Court Orders Fuel-Efficiency vs. Safety Study : * Autos: GM and a research group sued the agency that sets mileage standards. They say the smaller cars needed to meet the target are more dangerous.
An appeals court has ordered the government to study whether its automobile fuel-efficiency standard “kills people” by forcing car companies to make vehicles smaller and less crash-worthy.
“When the government regulates in a way that prices many of its citizens out of access to large-car safety, it owes them reasonable candor,” the U.S. Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling. “The requirement. . .prevents officials from cowering behind bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.”
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by General Motors Corp. and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based research group that advocates limited government interference in business.
Congress in 1985 set the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard at 27.5 miles per gallon. But it authorized the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the safety arm of the Department of Transportation, to lower the standard in ay given year.
The agency reduced the standard to 26.5 m.p.g. for the 1989 model year but returned it to 27.5 m.p.g. for 1990. That prompted the suit.
The court’s ruling Wednesday could prompt the safety agency retroactively to lower the standard for 1990 and for subsequent years. A spokesman declined to comment Thursday, saying the agency is studying the decision.
The ruling was hailed by the Coalition for Vehicle Choice. The group was founded by the Big Three U.S. auto makers to fight bills in Congress that would boost the CAFE standard 40% or more.
“It recognizes the inherent relationship between vehicle size and safety,” said Diane Steed, the group’s president and former administrator of the traffic safety agency
But Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety, which favors higher fuel-economy standards, said the ruling merely orders the federal agency to reconsider the safety question.
“It’s simply dotting i ‘s and crossing t ‘s,” Ditlow said. “I’m confident NHTSA will reach the same decision all over again.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute will petition the agency this fall to lower next year’s standard to about 25 m.p.g., spokesman Sam Kazman said.
In its ruling, the appeals panel said the agency “fudged the analysis” of the effect of the 27.5 m.p.g. standard on safety. It said auto makers historically have met fuel-efficiency standards by downsizing cars, boosting the price of larger vehicles.
“Nothing in the record of NHTSA’s analysis appears to undermine the inference that the 27.5 m.p.g. standard kills people,” the court said. It said the agency must conduct “a serious analysis” and decide “whether the associated fuel savings are worth the lives lost.”
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Abner Mikva said the agency considered the safety issue before retaining the 27.5 m.p.g. standard. He said it concluded that the standard would not necessarily make cars more dangerous.
The court’s majority “improperly second-guessed both Congress and the agency entrusted with this task,” Mikva wrote.
