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Don Quijote
Guest
EVOLVE OR DIE!
Once upon a time lived a race of dinosaurs whose violence and appetite alarmed everybody... One day
a Little Ant, tired of feeling stepped upon in their little bicycles, and worried about her
cooperative enterprise, came up to the Americanus Raptor--the biggest dinosaur of them all--and
asked: "Why you always have to protect the right of the dinosaurs, who do nothing but eat everything
in their path? Why don't the little animals get a fair share of this world?" Then the dinosaur, who
had a bad temper, replied: "Bigger is better, so get lost..."
The Little Ant, then, gathered the whole cooperative and said: "Comrades, our world is being
threatened by the dinosaurs, so..." And at that precise moment the Earth was hit by a big ball of
fire, destroying everything but the small animals...
Poll taking place at...
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php3?s=&postid=248289#post248289
Pitting Fuel Economy Against Safety By DANNY HAKIM
DETROIT, June 27 — For years, automakers have cited studies contending that thousands of people
die annually because fuel economy regulations force the companies to make cars that are not
heavy enough.
Larger vehicles, the argument goes, may guzzle more gas but they offer more protection, whether one
hits a tree or another car. The argument has been a central one when efforts emerge in Congress to
raise fuel economy standards. And it is taken seriously by the Bush administration, which has
started an effort to rewrite the fuel economy rules.
The problem with this argument is that it now has little relationship to the American road. As
safety advocates point out, the lightest cars have virtually disappeared from American roads over
the last 15 years, while the largest vehicles — including sport utilities and pickups — have
ballooned, both in number and heft.
The portion of cars that weigh 2,500 pounds or less, which was 18 percent of all passenger vehicles
sold in the 1985 model year, has fallen to less than half a percentage point, according to the
Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, the average American car has been steadily gaining weight
for a decade and a half.
Over the same period, the growth of the largest vehicles has only expanded weight differences that
are widely acknowledged to be deadly in collisions. Moreover, the largest vehicles are increasingly
not cars but sport utilities and pickups, which ride much higher than cars, increasing the danger to
people in cars and the likelihood of deadly rollovers.
When the government created fuel economy regulations after the energy crisis of the early 1970's,
few imagined they would become a flashpoint because of an entirely different issue — safety. But the
official the Bush administration has chosen to preside over the effort to rewrite the rules, John D.
Graham, says saving lives is as important as saving gasoline.
Dr. Graham, the regulations administrator of the Office of Management and Budget, has argued since
his years as a Harvard professor and risk expert that fuel regulations have cost thousands of
American lives because cars were made too light — in Detroit, the phenomenon is called
downsizing. Auto lobbyists have cited Dr. Graham's work, and other research, in opposing tighter
fuel standards.
Now Dr. Graham is chairman of an intra-agency group rethinking the fundamental structure of
corporate average fuel economy regulations, or CAFE standards, for light trucks — sport utility
vehicles, pickups and minivans — for the 2008 model year and beyond. The group also includes the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whose chief, Jeffrey W. Runge, will play a central
role; the Energy Department; and the E.P.A.
Ds. Graham said in an e-mail exchange that the administration's intention was "to stimulate more
fuel-saving, technological innovation while protecting safety and American jobs."
He said he did not want to press automakers to make most light trucks lighter. "CAFE reform does not
make sense if it forces consumers to purchase vehicles that are lighter or smaller than they need,"
Dr. Graham said.
But he also said, somewhat surprisingly, that there were problems with vehicles that are too heavy:
"A downsizing of the heaviest light trucks could be a net positive."
He said the country would be better served by less diversity in vehicles, in terms of weight and
size. In effect, he is playing to both sides of the debate, arguing that bigger is better — but that
too big is not better.
Now he faces the difficult task of selling his ideas.
"The curious thing about the administration's effort on this proposal is that it is opposed by all
of the major stakeholders, by the U.A.W., the environmental groups and by the major automakers,"
said Alan V. Reuther, the top lobbyist of the United Automobile Workers union.
The union fears that domestic automakers will abandon production of smaller cars under a Bush plan
and focus on their profit center: sport utility vehicles and pickups.
Automakers expressed a range of views, but always concern.
"What the auto industry and other industries support about Dr. Graham is that he does strive to base
decisions on sound data and sound science, and that's a mantra of business," said Gloria Bergquist,
spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry's main lobbying group.
"But when he's starting to take on changes to CAFE, it makes us nervous because it's very
complicated and it's something that we've wrestled with for 30 years."
The notion of Dr. Graham's presiding over the debate is anathema to environmentalists, who doubt
that conserving gasoline will be a priority, and safety groups, who do not trust him because the
Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which he founded, was partly financed by automakers.
"It's clear he's doing this on behalf of the auto industry," said Joan Claybrook, president of
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group and a critic of Dr. Graham.
