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."

This can be fixed.

[Ichijo]

Because road wear is proportional to the fourth power of the weight of the vehicle [pavementinteractive.org], make the 4,000 lbs SUV owner pay 16 times as much in taxes as the 2,000 lbs small car owner. Pretty soon we'll see fewer SUVs on the roads, and all because of a fair, well-justified tax as opposed to new, arbitrary [wikipedia.org] regulations.

Re:Your kidding, right?

[beelsebob]

The biggest joke here is the assumptions that 1) small, light cars can't be safe and 2) that deaths in small light cars won't reduce as we pull big, heavy cars off the roads.

1) Is easily disproved by looking at an extreme case or two – have a crash in a 600kg Formula 1 car, and you'll very very very likely survive – hell, have a crash at 200mph in one and you'll very very very likely walk out of it.
2) Is easily disproved by looking at countries where small and light cars are already the norm. In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population

Re:This can be fixed.

[Ichijo]

Uhm, that tax already exists: It's called lower miles per gallon with raising gas prices.

But a 2-ton SUV doesn't use 16 times as much fuel as a 1-ton small car! Therefore, the small car owner is heavily subsidizing road repairs for the SUV owner.

Re:Your kidding, right?

[floop]

The asshat [desmogblog.com] who wrote the first study [ncpa.org] sited in TFA is a shill [exxonsecrets.org] for ExxonMobil. The article hinges it's entire premis on the results of the second scholarly work [ucsd.edu] which is a month old draft of an unpublished, unpeer-reviewed, unproven idea for an econometric model to analyze policy effects on on safety (translate: probably not even close to accurate). In fact, the article states as it's first line "Research confirms that increasing fuel economy standards does cost lives on the road.", as if this is proven fucking fact now. Stuff like this on slashdot makes me want to punch people in the face. Few bother to question or even read linked articles but love to go all modern jackass on meta shit that doesn't even have anything to do with the subject.