K a u k was driving her
H onda Civic along a winding
stretch of California Highway
152. H er husband, Tim, was beside
her, and their two-month-old son,
Matthew; was belted in his car seat.
As Sharon steered around a curve,
a Lincoln Town C ar coming from
the opposite direction crossed the
double line and slammed head-on
into the H onda. Although Sharon
was wearing a seat belt, she was
killed inscandy. Tim and Matthew
w ere seriously injured. T he
passengers in the Lincoln suf­
fered only m inor injuries,
even though they were not
wearing seat belts.
Since that tragic after­
noon in January 1990,
one thought keeps
passing th ro u g h
Tun Kauks mind:
“H ad we been
driving a larger car, Sharons life
might have been saved.”
Earl M. Sweeney, chairman o f the
Highway Safety Advisory Com m it­
tee for the International Association
of Chiefs, o f Police, has seen num er­
ous accidents like this one. “The
fact is, people in smaller, lighter vehi­
cles always get the w orst of it in col­
lisions with larger vehicles,” he says.
For almost two decades, however,
the federal government has been try­
ing to force Americans into smaller
cars. T he fatal trade-off—higher gas
mileage at the expense o f size and
safety—begun in 1975, when Congress
enacted the Corporate Average Fuel
Economy (CAFE) law to solve the
h a ro n
S
“energy crisis" during the Arab oil
embargo. The law requires automak­
ers to produce car fleets averaging
27.5 miles per gallon. If a fleet fails
to meet that average, the carmaker
is fined $50 for every mile per gal­
lon under the standard, times the
total number o f cars in the fleet.
Forcing ever-smaller
automobiles on the American
public will exact a terrible price
This L aw
M ig h t K ill You
By D aniel R. L evine
The result: carmakers have been
forced to raise the prices of big
cars—the cars m any Americans
w ant—to entice consumers into
smaller, lower-priced models. Under
CAFE, large families, or people who
simply enjoy the comfort and safety
o f a spacious car, are penalized for
their choice.
Now some members o f Congress
are asking for even stricter standards.
Legislation introduced by Sen.
Richard H . Bryan (D., Nev.) would
require automakers to produce car
fleets averaging over 34 m.p.g. by
1996 and about 40 m.p.g. by 2001.
“This bill will save 2.5 million bar­
rels o f oil a day,” Bryan promises.
\
°
/W
Bryan's plan, which former Trans­
portation Secretary Samuel Skinner
called the “Highway Fatality Bill,”
was narrowly defeated two years ago.
But Bryan continues to press for
tougher fuel standards. H e is not
alone. Bill Clinton’s economic m an­
ifesto, Putting People First, calls for
increasing the CAFE standard to 45
m.p.g. by 2015.
Speaking for many, Sen. D on
Nickles (R., Okla.) says tougher stand­
ards would be a mistake. “A dra­
matic increase in CAFE standards
would reduce consumer choice and
increase highway fatalities,” Nickles
says. “It’s an inherently flawed ap­
proach that has been proven to do
more harm than gtxxl.”
H ere’s why increasing the CAFE
standards is a bad idea:
More small cars mean morefatalities.
W hen a 4000-pound Lincoln and
2275-pound H onda collide, pure
physics takes over. A small car will
provide less resistance to the energy
of the crash and be crushed more
quickly than a big auto, putting the
occupants at greater risk.
A 1989 study by economist Robert
Crandall of the Brookings Institu
tion and John G raham o f the H ar­
vard School o f Public Health found
that the 27.5-m.p.g. standard is esti­
mated to be responsible for 2200 to
3900 additional deaths and up to
20,000 serious injuries over the tenyear lifetime of 1989-model cars.
From this study G raham went on
to estimate that increasing the stan­
dards to those in Bryan’s bill could
add 1650 fatalities and 8500 serious
injuries to the annual toll.
T h e N ational H ighw ay Traffic
Safety A dm inistration (NHTSA),
which administers CAFE, has con­
firmed that small cars are m ore dan­
gerous than large ones, but claimed
the 27.5-m.p.g. standard dix-sn’t affect
safety. T his led th e Competitive
Enterprise Institute and Consumer
Alert, two public-policy groups, to
1
^
a T c^
K
READER S DICES!
file a lawsuit charging NHTSA with
ignoring CAFE’s dangers. In Febru­
ary 1992, the U.S. C ourt o f Appeals
agreed and said NHTSA had “fudged
the analysis” and “obscured the safety
problem.” The court ordered NHTSA
to conduct “a serious analysis o f the
ICAFEj data and decide whether the
associated fuel savings are worth the
lives lost."
