Power to the People

There are plenty of cars that get great fuel economy. But Americans don't buy them. Every single car comes with the greatest safety feature ever invented. But many Americans never use it.

Yeah, I know auto makers bear a lot of the responsibility for how their products perform. But so should the people who buy and operate them.

Yet regulators, plaintiff attorneys and safety advocates rarely ask the public to use less fuel or behave more responsibly. No, of course not. It's far easier to blame the big bad corporations.

Of course, the car companies practically asked for it. Early on they opposed even the most rudimentary safety, emission and fuel-economy regulations. Re-member in the late 1970s when Ford threatened to stop building cars and trucks in the U.S. if corporate average fuel economy standards were enacted? No wonder this industry has a credibility problem.

But 30 years later we've hit the point of diminishing regulatory returns. The National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. is busy working on new rules for fuel tanks, rollover protection, and car-to-truck incompatibility.

At most these will save a few hundred lives a year — a noble effort. Yet all the safety experts know that nearly 60% of all people killed in traffic accidents are not wearing their seatbelts.

The potential to save lives with increased seatbelt usage is mind-boggling. It completely overshadows all the other safety regulations already in place, or any of those being contemplated.

There are about 42,000 fatalities involving motor vehicles in the U.S. every year. If you strip out the fatalities involving pedestrians, motorcycles and heavy-duty vehicles, that leaves about 32,000 people who are killed in passenger cars and light trucks. That means the life-saving potential of higher seatbelt usage is thousands of people a year.

Even more alluring is that the solution involves zero capital investment. All we need are strict laws and enforcement (about eight states already have them and do this). But most safety advocates only give this lip service while they push for new enormously expensive regulations. Where are their priorities?

And it goes beyond safety. Visit the Dept. of Energy's website (www.fueleconomy.gov), and you can call up a list of cars that get over 40 mpg (6L/100 km). For the most part they don't sell very well. Americans may say they're in favor of better fuel economy, but when it comes time to buy a new car, they choose horsepower over thriftiness.

As I've argued here before, a phased-in increase in the gas tax would do far more to reduce petroleum consumption than any increase in corporate average fuel economy will ever do. If it is made revenue neutral, i.e., taxes are reduced elsewhere, it will impose no additional burden on taxpayers.

Are we truly serious about saving lives and saving fuel? Put the burden on the people, who can do the most about it.

John McElroy is editorial director of Blue Sky Productions and producer of “Autoline Detroit” for WTVS-Channel 56, Detroit, and Speed Channel.