Almost daily Corner bashing part 2

Based on the conservative uproar over the survival (thus far) of higher CAFE standards in the Senate energy bill, that these city-dwelling pundits were mountain-dwelling SUV drivers. Somehow I don't think that's the case. But you have to wonder based on a case against higher CAFE standards that's this weak:

The measure is problematic for several reasons. For one thing, it would limit consumer choice. As David Holt of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce told the Indy Star, "There's no way [automakers would] probably be able to produce SUVs," under the new standards. For another, it would make cars more expensive. A 2002 National Research Council study estimated that new fuel-efficiency standards would increase the sticker price on automobiles by anywhere from $1,000 to $3,500.

But more troubling is that study's finding that, although CAFE standards enacted in the 1970s reduced auto emissions, they increased traffic fatalities. The study looked at the year 1993, and a majority of its authors found that CAFE standards resulted in between 1,300 and 2,600 preventable traffic deaths in that year because, in order to meet the new fuel-efficiency standards, automakers had been downsizing and downweighting most cars, which made them less safe in collisions.

I'll not address the "limit consumer choice" point, because it's basically pablum--at best exaggerated, and at worst entirely untrue. And, moreover, arguments about "consumer choice" are only really relevant when those choices don't particularly cause harm to the commons.

But the other two arguments are worth a thorough dismantling. For one, part of the benefit of a highly fuel efficient auto fleet, particularly in an era of expensive gasoline, are the savings accrued over time. Significantly increase fleet efficiency and--with, say, regulations requiring vendors to note expected savings per year--peoples' concerns about car prices would largely disappear.

The other point is just unbelievably disingenuous, and not simply because it misconstrues the study's findings : It ignores extraordinary improvements in vehicle safety over the last decade and a half; it ignores the fact that, in 1993, because small cars were by today's standards unsafe, ever larger cars were causing the fatalities; and it ignores the impressive possibility that--as higher gas prices and toothy CAFE standards push SUVs off the road--driving will become safer than it is now.

The study Spruiell sites--though you'd never guess it from the tone of his post--was absolutely agog about both the higher CAFE standards of the post-oil crisis era, and the potential for higher CAFE standards to be still more effective over time.