When th e Insurance Institute for
Highway Safety examined occupant
death rates for 11 General Motors
models reduced in size berween the
1977 aQd 1986 model years, the insti­
tute found that in ten o f the cars,
more people died after downsizing.
The cars that were not downsized
showed no such increase in fatali­
ties. T he institute concluded that
“downsizing cars means more deaths.”
Ralph N ader and his various pub­
lic-interest groups have been in the
forefront o f the effort to increase
CAFE. These advocates m aintain
that today’s small cars can be made
just as safe as large ones through the
use of air hags and other safety devices.
Yet in 1989, a reporter interviewing
Nader asked if he were to buy a car,
what size would it be? “Well, larger
cars are safer—there’s m ore bulk to
protect the occupant,” he answered.
Joan Claybrook heads the Nader
group Public Citizen. She was also
in charge of NHTSA du rin g the
Carter Administration. Claybrook is
an outspoken advocate of higher
CAFE standards. But in 1980, as
head of NHTSA, she released a report
that concluded: "T he growing shift
to smaller cars will increase the num -
her
o f i l e a l t ils
and
i n j u i ie s
;•
t »un
y e a r N H T S A p u b l i s h «i l The
Car littol( A Consumer's (,u n it to
Car Buying, w h i c h c o n i l o d e . i: "N ext
sam e
to
w e a rin g
y o u r s a fe ty
U h . a t a r ’s
w e i g h t is o i u : o f t h e i m
im t i n 410 r t . i i it
s a fe ty . ( f f ; d a ­
c u r r e n t l y o n vli le r o a d .
f a c t o r s , a f le e t i n g
a u to m o b ile s
your
a 4<HH)-pouu«l car is twice .0 sale
:i 2000-pound car.”
Why the discrepancy.? Kuinei.NHTSA administrator I )j;iu<. Steed,
who now heads an anti ( 'AFF'gioup
called die Coalition Ibr V ehicle
Choice, suggests the answer"./‘These
groups make 1heir living hy m ak­
ing American industry, ihc villain —
even when industry is right The day
they agree with industry is the day
they go out of business. UiiJormnately, the interests of Aiuei uan ion
sunicrs, whom they supixiseilly
represent, are forgotten,"
Prices would go up. The- average
price of. a new car .has risen fro m '
$4950 in ..1975 to '$16,700 today, C a r­
makers have already been Ion Vi I <0
use more expensive, lightweight m a­
terials, reducing the.weight o| their
cars by an average hi iouo pounds,
to meet the 27.5-m.p.g. Mainlin'd, lb
achieve a 40-m.p.g. standard, man
ufitcturcrs would require greater use
of these materials. Last year, alrer
conducting an authoritative exam i­
nation o f C A FE, .the N illiou.il
Research Council oI the National
Academy o f Sciences concluded that
higher CAFE standards would drive
up the price o! new vehicles hy is
much as $2750 each.
And since the production »*l larger.
THIS LAW MIGHT KILL YOU
loss fifrl-efficient cars w ould be
severely o it to comply with CAFE
fleet requirements, their prices would
rise even higher- This would hurt
foitsitlisers ;md American auto manulaeiHrers. It would make big cars
tinailon table for many more people
I sli.arply limit U.S. production of
mid and full sized cars and light
trucks, an area in which U.S. m an­
ufacturers enjoy a 90-percent m ar­
ket share. “When the government
cgulates in a way that prices many
..
o f1its citizens out■ o- fr access
to »----largetar safety, it owes them responsible
candor,” wrote Judge Stephen
Williams in the February 1992 court
decision against NHTSA.
C 1/ 7 .' has failed to accomplish its
fuel conservation goals- It wits sup­
posed to .'reduce U.S. “dependence”
on foreign oil and guard against
future oil shocks, fn fact, U.S. pur­
chase of foreign oil has increased '20
pcre< nt since CAFE was enacted.
