Detroit \u2014 Toyota is grappling with a recall over obscure acceleration problems. And Democrats in Congress aren\u2019t even waiting for a full diagnosis of what went wrong: They\u2019re using the car maker\u2019s troubles to load more regulations (on top of expensive new miles-per-gallon laws) on the back of an entire industry that\u2019s struggling to emerge from the deepest sales swoon in 30 years.<\/P>
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Hasn\u2019t the beltway heard there\u2019s a recession on?<\/P>
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New regulations will be piled on top of the previous \u201cnew\u201d regulations, which were drafted after the 2001 safety \u201ccrisis\u201d involving rollovers from faulty Firestone tires. Those \u201cearly warning\u201d requirements were supposed to \u201cenable the NHTSA to collect data, notice trends, and warn consumers of potential defects in vehicles,\u201d like, say, sudden acceleration in Toyotas.<\/P>
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They didn\u2019t \u2014 and these new regulations won\u2019t, either. But they will allow Henry Waxman to claim \u201ca red-letter day for auto safety.\u201d<\/P>
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Want a better quote? Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas) calls the rules a \u201ckick in the groin\u201d to the auto industry \u2014 not to mention consumers, who will be stuck with a new $3 tax (rising to $9 in three years) to pay for the new regulations.<\/P>
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This bill sets rules that have nothing to do with sudden acceleration. For example, $40 million of your money will be spent to research ways to expand in-vehicle systems that would prevent drunk drivers from being able to start their cars.<\/P>
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Another: The bill requires that \u201cquiet cars\u201d \u2014 read hybrids and electrics \u2014 must alert blind pedestrians, bikers, and others with chirps or other sounds. No one knows what this will entail except more expense. Must these cars sound an alarm all the time? Must they be linked to satellites to chirp only at intersections? Are there so many blind pedestrians wandering America\u2019s streets that we need beeping cars? Isn\u2019t most vehicle noise at low speed generated by air disturbance, not engine sound?<\/P>
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Barton called the amendment \u201cextreme overkill.\u201d Is \u201coverkill\u201d what a struggling industry needs?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Detroit \u2014 Toyota is grappling with a recall over obscure acceleration problems. And Democrats in Congress aren\u2019t even waiting for a full diagnosis of what went wrong: They\u2019re using the car maker\u2019s troubles to load more regulations (on top of expensive new miles-per-gallon laws) on the back of an entire industry that\u2019s struggling to emerge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5014,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5013\/revisions\/5014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}