Observation: Cliff Notes
Sacrificing traffic safety, consumer welfare, and America’s industrial prosperity on the altar of carbon dioxide regulation.
Just over three months after the Senate confirmed him to be the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the U.S. Department of Transportation, Dr. Steven Cliff has left his appointed post as the Federal Government’s top traffic safety regulator to take a career job as Executive Officer of California’s Air Resources Board, the State climate agency whence he was plucked. As reported in the Wall Street Journal (Aug. 13, 2022), Dr. Cliff says that by returning to CARB, he’ll be in a “unique position” to advance “the Biden administration’s transportation policies.” Huh?
That pretty much sums up this Administration’s priorities when it comes to transportation policy: It’s carbon dioxide suppression über alles—even over safety, consumer interests, and blue-collar jobs. And it tells you all you need to know about where the real center of power currently lies—with Gov. Gavin Newsom and the aggressive climate activists of the Left Coast.
The White House put Cliff, an “atmospheric chemist” by training, in charge of NHTSA in 2021, initially as Deputy Administrator, to do just one thing: bring NHTSA into line with EPA and CARB on fuel economy regulations for new cars that will force a national transition to electric vehicles much sooner than consumers are demanding and before the Nation’s infrastructure and electric power grid are ready to support this widespread deployment.
The Biden Administration’s fuel economy rules, finalized first by the EPA and then by NHTSA this past April, impose year-over-year increases in mile-per-gallon requirements that are unattainable for nearly all categories of vehicles powered by conventional internal-combustion engines. And that’s the point: The Administration is using the Federal fuel economy program to achieve its prime directive of reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by forcing the eventual cancelation of the traditional gas-powered automobile.
Meanwhile, CARB is moving even more aggressively—decreeing that automakers must convert all the new passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs they sell to 100% zero-emission vehicles by no later than 2035. CARB’s emissions standards for California are copied by other blue States, and automakers have no choice but to reengineer their production lines to try to meet the strictest requirements set by CARB.
None of this was authorized or even contemplated by Congress.
Congress assigned to the Secretary of Transportation the authority to set national fuel economy standards for U.S. automobiles in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. This authority is exclusive to DOT and has been delegated by the Secretary to NHTSA. Significantly, Congress chose to grant this power to DOT, not to EPA, even though the Clean Air Act had already been enacted five years earlier.
EPCA expressly prohibits all States and State agencies from adopting or enforcing any different law or regulation “related to fuel economy standards” for any automobiles covered by NHTSA’s standards (49 U.S.C. § 32919), and while the Secretary (through NHTSA) is to consult with the Department of Energy and EPA in formulating the standards, no law grants any other Federal agency, including EPA, clear authority to set fuel economy requirements in place of NHTSA.
EPCA was passed in the wake of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, when American consumers and the U.S. economy were under siege from spiking energy prices and Congress saw the clear national security dangers of America’s dependence on foreign oil. Consistent with that context, the purpose of the fuel economy mandate was to prod automakers into offering consumers more fuel-efficient vehicle options, as a means of conserving energy for the Nation while preserving the vitality of America’s auto industry.
The purpose of EPCA certainly was not to authorize grandiose regulatory edicts that would impose a seismic transformation on the U.S. economy.
The gas-powered automobile has been a prime engine of freedom and prosperity since the turn of the last century, and the many assembly plants, factories, and research facilities that support traditional automotive production in the U.S. have long comprised a critical portion of the Nation’s industrial base, generating and sustaining millions of good-paying jobs for American workers.
Accordingly, just as Congress has acted on several occasions to bail out or support the automakers during times of financial stress, Congress has taken great care under EPCA to ensure that the regulatory power granted NHTSA over fuel economy standards would never be used to impose harmful dislocations in this critical industry.
It’s done so by setting clear limits on the mileage requirements NHTSA can adopt:
EPCA itself established the first mpg targets by statute and directed NHTSA to adopt standards that would gradually increase the fuel economy of particular categories of new vehicles beginning in model year 1978, with the aim of achieving a combined average fuel economy of 27.5 mpg for model year 1985 cars and light trucks.
At the same time, Congress put a tight collar around the targets: Any mpg requirement NHTSA proposed to set that would fall outside the collar would be subject to veto by either House of Congress—an important Congressional restraint that was later lost when the Supreme Court held legislative vetoes unconstitutional in INS v. Chadha (1983).