She said the effort should be led by the agency she once ran, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration. "That's why they create these agencies," she said.
Dt. Runge, the traffic agency's current administrator, has a leading role because his agency
actually writes the regulations, though Dr. Graham has used his power in the budget office
before to reject a tire pressure regulation proposed by the traffic agency.
The two men seem closer to the same page on the weight debate. Dr. Runge called Dr. Graham "a very
valuable player in helping the administration navigate through this thorny issue."
"This is very important to the future of the country," he added. "It may seem arcane outside of
Washington, D.C., but it affects everybody in our nation."
Fuel regulations are so strewn with loopholes that several auto lobbyists said they preferred "the
devil we know."
Today, each automaker's fleet of passenger cars is required to average
27.5 miles per gallon. Light trucks are required to average 20.7 miles per gallon. The Bush
administration has already raised that figure, to
28.2 by the 2007 model year.
But the system allows automakers to assume their vehicles are about 18 percent more fuel-efficient
than they actually are. They also get special credits for making some vehicles that can substitute
ethanol for gas even though few customers realize they have such an ability.
The largest sport utilities and pickups, those with a weight greater than three tons, are not even
part of the regulatory system. That means automakers do not have to count many Hummers, Toyota Land
Cruisers or Lincoln Navigators, to name a few.
Perhaps the ultimate quirk is that regulations meant to save gasoline led the auto industry to dump
the station wagon, because it qualifies as a car, and create new classes of family haulers, like
sport utilities, that qualify as light trucks. As a result, the fuel economy of the average new
passenger vehicle is at its lowest point in 22 years.
But many automakers and their allies have long argued, and continue to argue, that saving
gasoline kills.
Tough regulations would "exchange body bags for oil barrels," Jerry Curry, the top auto regulator
during the first Bush administration, said in 1990. In 1999, Michigan's senators, Carl Levin and
Spencer Abraham — Mr. Abraham is now the energy secretary — wrote to colleagues that higher CAFE
standards would equal more vehicle deaths because cars would be made too light.
Last year, to ward off another attempt to raise fuel standards, the industry ran advertisements
suggesting farmers would be forced to haul hay with subcompacts and warning: "Fuel economy is
important. Safety is vital." Trent Lott held up a picture of a tiny European Smart car on the Senate
floor — it was purple — to warn that Americans would be forced to drive such Lilliputians.
Sam Kazman, general counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has sued the government
to halt even small regulatory increases, said in a recent statement that fuel regulation "kills
thousands of people each year by forcing vehicles to be downsized and therefore less crashworthy."
But Clarence M. Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety, said
Du. Kazman "has no argument on small cars because the small cars have gotten bigger."
"When you look at today's fleet, manufacturers have not met the regulations by making small cars,"
he added, but by improving technology.
Dv. Ditlow argues that safety problems could be alleviated — and gasoline saved — if the separate
standard for light trucks were scrapped. But the industry has blocked several efforts to do so.
On average, cars have been gaining weight for a decade and a half, to 3,408 pounds today from 3,013
pounds in 1987. Some additional weight has come from new safety systems like air bags. Car weights
have consolidated at 3,000 to 4,000 pounds — a trend that on its own would help safety because cars
are more alike in terms of weight than they were 30 years ago.
If the lightest cars have vanished, so have the behemoths of Motor City's last heyday — the
two-and-a-half-ton Lincolns and the battleship station wagons. Even after bulking up in recent
years, passenger cars are below the 4,071-pound average of 1975.
Large cars have been supplanted by light trucks, which have grown to more than half of sales today
from a fifth in 1980. Sport utilities and pickups are gaining faster than cars, to 4,569 pounds
today from a low of 3,840 in 1987, increasing the weight disparity on the roads.
The industry's arguments were bolstered by a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report, which said
that cars being made too light caused 1,300 to 2,600 deaths in 1993.
But the finding drew dissent from two of the academy's panelists, and Charles Lave, an economics
professor at the University of California at Irvine who was a primary architect of the finding, said
much had changed since 1993.
"It's a description of the past," he said. "You can get a 20 to 40 percent improvement in fuel
economy without decreasing weight. You don't have to decrease performance either. The technology
exists to do
Dw."
"There's no reason you should get an increase of deaths," he added.
The administration is likely to submit several ideas for public comment this summer, mostly
variations on a system that would mandate light truck fuel efficiency in terms of weight or size
classes instead of a single mileage target, several people who ae close to the deliberations said.
Environmental groups say such a system will nullify fuel economy gains. The administration, however,
is considering bringing Hummers and Land Cruisers into the regulatory system and effectively
creating a heavyweight class like one suggested in the National Academy's report, with a somewhat
demanding mileage target to stem further auto obesity.
"My intention is to seek wide public comment on this topic to the point of public meetings," Dr.
