More Dead on the Road? (How raising fuel efficiency standards does not necessarily decrease safety)

[Leo 9]

Raising CAFE Standards Was Obama's Only Near-Term Choice
by Meteor Blades

- Sun May 24, 2009 at 02:29:28 PM PDT

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More Dead on the Road?

Safety is something else. It’s true, as ROBERT E. GRADY, wrote in his Light Cars Are Dangerous Cars in The Wall Street Journal Friday, the National Research Council did a 2002 study estimating that 1300 to 2600 extra auto deaths occurred in 1993 because cars weren’t as heavy on average as they were in 1976.

But critics of the report say times have changed and are continuing to do so, making the weight issue irrelevant to the safety claim.

One of those is Robert Hall, professor emeritus of operations management at Indiana University. In 2005, he told Rob Chapman at the Center for Auto Safety:

"In the last 40 years ... auto racing speeds have increased, yet deaths have decreased significantly while the weights of the vehicles have gone down progressively. Why? Crushable fronts that absorb impact, 'tubs' that shelter drivers after the entire car has disintegrated, a relocation of the front axle and, yes, crash bags. In this case, lighter is markedly safer."

Daniel L. Green wrote a "Dissent on Safety Issues" to the National Research Council's 2002 report, in which he states: "There is no fundamental scientific reason why decreasing the mass of all vehicles must result in more injuries and fatalities." With Sanjana Ahmad, Greene also wrote The Effect of Fuel Economy on Automobile Safety: A Reexamination.

That’s something O’Grady doesn’t mention. Perhaps it was too hard to dig out. But you would think, if he really wanted to tell the whole story rather than make a propaganda point, he could find an article in the Wall Street Journal headlined "Crash course: How U.S. shifted gears to find small cars can be safe, too" and published in 2005:

"There's now a credible opposing view to what used to be the only view," says David L. Greene, a research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Department of Energy research lab. A paper he co-authored in March, looking at car-crash fatality rates from 1966 to 2002, found no statistically significant relationship between fuel economy and increased traffic fatalities. Mr. Greene says that previous research that did find a correlation studied only the immediate years after fuel-economy reform when weight drops were most significant. But studied over a longer period, that correlation disappears, he says.

For years, the accepted wisdom in the car industry held that, all things being equal, heavier vehicles are always safer when two vehicles crash. New studies highlight how other factors -- including a car's size, body design and advanced technology -- can do much to counteract the weight issue.

The newer studies also have homed in on the downside of weight: While a heavy vehicle protects its occupants in an accident, it inflicts more damage to those it hits. That means reducing the weight of the biggest vehicles could yield dividends in both fuel consumption and safety.

As Chapman writes:

There has been a recurring contention that heavier vehicles are safer. But even the experts disagree on that point. The more important question is whether lighter-weight vehicles can be made to be as safe as heavier ones. The evidence suggests they can be.

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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/24/735026/-Raising-CAFE-Standards-Was-Obamas-Only-Near-Term-Choice

[phantom power]

1. I think economics will more or less trump any safety issues...

on average, people will drive smaller vehicles (and probably own fewer of them), because that is what we will be able to afford to purchase and operate. A side effect of that may be a decrease in auto fatalities due to there being less kinetic energy out there on the roads.

[damntexdem]

2. And as average weights come down, the risk of being hit by heavier vehicles decreases.

Yes, there will be variation, we'll be out there driving alongside semis; but the average vehicle with which we might collide will be lighter.