Washington, D.C., February 13, 2002—Even though the federal government’s fuel economy standards program increases highway fatalities, Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) is expected to add a provision this week in his energy bill to make it far more stringent. The provision would come from Senator John Kerry’s (D-MA) proposal to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, known as CAFE, to a combined 35 mpg by 2013.
CEI’s Sam Kazman stated: “The fuel economy standards program has already proven to be deadly because it forces the downsizing of automobiles. Higher CAFE standards will only claim more lives. Regardless of one’s viewpoint on the advisability of making CAFE more stringent, its safety effects must be acknowledged as a human cost of this program.”
In 1992, Kazman won a federal appeals court ruling that the U.S. Transportation Department had illegally ignored CAFE’s adverse safety effects.
Fuel Economy Expert Available for Interviews
Sam Kazman, General Counsel
Competitive Enterprise Institute
202.331.1010, ext. 218
or 703.534.2738
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, visit our website at www.cei.org.
