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Trump Administration Justifies Freezing Fuel Standards: It'll Reduce Crashes

Insisting people would drive more if cars got better gas mileage.

The Trump administration has defended their efforts to freeze Obama-era fuel standards by arguing that if cars have a lower mileage-per-gallon, people will drive less and therefore get into fewer crashes. The Associated Press, which has obtained a copy of the proposal draft, reports that the administration hopes to freeze the standard at 30mpg until 2026, and asserts that doing so could save up to 1,000 lives each year. Experts have questioned the validity of this logic, arguing that the lighter, more efficient vehicles that would be ushered in by increasing fuel standards perform better in crash tests than older, heavier models. The director of the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University agreed, telling the Associated Press that “To say that safety is a direct result of somehow freezing the fuel economy mandate for a few years, I think that’s a stretch.”