For several years thereafter, Congress placed specific statutory caps on the mpg requirements for different categories of vehicles, including through restrictive appropriations riders, and the fuel economy standards for passenger cars were essentially frozen through model year 2010.
In 2007, Congress again directed NHTSA to adopt standards that would achieve a smooth and gradual increase in the average fuel economy of passenger cars and light trucks produced between model years 2011 and 2020, this time with the target of attaining a combined average fuel economy of at least 35 mpg for model year 2020 vehicles. (See 49 U.S.C. § 32902(b)(2)(A).)
In general under EPCA, and specifically for vehicles produced in model years 2021 through 2030, Congress has directed NHTSA to adopt “maximum feasible” fuel economy standards for different categories of vehicles, taking into consideration—
“technological feasibility, economic practicability, the effect of other motor vehicle standards of the Government on fuel economy, and the need of the United States to conserve energy.” (49 U.S.C. § 32902(a), (b)(2)(B), & (f).)
It’s clear the statute is referring to the fuel economy that’s “technologically feasible” and “economically practicable” for automobiles powered with internal-combustion engines.
EPCA defines “fuel” to mean gasoline, diesel fuel, or other liquid or gaseous fuels with similar combustion properties as identified by NHTSA. Electric vehicles are defined as “alternative fuel” vehicles, and EPCA specifically prohibits NHTSA from considering the fuel economy of electric vehicles in setting or amending its standards. (As for hybrid gas-electric vehicles, the statute requires NHTSA to consider them as if they were operated only on gasoline or diesel fuel.) (See 49 U.S.C. § 32901(a)(1), (8), (9) & (10); 49 U.S.C. § 32902(h).)
Moreover, EPCA requires NHTSA to set standards at least 18 months in advance of each model year and prohibits the setting of standards for more than 5 model years at a time. (49 U.S.C. § 32902(a), (b)(3)(B).)
Together, these strictures mean that NHTSA’s standards must aim to achieve fuel-efficiency gains that are realistically achievable with internal-combustion-engine technologies, and they require NHTSA to ensure that the automakers can build large fleets of vehicles that meet the standards using their currently available production facilities and can sell those vehicles for a profit to consumers who want them and can afford to pay for them.
No new vehicle design—indeed, no product of any kind—is “economically practicable” to produce in a free market system if insufficient numbers of consumers want the vehicle and are willing and able to pay enough for it to cover the manufacturer’s cost of production plus a reasonable profit. That’s true even when, as a technological matter, production of the vehicle may be “feasible.”
The rulemaking standards embodied in EPCA respect these marketplace realities. They require NHTSA to take account of the needs and demands of American consumers and their ability to pay for the vehicle improvements automakers will have to make to meet NHTSA’s fuel economy requirements. And, as a last recourse, if NHTSA’s standards overshoot the mark in terms of what’s economically practicable for the industry to achieve, EPCA authorizes NHTSA to compromise or remit the statute’s monetary penalties as necessary to prevent the insolvency of automakers. (49 U.S.C. § 32913(a)(1).)
Thus, while EPCA includes specific provisions designed to incentivize automakers to invest in the development of new technologies, including battery-electric and other alternative-fuel powertrains, it’s obvious that in carrying out the central mandate of setting fleetwide fuel economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks, NHTSA has no authority to compel the auto industry to phase out internal-combustion engines or to force the use of any new technologies at the expense of consumer choice and without regard to production realities and market forces.
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration disregarded these limitations.
The Obama EPA found that carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” pose a potential danger to human welfare due to global climate concerns, and on that basis, EPA launched into the business of setting carbon dioxide emissions limits for new motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act.*
*(For thoughts on climate change policies and the zeal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, see my earlier post Rumination: The Problem Is Not “180ism.”)
Most air pollutants typically produced by internal combustion engines can be controlled by adjusting the fuel mix or adding filters or other technologies, like catalytic converters, which may have an incidental effect on fuel efficiency. But carbon dioxide is very different.
Because there’s a direct and unavoidable relationship between the amount of CO2 emitted per mile traveled and the number of gallons of gasoline or diesel fuel the vehicle consumes, EPA’s emissions limits for carbon dioxide effectively function as a new set of fuel economy requirements.
