Flip-Flopping On Small Car Safety

When advocates of higher CAFE standards are asked about the safety issue, one of their first responses is invariably along the following lines:  “CAFE can’t be unsafe; after all, it’s endorsed by Ralph Nader, Joan Claybrook, and Clarence Ditlow.”  (Ditlow heads the Center for Auto Safety.)  But as the quotes below demonstrate, these individuals all once recognized the fact that, other things being equal, larger cars are more crashworthy than smaller cars.  In fact, in the past they repeatedly warned about the inherent dangers of small cars.