The Big Lie About Fuel Efficiency

In a Chronicle story story about the Bush administration's proposal to 'reform' CAFE standards--a 'reform' that, at first glance, appears to be all about appearing to do something while actually making it harder to keep track of the standards, and boy does that story get old--one of the classic auto industry lies gets passed on without comment:

Raising the number from the current 27.5 miles per gallon would cause hundreds more highway deaths each year because automakers would meet the goal by moving to smaller cars, the administration argues.

Sadly, no:

The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars--8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail....While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.

In summary, then:

• SUVs are a little more dangerous for their occupants than normal passenger vehicles; and


• SUVs are vastly more dangerous to people in other vehicles.

Applying passenger-vehicle CAFE standards to SUVs would mean fewer SUVs on the road; fewer of these killing machines translates directly to fewer deaths. It's not a choice between safety and fuel efficiency, as Detroit would like us to believe. It's a choice between industry profits on one hand, and safety and fuel efficiency on the other.

[That's all, folks]