Depending on how strict EPA decides to make these limits (a matter over which the Obama EPA claimed virtually unrestrained discretion), the EPA regulations have the potential to supersede NHTSA’s standards and thereby render NHTSA’s role effectively meaningless.
With this new-found power, the EPA usurped NHTSA’s statutory mandate in 2012, taking over the regulatory tiller in the setting of national fuel economy requirements for the auto industry. NHTSA was given no choice but to follow EPA’s lead in adopting mileage requirements that were designed to accelerate deployment of hybrid and electric vehicles in furtherance of President Obama’s climate policy goals.
And the Obama Administration, choosing to ignore Federal preemption commands, reached a grand deal with California and the automakers that allowed CARB to set its own separate fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions standards.
In the Trump Administration, under the leadership of Secretary Elaine Chao and Deputy Secretary Jeff Rosen at DOT, we returned the fuel economy program to the more limited parameters and purposes expressly adopted by Congress. NHTSA took the helm in issuing together with EPA a final rule—the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule (April 2020)—that set stringent but realistic new mileage requirements for vehicles produced in model years 2021-2026 consistent with the terms and requirements of EPCA.
Our SAFE Vehicles Rule required automakers to improve the fuel economy of their fleets by an average of 1.5% per year (starting from the model year 2020 requirements set by the Obama Administration), resulting in an overall industry-wide average fuel economy of 40 mpg for the combined fleet of passenger cars and light trucks in model year 2026 (compared to the starting average of 37 mpg for model year 2020).
In September 2019, the Trump agencies (EPA and NHTSA) also invoked the preemption provisions of Federal law to the full extent intended by Congress, announcing that California and other States would no longer be permitted to impose fuel economy standards and CO2 emissions restrictions for new vehicles that differ from Federal requirements.
As verified by OMB, the SAFE Vehicles Rule was projected to save the U.S. economy (and American consumers) approximately $160 billion over the life of the automobiles covered by the rule relative to the trendline of the Obama standards.
Much of these savings would come through a significant reduction in the purchase price of new automobiles. Lower prices for new cars would lead to more new cars sold and therefore lower prices for used cars. As a result, more U.S. families would be able to afford to drive newer vehicles (whether new or used).
Because NHTSA’s own statistics show definitively that newer vehicles are considerably safer than older cars, NHTSA projected that the SAFE Vehicles Rule would save hundreds of lives on U.S. highways and prevent tens of thousands of serious injuries from traffic accidents.
I can attest that the SAFE Vehicles Rule, with the overwhelmingly positive economic and safety benefits it promised to deliver, was among our proudest achievements under Secretary Chao at the Department of Transportation.
But elections have their consequences, especially Presidential elections.
The Biden Administration has now reverted to the Obama approach—putting EPA back in charge of the fuel economy rules and unleashing CARB from the preemptive force of Federal law, allowing California to issue its own draconian fuel economy requirements, including its zero-emissions mandate, in close coordination with the Biden EPA and NHTSA.
The new Biden rules replace the Trump fuel economy standards for model years 2024-2026 with dramatic Cinderella-like increases. They mandate annual jumps in fuel efficiency (starting from the Trump standards for model year 2023) of 8% for each of model years 2024 and 2025 and 10% for model year 2026 and require automakers to achieve an industry-wide average of 49 mpg for the combined fleet of passenger cars and light trucks by model year 2026.
For passenger cars alone, the Biden rules mandate an average fuel economy of 59.4 mpg by model year 2026. Such averages are fantasy, simply not currently feasible for gas-powered cars, except potentially for the tiniest and lightest econobox designs. Light trucks (which include pickups, SUVs, and 4WD CUVs) will have to achieve an average of 42.4 mpg by that same model year. The most popular vehicles in the light truck category won’t come close to meeting that average fuel economy level.
The bottom line is that if automakers build the cars and trucks most in demand with American families (and, after all, auto companies are still for-profit enterprises), they can’t possibly comply with the new standards.
So the major manufacturers will likely face giant monetary penalties for noncompliance that must be paid to the U.S. Treasury. The penalties are assessed for each model year of production based on the amount by which the average fuel economy of their vehicles falls short of the required levels (measured by tenths of a mile per gallon) multiplied by the volume of vehicles they manufacture.