Runge said.
http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote
Once upon a time lived a race of dinosaurs whose violence and appetite alarmed everybody... One day
a Little Ant, tired of feeling stepped upon in their little bicycles, and worried about her
cooperative enterprise, came up to the Americanus Raptor--the biggest dinosaur of them all--and
asked: "Why you always have to protect the right of the dinosaurs, who do nothing but eat everything
in their path? Why don't the little animals get a fair share of this world?" Then the dinosaur, who
had a bad temper, replied: "Bigger is better, so get lost..."
The Little Ant, then, gathered the whole cooperative and said: "Comrades, our world is being
threatened by the dinosaurs, so..." And at that precise moment the Earth was hit by a big ball of
fire, destroying everything but the small animals...
Poll taking place at...
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php3?s=&postid=248289#post248289
Pitting Fuel Economy Against Safety By DANNY HAKIM
DETROIT, June 27 — For years, automakers have cited studies contending that thousands of people
die annually because fuel economy regulations force the companies to make cars that are not
heavy enough.
Larger vehicles, the argument goes, may guzzle more gas but they offer more protection, whether one
hits a tree or another car. The argument has been a central one when efforts emerge in Congress to
raise fuel economy standards. And it is taken seriously by the Bush administration, which has
started an effort to rewrite the fuel economy rules.
The problem with this argument is that it now has little relationship to the American road. As
safety advocates point out, the lightest cars have virtually disappeared from American roads over
the last 15 years, while the largest vehicles — including sport utilities and pickups — have
ballooned, both in number and heft.
The portion of cars that weigh 2,500 pounds or less, which was 18 percent of all passenger vehicles
sold in the 1985 model year, has fallen to less than half a percentage point, according to the
Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, the average American car has been steadily gaining weight
for a decade and a half.
Over the same period, the growth of the largest vehicles has only expanded weight differences that
are widely acknowledged to be deadly in collisions. Moreover, the largest vehicles are increasingly
not cars but sport utilities and pickups, which ride much higher than cars, increasing the danger to
people in cars and the likelihood of deadly rollovers.
When the government created fuel economy regulations after the energy crisis of the early 1970's,
few imagined they would become a flashpoint because of an entirely different issue — safety. But the
official the Bush administration has chosen to preside over the effort to rewrite the rules, John D.
Graham, says saving lives is as important as saving gasoline.
Dr. Graham, the regulations administrator of the Office of Management and Budget, has argued since
his years as a Harvard professor and risk expert that fuel regulations have cost thousands of
American lives because cars were made too light — in Detroit, the phenomenon is called
downsizing. Auto lobbyists have cited Dr. Graham's work, and other research, in opposing tighter
fuel standards.
Now Dr. Graham is chairman of an intra-agency group rethinking the fundamental structure of
corporate average fuel economy regulations, or CAFE standards, for light trucks — sport utility
vehicles, pickups and minivans — for the 2008 model year and beyond. The group also includes the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whose chief, Jeffrey W. Runge, will play a central
role; the Energy Department; and the E.P.A.
Ds. Graham said in an e-mail exchange that the administration's intention was "to stimulate more
fuel-saving, technological innovation while protecting safety and American jobs."
He said he did not want to press automakers to make most light trucks lighter. "CAFE reform does not
make sense if it forces consumers to purchase vehicles that are lighter or smaller than they need,"
Dr. Graham said.
But he also said, somewhat surprisingly, that there were problems with vehicles that are too heavy:
"A downsizing of the heaviest light trucks could be a net positive."
He said the country would be better served by less diversity in vehicles, in terms of weight and
size. In effect, he is playing to both sides of the debate, arguing that bigger is better — but that
too big is not better.
Now he faces the difficult task of selling his ideas.
"The curious thing about the administration's effort on this proposal is that it is opposed by all
of the major stakeholders, by the U.A.W., the environmental groups and by the major automakers,"
said Alan V. Reuther, the top lobbyist of the United Automobile Workers union.
The union fears that domestic automakers will abandon production of smaller cars under a Bush plan
and focus on their profit center: sport utility vehicles and pickups.
Automakers expressed a range of views, but always concern.
"What the auto industry and other industries support about Dr. Graham is that he does strive to base
decisions on sound data and sound science, and that's a mantra of business," said Gloria Bergquist,
spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry's main lobbying group.
"But when he's starting to take on changes to CAFE, it makes us nervous because it's very
complicated and it's something that we've wrestled with for 30 years."
The notion of Dr. Graham's presiding over the debate is anathema to environmentalists, who doubt
that conserving gasoline will be a priority, and safety groups, who do not trust him because the
Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which he founded, was partly financed by automakers.
"It's clear he's doing this on behalf of the auto industry," said Joan Claybrook, president of
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group and a critic of Dr. Graham.
