellow police “CAUTION” tape. The tradeoffs are stark and simple: CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] fuel standards clamp down on the production of larger, more crashworthy cars. Analysts from Harvard to the Brookings Institution to the federal government itself have arrived at the same conclusion: CAFE kills. Welcome to the bloody intersection between the Obama jobs death toll and the Obama green death toll. [MichelleMalkin.com, 8/29/12] [Fox Nation, 8/29/12] [Newsbusters, 8/29/12] [CNSNews.com, 8/29/12] [Townhall, 8/29/12] [Washington Examiner, 8/29/12]

But Standards Were Reformed To Remove Incentives For Smaller Vehicles

Expert: New Fuel Economy Standards “Will Have Little Impact On Safety.” Mark Jacobsen, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California - San Diego, told Media Matters that, in accordance with a study he conducted, the new fuel economy standards “will have little impact on safety.” Jacobsen’s 2011 study found previous standards had provided incentives for carmakers to simply build smaller and potentially less safe cars while continuing to produce the same amount of light trucks. But as Jacobsen explained in an email to Media Matters, the new standard will encourage automakers to use advanced technology to improve fuel economy, rather than simply building smaller cars:

Under the old standards automakers instead had to meet a constant, fixed fuel economy target and they could do that simply by building smaller cars, or, more likely, through a combination of building smaller cars and using better technology.  Under the new standard they will instead do much of the savings via technology alone; building smaller cars only gets them a tougher fuel economy rule to meet so [it] doesn’t help them as much as it used to.  As a result, the size (and safety outcomes) of vehicles in our car fleet may remain much the same as they are today. (this is one of the findings in my paper)

In sum, the improvements in fuel economy under the new rule will likely come through technologies that are less visible, like hybrid engines and improvements in engine efficiency, and so will have little impact on safety. [Email exchange, 8/30/12, emphasis added] [American Economic Review, 2011]

Research: New Materials Help Reduce Weight And Increase Safety. In a 2006 study published in American Scientist, two researchers found that improving cars’ fuel economy by making them lighter doesn’t necessarily mean compromising safety, partly because the increased use of new materials “offers automotive engineers the means to fashion vehicles that are simultaneously safer and less massive than their predecessors”:

We have also conducted our own analyses and come to the conclusion that the claim that lighter vehicles are inherently dangerous to those riding in them is flawed. For starters, all else is never equal; other aspects of vehicle design appear to control what really happens in a crash, as reflected in the safety record of different kinds of vehicles. What’s more, the use of high-strength steel, light-weight metals such as aluminum and magnesium, and fiber-reinforced plastics now offers automotive engineers the means to fashion vehicles that are simultaneously safer and less massive than their predecessors, and such designs would, of course, enjoy the better fuel economy that shedding pounds brings. [American Scientist, March-April 2006]

h/t: MMFA