These penalty payments are an added cost of doing business spread across the automakers’ entire fleets in future model years, and, to the extent customer demand for particular models will bear it, the penalty amounts will be applied directly to jack up the sticker prices of popular non-complying vehicles, like sports cars, muscle cars, pickups, etc.
Automakers can avoid the penalty payments either by greatly increasing the proportion of hybrids and EVs in their fleets, which is simply not practicable without sufficient consumer demand to justify the production shift, or (the much more likely strategy) by using special off-setting “credits,” authorized by EPCA, to bump up their reported fuel economy results before penalties are assessed.
Automakers generate such off-setting credits if they produce categories of vehicles that exceed the applicable fuel economy standards, and EPCA allows for the transfer of credits from one category of vehicle to another and for the trading of credits among automakers (though NHTSA isn’t supposed to consider the availability of credits when setting the fuel economy standards themselves). (49 U.S.C. §§ 32903, 32902(h).)
The regulators attribute super-generous fuel economy scores to EVs, enabling producers of EVs to build up large banks of valuable credits they can sell to other automakers. As you might expect, most of these credits are purchased by the legacy manufacturers from Tesla, since Tesla accounts for more than 75% of EV sales in the U.S. Historically, Tesla has earned a large portion of its net income from the sale of fuel economy and emissions credits—an indirect but massive government subsidy.*
*(Tesla earned a net income of $5.5 billion in 2021, of which $1.5 billion came from the sale of such credits. Historically, Tesla has reportedly earned $5.3 billion from fuel economy and emissions credits globally. Regarding Tesla’s share of EV sales, for comparison’s sake, consider that in the first quarter of 2022, Tesla sold 114,000 EVs in the U.S., whereas GM sold a whopping 457.)
There’s a major hitch when it comes to credits, though: They can’t be used to escape penalties for failure to meet what’s known as the “domestic minimum” fuel economy requirement for passenger cars. In addition to the general average fuel economy standards set by NHTSA (which apply separately to all passenger cars and light trucks sold in the U.S., no matter where they’re produced), EPCA also requires automakers to meet a specific minimum level of fuel economy for all the passenger cars they manufacture domestically (meaning in North America). (49 U.S.C. § 32902(b)(4).)
Critically, EPCA requires the automakers to meet this domestic minimum “without regard to any trading of credits from other manufacturers” and “without regard to any transfer of credits from other categories of automobiles” they produce. (49 U.S.C. § 32903(f)(4) & (g)(4).)
The statute sets the domestic minimum at 92% of the industry-wide average fuel economy that NHTSA projects will be achieved in the relevant model year by all passenger cars sold in the U.S., whether produced domestically or imported. Under the Biden rules, this requirement translates into sky-high mandatory domestic minimum levels—48.2 mpg for model year 2025 and 53.5 mpg for model year 2026.
At these levels, the domestic minimum requirement by itself will effectively cripple North American production of standard affordable 5-passenger cars. Except for hybrids and for the most ultra-compact gas-powered cars that don’t accommodate the average family, the only passenger cars (as opposed to pickups, SUVs, and 4WD CUVs) that automakers will find it economical to manufacture domestically will be luxury sedans, sports cars, muscle cars, and other specialty models for which customer demand will allow the purchase price to include the penalty value. Of course, because of the higher cost, fewer of these, too, will be produced and sold.*
*(Not only is it tragic and sad that Biden’s domestic minimum will lead to the smothering of a major segment of U.S. auto manufacturing and a consequent loss of jobs, it’s also acutely ironic. The domestic minimum requirement was originally included in EPCA at the request of labor to ensure that the introduction of fuel economy mandates wouldn’t lead the Big Three automakers to move production of fuel-efficient cars overseas where labor costs are lower; now it will simply force them to shut down much of their domestic passenger car production capacity.)
The Biden fuel economy rules will impose ginormous costs across all corners of traditional automobile manufacturing in the U.S.—costs that will rain down on America’s consumers and the entire U.S. economy.
Consistent with the industrial transformation sought by the Biden Administration, the auto companies are making or planning to make some of the largest capital investments in history to effect a changeover to the production of electric vehicles. Ford Motor Company recently announced it expects to invest no less than $50 billion in the conversion to EV manufacturing.
