Going Forward with Auto Safety
Earlier last month, President Obama has annoucned the official White House National Fuel Efficiency Policy.
The new standards, covering model years 2012-2016, and ultimately requiring an average fuel economy standard of 35.5 mpg in 2016, are projected to save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the life of the program with a fuel economy gain averaging more than 5 percent per year and a reduction of approximately 900 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions.
Smart Car in America
A lot of naysayers and critics say positive results are unlikely and the new policy is detrimental to passenger safety, among other things. The argument goes as follows: to comply with these restrictions, automakers may turn to reducing the amount of protective metal in their vehicles. A lighter car, after all, would require less energy to run, thereby increasing gas mileage. Smaller cars, too. Conservatives would very much like to choose the type of car they would like to drive, even if it is an inappropriate gas-guzzling SUV. (I’m all for freedom of choice, but when those choices are clearly selfish and wrong, something needs to be done, perferably not through government regulation, but instead through personal responsibility. But, oh well.)
In an article from Salon, titled “Auto safety for dummies,”
For years, physicists, road safety experts and auto designers have shown that big vehicles are not necessarily safer than smaller ones. Of course, nobody would debate that a head-on collision between a Chevy Tahoe and a Smart Car is going to favor the Tahoe. But that hypothetical crackup does not represent the ecology of the roads, where the truth of auto safety resides.
The article goes on to say that there are more real-world factors like road conditions and driver behavior that affect the safety of a vehicle. The informal conclusion? “The correlation to safety is with the cost of the vehicle, much more than size or weight.”
In the end, larger vehicles may better protect passengers but they are also more of a threat to everyone else on the road, whether drivers in other cars, cyclists, pedestrians, or even animals. Let’s not be selfish here.
But don’t worry, car makers will be turning to hybrid technology, innovative fuels, supercharging and turbocharging to improve gas mileage rather than shave metal from the body. Plus, improvements in materials can let us hope for stronger and lighter composites for car parts.
Read the article. It is a good one.
Smart Car image from Smart USA. (This is not an endorsement.)
all about automotive is always growing up…
thanks for sharing here…