Word: nhtsa
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...late July, the Center for Auto Safety (CAS) released hundreds of pages of a previously buried 2003 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study that identified the cell phone as a serious safety hazard when used on the road. A bill introduced last month in the Senate would require all states to impose a ban on texting while driving; 17 states (including, most recently, Illinois, on Aug. 6) and the District of Columbia have passed such a ban, and seven states have outlawed driver use of handheld communication devices altogether. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood considers cell phones such a problem...
Still, DeCicco points out, even if the CAFE numbers don't reflect reality, by raising the standard to 35 m.p.g., it mandates a relative increase in fuel economy of about 40%. But the government's double bookkeeping still matters - especially with the NHTSA set to issue final regulations that will help guide automakers to meet the new standard. An EPA analysis from September shows that the 35-m.p.g. CAFE standard will translate to 27 to 28 m.p.g. under real-world conditions - about the same fuel efficiency that the current CAFE standard purports to enforce. "The program is undermined...
That's partly due to the fact that while the EPA rates the fuel economy of vehicles on a model-by-model basis, the calculation of CAFE falls to the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the Department of Transportation. Under the laws that have created and modified CAFE, the NHTSA isn't allowed to revise its tests - meaning it's stuck using tests that haven't really been updated since CAFE was established...
...decades - but the U.S. standards still lag behind those of Europe and Japan, and barely keep pace with China's. And, yet, that increase - against which foot-dragging U.S. automakers fought hard, complaining about the cost of meeting higher fuel efficiency standards - required compromises, which forced the NHTSA to keep using the old rules. "It's a shame that when this law was passed no one in the government went up and measured what was actually going on," says DeCicco. (Read "Heroes of the Environment...
...Joan Claybrook The President of Public Citizen and former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) talks about the merits of having black boxes in cars...