EVs are expensive to develop and build and currently come to market at a significantly higher cost than gas-powered cars. Ford’s primary EV product, for example, the Mustang Mach-E, retails for between $45,000 and $70,000, and Ford’s CFO told analysts this summer that Ford is currently losing money on each Mach-E it sells. Not surprisingly, Ford just announced it’s raising the price of the Mach-E by $8,000 because of battery cost increases—and oh, by the way, $8,000 happens to be $500 more than the Federal EV tax credit that was just renewed by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act (assuming the Mach-E could qualify for the tax credit, which it may not since its battery isn’t produced in North America).
The costs the legacy manufacturers will incur to satisfy the Biden rules won’t only be reflected in the purchase price of EVs, of course. These vast outlays will spread to every model of passenger car and light truck, leading to sizable price increases for nearly all new vehicles sold in the U.S.
The tectonic shift to EVs will also bring supply-chain vulnerabilities and new national security risks for the U.S. The batteries needed to power the envisioned fleets of EVs will require a ready supply of costly minerals and a massive step up in the extraction of these minerals, which in turn will depend on strip-mining operations in parts of Asia, Africa, and South America that are subject to the control or potential control of foreign governments not always friendly to the U.S.
Moreover, if it happens as the Biden Administration and CARB are pushing for, the conversion of the fleet to EVs will put a colossal load on America’s electric power grid and require a corresponding increase in electricity production across the Nation—which can only be fully realized with a significant increase in the output of CO2-producing oil-, gas-, and coal-fired power plants. (But in calculating the street-level carbon dioxide savings they expect to see from the hoped-for conversion to EVs, the Biden Administration conveniently ignores the upstream increases in carbon dioxide emissions that will come with the higher electricity production needed to power this fleet.)
Because supply meets demand, higher prices for new vehicles will mean fewer new cars produced and sold, in a reversal of the dynamic we expected under the Trump Administration’s SAFE Vehicles Rule.
A drop in production will inevitably result in fewer factory jobs for UAW workers. Even if the legacy automakers could produce EVs at the same rate as they’ve historically turned out gas-powered cars—a hopeless aspiration in the near term—the industry would still suffer a major loss in assembly-line jobs, since EVs have far fewer parts and their assembly requires only a fraction of the number of workers.*
*(At the same time it announced its planned investment in EV production, Ford announced the layoff of 3,000 salaried and contract workers. The industry’s much larger loss of assembly-line jobs probably won’t draw such headlines because they won’t come from layoffs—they’ll come over time as blue-collar workers take retirement and aren’t replaced.)
So why do the major automakers (and the UAW) say they can live with the stricter mileage standards, as the Biden Administration likes to trumpet?
The short answer is that the companies need the coercive power of the U.S. Government to help them overcome the lack of consumer demand for EVs.
The industry is already under compulsion from China and the EU (as well as from powerful ESG-focused investment firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street) to convert their plants to EVs to meet climate policy commitments, and the boards and senior management (and, I guess, union reps) of the legacy companies believe the future will be electric. (Who can blame management really, if EVs will sell at a higher price point and require fewer employees to assemble?)
If they don’t want this electric future to be dominated by Elon Musk (and any number of Chinese producers), they know they need to bite the bullet and make the enormous capital expenditures required to obtain global economies of scale in EV production, and they need to do it quickly.
But there’s one big impediment to this global conversion race: the resistance of consumers, especially American consumers.
EVs are beyond the budgets of most American families. The average income of EV purchasers is more than $100,000. EVs also have quality issues that are off-putting for many new-car buyers, like limited range per charge, long charging times, lack of charging infrastructure, and loss of charge in cold weather. Hence the average American isn’t leaping on the all-electric bandwagon. In other words, consumer demand alone won’t support the transformation, at least not on the desired timeline.
Some automakers therefore welcome regulatory mandates from NHTSA and CARB (and, heck, from EPA, too) that will diminish consumer choice and narrow the non-EV options available in the marketplace.
These mandates help the industry solve its prisoner’s dilemma: As long as American consumers are left free to choose among a wide range of vehicle options and prefer to buy gas-powered cars, SUVs, and pickups, there’ll be manufacturers that cater to those preferences and take market share and profits away from others, putting a brake on the industry’s collective ability to achieve the planned conversion. It’s an old story—competition is the enemy of centralized industrial planning.
Thus, EPCA, a law enacted by Congress with care to preserve consumer choice, promote the continued vigor and dynamism of the auto industry, and protect America’s energy security has been coopted to do just the opposite.
