Car illness

Proposed rule change would endanger public health.

One of the Texas Department of Transportation’s five recommendations to improve air quality in Houston and other urban areas whose air is filthy with car exhaust is to “add capacity to highways to reduce idling.”

That’s like arming more people to reduce gun violence. Yes, some people actually advocate this approach. But it doesn’t work. And neither will more highways. Experience shows they’ll just lead to more vehicles on the road — which will lead to more pollution, even if fewer cars are idling.

There should be a special place for people who push policies they know won’t work as advertised. That includes Trump administration officials with their proposal to weaken car emission and fuel efficiency rules.

The Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 required all passenger cars to average about 54 miles per gallon by 2025. Consumers would spend less at the gas pump as a result, and their cars would emit less carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants that cause asthma and bronchitis and increase the risk of cancer.

Ignoring the public health danger, the Trump administration wants to freeze the fuel standard at 37 miles per gallon after 2021. The EPA and TxDOT claim the rule change will save lives, ostensibly because the lighter cars needed to meet Obama-era fuel standards would be more vulnerable in accidents.

But that conflicts with a report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that shows a 22 percent decline in passenger vehicle accident deaths has occurred since 1975, when much heavier cars dominated America’s roads. Air bags and other engineering changes have made lighter cars safer.

Not even the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s lobby group, has embraced President Donald Trump’s proposal, which faces a court challenge by California and other states whose authority to set their own fuel standards would be revoked.

A prolonged legal battle could be costly for car manufacturers, causing them to make different cars for different states until the issue is resolved. Meanwhile, auto parts manufacturers say the rule change could dry up investment in high-tech innovations to make cars more fuel efficient.

So, why is Trump insistent about making the change? It appears to be yet another of his misguided efforts to undo everything President Barack Obama did, even when there’s good reason to believe the rollback would be harmful.

The fuel standards proposal must go through a public hearing process. People should let the Trump administration know they want cars that don’t guzzle gas and don’t make them sick.