Killing for oil continues
LETTERS
To The Editor

This is not a letter about the Middle East. It is a letter about how our federal government is killing us as a result of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. To save gasoline (and hence, oil), laws enacted by Congress mandate that vehicles sold in the US meet certain fuel efficiency standards. One way auto makers increase "fuel economy" is by building smaller and lighter vehicles that burn less fuel, and those cars kill more Americans than their heavier predecessors. The conventional wisdom that passengers in smaller/lighter vehicles die at a much higher rate when involved in traffic accidents with larger/heaver vehicles, is supported by traffic safety experts such as Dr. Leonard Evans, internationally recognized researcher and pres ident of Science Serving Society, who estimates that drivers in lighter cars may be 12 times as likely to be killed in a crash when the other vehicle is twice as heavy as the lighter car. And he's not alone: the National Safety Council, the Brookings Inst itution, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the General Motors

Research Laboratories and the National Academy of Sciences all agreed that reductions in the size and weight of passenger cars pose a safety threat.

Much as I would like to think that Congress would take into account these (presumably) unintended consequences before increasing the CAFE standards, the fact is that the senate energy legislation passed late last month mandates a 40 percent increase in fuel economy standards. In numbers of fatalities, a USA Today analysis of crash data found that since CAFE went into effect in 1978, 46,000 people died in crashes they otherwise would have survived, had they been in bigger, heavier vehicles. And to add insult to injury, the Heritage Foundation estimates that other aspects of the new energy legislation will result in gas prices in excess of $6 within the next 8 to 10 years. I wonder how many more Americans will have to die before Congress gets the message that they're costing us money and killing us?
Cordially,
Chuck Esposito
Suches, Ga.