Saving Gas Via Underpowered Death Traps

Harperdog writes with this excerpt from a story at Miller-McCune: "Yes, it's true that the fuel-economy standards the U.S. has been using cost lives. Economist Mark Jacobson has estimated that for every mile-per-gallon we raise the standards, 149 traffic fatalities occur per year. That would mean 1,490 deaths if the standards were raised from, say, 30 miles-per-gallon to 40. But this doesn't have to be the case. It's possible, Jacobson has concluded, to increase fuel efficiency without also decreasing safety. And if government officials are smart, they'll tailor the regulations behind the new standards to do this."

Comments

How come this

[bugs2squash]

is not already costing drivers of big cars more in terms of liability premiums.

1490 is low

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be brutal, but that number's pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of all of this. It's a tiny fraction of total traffic fatalities, which means we can more than make up the difference looking for other forms of safety improvement.

Or...

[eepok]

Economist Mark Jacobson has estimated that for every mile-per-gallon we raise the standards, 149 traffic fatalities occur per year.

OR

Everyone with a brain has estimated that massive, unnecessarily heavy and powerful gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs driven by distracted buffoons kill people on the road.

Also, the report and the curiously straight-line graph comes from:

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. Our goal is to develop and promote private, free-market alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial
private sector.

Re:Your kidding, right?

[geekoid]

Not really.

Here is a Bel Air - also know for being a 'boat'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtxd27jlZ_g&feature=player_embedded