‘The present fuel-efficiency law is
seriously flawed." the Washington
.said in an editorial last year. “If
the object is to save gasoline, a higher
fuel eflii ten. y siandard is the wrong
way to go about it.”
/ ltg/)r> standards will have little
cfjt'i t on the nwmmmcnt. Even though
pas prices, adjusted lor inflation, have
U rn .11 their lowest level in tq years,
the Persian G u lf War brought
r -n ru rd t ails from some Congress
m> n i..r a higher fucl econotn y sta nd .ir«l l b-y said n was nectlul not
11111v 10 reduce dependence on foTcign oil. hui to significantly reduce
01 , a ll.d 'g i t unlit>us< g as "
According to Congress’s Office of
Technology Assessment, however,
A m erican cars and light trucks
account for only 1,5 percent of these
emissions, meaning that enactment
o f the Bryan bill would reduce them
by less than one-half o f one percent.
Technological improvements since
the early 1970s have reduced about
80 percent o f harmful carbon monox­
ide and hydrocarbon emissions, while
fuel efficiency has more than doubled.
These improvements are largely the
result o f fierce competition among
automakers striving to give the con­
sum er-w hat he or she-wants.
Higher standards w ill limit con­
sumer choice. According ro a Gallup
poll, Americans spend an average of
two hours and 24 minutes a day in
their cars. Many want to spend that
time in large vehicles. Typical is Wal­
ter R. Thom as o f Kansas City, Mo.,
who drives a Buick Park Avenue.
“I’m willing to pay more for a larger
car, and I’m willing to buy more,
gas for a larger car,” he says. “I
don’t want the government telling
me I have to drive a small car.”
. Bryan’s legislation would reduce
the num ber o f family-size cars on
the m arket. Even the num ber of
m idsized m odels that Americans
have been forced to redefine as
“family-size” would taper off. The
H onda Accord has been Americas
best-selling car for three of the past
four years. Using available, proven
technology, however, todays Accord
could npt m eet the higher mileage
standard proposed for 2001. Neither
would current models such as the
READER’S DIGEST
Acura Integra or Legend, Toyota
Camry, Buick LeSabre, Oldsmobile
Cutlass or Chevrolet Lumina.
The two-door Geo Metro XFi is
one o f the few cars on the road today
that exceeds Bryan’s proposed stand­
ard. It gets a remarkable 53 m.p.g.
in the city and 58 m.p.g. on the high­
way, but it weighs only 800 pounds
more than a touring motorcycle. “If
fuel economy is your main objec­
tive, the Geo M etro is a great car,”
says G M s William H . Noack. “But
most of our customers want more
luggage space* performance and com­
fort. CAFE forces automakers to build ,
cars customers.don’t necessarily want.” ‘
The consumers’ preference is evi­
denced by sales figures. In 1991, G en­
eral Motors sold only 96,000 Metros
in the U.S. (two percent o f its total
U.S. sales), b ut 217,555 m idsized
Luminas ($7990 more expensive than
the Metro). Nationwide, subcompact
cars that achieve 40 m.p.g. or better
account for less than three percent
o f total new-car sales. Even though
most Americans aren’t buying smaller
cars, auto manufacturers are pres­
sured to build more o f them.
T he o p e n s e c r e t , which seems to
elude only Congressmen and fed­
eral bureaucrats, is that m arket con­
ditions determine the types o f cars
people drive. In the late ’70s, auto­
m akers w ere producing cars that
surpassed the 27.5-m.p.g. CAFE
standard—not because o f a govern­
ment mandate, but because gasoline
prices were near an all-time high
and people wanted fuel-efficient cars.
W hen gas prices dropped, buyers
once again dem anded larger, more
powerful cars.
In its report about CAFE stand­
ards, the National Research Council
concluded: “Congress and govern­
ment agencies are attem pting to reg­
ulate an industry o f trem endous
importance to the U.S. economy in
the absence o f sufficient information
from" neutral sources on which to
base such regulation.”
Forcing automakers to build vehi­
cles to meet a drastically higher gasmileage standard would cost us more
money, limit our choices and endan­
ger our lives. Just ask Tim Kauk,
whose two-month-old son was left
without a mother after the head-on
collision o f their subcompact car:
“Every time you go out in a small
car, you’re pu ttin g your fam ily’s
safety on the line. The sacrifice is
not w orth it.”
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B y D aniel R. L evine