She said the effort should be led by the agency she once ran, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration. "That's why they create these agencies," she said.
Dt. Runge, the traffic agency's current administrator, has a leading role because his agency
actually writes the regulations, though Dr. Graham has used his power in the budget office
before to reject a tire pressure regulation proposed by the traffic agency.
The two men seem closer to the same page on the weight debate. Dr. Runge called Dr. Graham "a very
valuable player in helping the administration navigate through this thorny issue."
"This is very important to the future of the country," he added. "It may seem arcane outside of
Washington, D.C., but it affects everybody in our nation."
Fuel regulations are so strewn with loopholes that several auto lobbyists said they preferred "the
devil we know."
Today, each automaker's fleet of passenger cars is required to average
27.5 miles per gallon. Light trucks are required to average 20.7 miles per gallon. The Bush
administration has already raised that figure, to
28.2 by the 2007 model year.
But the system allows automakers to assume their vehicles are about 18 percent more fuel-efficient
than they actually are. They also get special credits for making some vehicles that can substitute
ethanol for gas even though few customers realize they have such an ability.
The largest sport utilities and pickups, those with a weight greater than three tons, are not even
part of the regulatory system. That means automakers do not have to count many Hummers, Toyota Land
Cruisers or Lincoln Navigators, to name a few.
Perhaps the ultimate quirk is that regulations meant to save gasoline led the auto industry to dump
the station wagon, because it qualifies as a car, and create new classes of family haulers, like
sport utilities, that qualify as light trucks. As a result, the fuel economy of the average new
passenger vehicle is at its lowest point in 22 years.
But many automakers and their allies have long argued, and continue to argue, that saving
gasoline kills.
Tough regulations would "exchange body bags for oil barrels," Jerry Curry, the top auto regulator
during the first Bush administration, said in 1990. In 1999, Michigan's senators, Carl Levin and
Spencer Abraham — Mr. Abraham is now the energy secretary — wrote to colleagues that higher CAFE
standards would equal more vehicle deaths because cars would be made too light.
Last year, to ward off another attempt to raise fuel standards, the industry ran advertisements
suggesting farmers would be forced to haul hay with subcompacts and warning: "Fuel economy is
important. Safety is vital." Trent Lott held up a picture of a tiny European Smart car on the Senate
floor — it was purple — to warn that Americans would be forced to drive such Lilliputians.
Sam Kazman, general counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has sued the government
to halt even small regulatory increases, said in a recent statement that fuel regulation "kills
thousands of people each year by forcing vehicles to be downsized and therefore less crashworthy."
But Clarence M. Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety, said
Du. Kazman "has no argument on small cars because the small cars have gotten bigger."
"When you look at today's fleet, manufacturers have not met the regulations by making small cars,"
he added, but by improving technology.
Dv. Ditlow argues that safety problems could be alleviated — and gasoline saved — if the separate
standard for light trucks were scrapped. But the industry has blocked several efforts to do so.
On average, cars have been gaining weight for a decade and a half, to 3,408 pounds today from 3,013
pounds in 1987. Some additional weight has come from new safety systems like air bags. Car weights
have consolidated at 3,000 to 4,000 pounds — a trend that on its own would help safety because cars
are more alike in terms of weight than they were 30 years ago.
If the lightest cars have vanished, so have the behemoths of Motor City's last heyday — the
two-and-a-half-ton Lincolns and the battleship station wagons. Even after bulking up in recent
years, passenger cars are below the 4,071-pound average of 1975.
Large cars have been supplanted by light trucks, which have grown to more than half of sales today
from a fifth in 1980. Sport utilities and pickups are gaining faster than cars, to 4,569 pounds
today from a low of 3,840 in 1987, increasing the weight disparity on the roads.
The industry's arguments were bolstered by a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report, which said
that cars being made too light caused 1,300 to 2,600 deaths in 1993.
But the finding drew dissent from two of the academy's panelists, and Charles Lave, an economics
professor at the University of California at Irvine who was a primary architect of the finding, said
much had changed since 1993.
"It's a description of the past," he said. "You can get a 20 to 40 percent improvement in fuel
economy without decreasing weight. You don't have to decrease performance either. The technology
exists to do
Dw."
"There's no reason you should get an increase of deaths," he added.
The administration is likely to submit several ideas for public comment this summer, mostly
variations on a system that would mandate light truck fuel efficiency in terms of weight or size
classes instead of a single mileage target, several people who ae close to the deliberations said.
Environmental groups say such a system will nullify fuel economy gains. The administration, however,
is considering bringing Hummers and Land Cruisers into the regulatory system and effectively
creating a heavyweight class like one suggested in the National Academy's report, with a somewhat
demanding mileage target to stem further auto obesity.
"My intention is to seek wide public comment on this topic to the point of public meetings," Dr.
Runge said.
http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote
