Although neither of them intended it, two recent news reports combined to make the case that federal fuel economy standards are killing people. And neither article mentions that President Donald Trump has a plan that will save lives.

The New York Times this week featured an article looking at the rise in pedestrian deaths, which had been trending downward for decades, but then steadily turned upward after 2009.

“While speeding and poorly designed infrastructure have helped fuel the increase, many safety advocates have also drawn a connection to the growing portion of the U.S. vehicle fleet made up of pickups and SUVs,” the article notes.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety explains that the taller, flatter front ends of trucks and SUVs make them more deadly to a pedestrian who happens to get in the way.

“SUVs and vans with a hood height greater than 40 inches are about 45% more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes than cars and other vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches or less and a sloping profile,” it notes.

And if you look at the trend in auto sales, you see that the market share of trucks started to eclipse that of sedans around the same time as the rise in pedestrian deaths. While sedans made up roughly 80% of auto sales in 1975, today they account for less than 25%.

So, what does any of this have to do with federal fuel economy requirements – which are officially known as “Corporate Average Fuel Economy” (CAFE) standards?

That’s where the second article, published in Autoblog and titled “Everything Is An SUV Today Because of This Fuel Economy Loophole,” comes in.

Since 1975, the federal government has been in the business of telling automakers that all the cars they sell in a given year must average a pre-set miles per gallon standard, starting at 18 mpg in 1978 and ramping up to 27.5 mpg by 1985. So, automakers went on a frenzy of downsizing cars to hit these mandates.

That proved to be deadly.

A study published in the Journal of Law and Economics in the late ’80s concluded that the resulting downsizing of the fleet resulted in thousands of additional deaths, for the simple reason that smaller, lighter cars are less safe.

But now, CAFE standards are killing people for a different reason.

Once the government got into the business of dictating fuel economy, it had to make accommodations for different kinds of vehicles. Pick-up trucks, after all, couldn’t be expected to get the same kind of mileage as a sedan.

So, regulators set tighter standards for cars and looser ones for “light trucks,” a category that included minivans and SUVs, which automakers started selling instead of station wagons.

See also:

• Why CAFE Must Be Ended, Not Mended
• Car Lovers Rejoice! After 50 Miserable Years, CAFE Standards Are Dead
• By Gutting CAFE, Trump Can Make Autos Beautiful Again
• Are EVs The Biggest Boondoggle In Human History?
• Making Cars Fun To Drive Again

After 1985, the CAFE standards didn’t change for 25 years. But then in 2010, thanks to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the mandate for cars started ramping up again, hitting 44.2 mpg in 2020. The one for “light trucks,” however, went up far more slowly.

As a result, while cars only had to be 17% more fuel efficient than “light trucks” in 2010, in 2025 they had to be 40% more efficient, according to data from the Department of Energy.

Not surprisingly, that’s when sales of SUVs started to overwhelm the market. (See the chart above.)

“If you could build a passenger vehicle that people wanted to buy, classify it as a light truck, and face a significantly lower regulatory burden while doing so, why would you build sedans?” writes Autoblog’s James Ochoa.

That also proved to be deadly.

As the New York Times article shows, these bigger, heavier, taller vehicles – while arguably safer for drivers and passengers – are more deadly to everyone else, including those in small cars and, yes, pedestrians.

Trump, believe it or not, is trying to solve this problem. The Department of Transportation has proposed a rule that will lower the CAFE standard to 34.5 mpg and get rid of the distinction between crossover SUVs and passenger cars. Assuming those rules are finalized and stay in place, carmakers could go back to making sedans or even, who knows, station wagons. Consumers will be happier. And lives will be saved.

As we have said countless times, the better solution is to ditch CAFE altogether. But if Trump’s rule is finalized as proposed, it will be a life-saving step in the right direction.

–  Written by the I&I Editorial Board