How could this happen? It’s inconceivable that a majority of the Members of Congress would ever intend for the national fuel economy program to become the angel of death for the traditional gas-powered automobile and the destroyer of consumer choice at the local dealership.*
*(Certainly, the Biden fuel economy rules, from both NHTSA and EPA, are ripe for review under the “major questions” doctrine, applied most recently by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA (2022).)
The regulators and economists in the Biden Administration recognize some but not all of the very real costs and harmful effects their fuel economy standards will impose. Predictably, though, they claim the standards are justified by offsetting future benefits, including an assumed global reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from less gasoline use (not counting the upstream CO2 emissions that will come with the necessary increase in electricity generation) and the supposed creation of jobs required to develop the new technologies demanded by the regulatory mandates. But most of these benefits are far off and hyper speculative, and the ultimate climate effects of the rules will be negligible at best.*
*(Using the UN Climate Panel’s model for global average temperature effects, Bjorn Lomborg points out that if every country achieved its stated EV targets by 2030, the total savings in CO2 emissions would be expected to reduce global temperature by 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the year 2100. If Electric Vehicles Are So Great, Why Mandate Them?, Wall Street Journal (Sept. 10, 2022).)
The Biden team does acknowledge, as they must, that their rules will increase the purchase price of new vehicles in the U.S. and will reduce the range of affordable vehicle options for consumers. And they acknowledge what will follow from that: more deaths and injuries on U.S. highways—safety harms that mirror in reverse the safety benefits projected to follow from the Trump rules.
As fewer new cars are purchased, the price of used cars will rise, and more Americans will be stuck driving older and older cars. (And, incidentally, older cars run dirtier and produce more air pollution.) The average car in the U.S. today is more than 12 years old (a record), and that number is steadily rising—many cars are more than 20 years old, and they’ve been passed from owner to owner to owner. It’s the Cubanization of America’s passenger fleet.
The aging fleet should be very concerning to NHTSA. Given that old cars are distinctly less safe, there’s a clear safety imperative in preserving manufacturers’ incentives to offer consumers a broader selection of affordable new models. Every time one American family buys a new car, another gets the opportunity to step into a newer and safer (and less polluting) used vehicle.
Acknowledging the links between cost, consumer demand, vehicle age, and safety, NHTSA calculates that the new Biden fuel economy standards will result in thousands of additional injuries and hundreds of additional deaths on U.S. highways in the coming years.
You read that right: In its zeal to pursue the Green Dream, the Biden Administration has directed the Federal Government’s premier traffic safety agency to go out of its way to impose rules it knows will cause an increase in traffic deaths and injuries. That’s scandalous.
In fact, the Biden regulators at NHTSA (and the Biden appointees at OMB) are understating the havoc these rules will produce because they’ve excluded from their estimates the many projected deaths and injuries that can be separately attributed to CARB due to the expected phase in of its zero-emissions mandate. In finalizing the Biden rule, NHTSA and OMB ignored all the CARB-related deaths and injuries by pretending that CARB is acting independently, but that’s laughable.
With the active blessing of the Biden Administration, California’s regulators now call the shots and NHTSA has effectively ceded away its supposedly exclusive authority to set nationwide fuel economy standards. No wonder Steven Cliff is eager to fly back to CARB.
With Cliff’s departure, NHTSA’s Chief Counsel is temporarily in charge of the agency. True to form, the White House is reportedly planning to install as Deputy Administrator a policy analyst who’s worked on climate and electric mobility issues, not someone with traffic safety experience. Evidently, the new Deputy won’t be in place until the end of this year or early next.
The vacuum in leadership at NHTSA comes at a particularly challenging time for the agency and for traffic safety generally. The latest numbers show a distressing rise in highway fatalities: Nearly 43,000 lost their lives in traffic accidents on U.S. highways in 2021—a 10.5% increase over 2020—and the first quarter’s preliminary numbers are 7% higher than 2021’s. Traffic fatalities are at a 20-year high. The alarm bells should be ringing at DOT.
NHTSA’s also under pressure to develop new safety standards for the systems that control self-driving vehicles, and it’s got its hands full with a complicated and unprecedented investigation into the safety of Tesla’s software.
Evidently, none of these consequential safety matters is top of the inbox for President Biden or Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. For this Administration, all evils are banal compared to the vile molecule, carbon dioxide.