Red Asphalt

That was the name of an infamous movie that was used for years to scare driver training students. Greg Gutfield thinks we'll be returning to the days when red asphalt will be a much more common occurrence:

So according to MSNBC, President Obama is enjoying amazing support from “an uncommon alliance of auto executives, union leaders and environmental activists” concerning is new proposal to raise mileage standards and curb vehicle emissions.

But if you look at this support, you can see why it`s as pathetic as spoilers on a Yugo.

Of course, the auto executives are behind it, because the government is paying them to be behind it. For the union leaders and environmentalists, it just means a preservation of power and an increase in influence. The only people missing from this equation? The rest of America. They will pay with their wallets, and their lives.
According to the experts, Obama`s proposals will add about $1300 in costs to every car. How that helps an industry during a bottomless recession is beyond me. Worse, the National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage standards to roughly 2000 deaths per year. According to Steve Milloy, the author of Green Hell, every 100 pound reduction in the weight of small cars causes traffic fatalities to rise as much as 715 per year. He claims that Obama`s proposed plan will kill more Americans at a faster rate than the Iraq War. He might be right: last month, for example, crash tests found that drivers of the 2009 versions of so-called Smart cars- basically sardine cans without the odor or the protection - could suffer serious injuries in front-end crashes with larger, mid-size vehicles.

So wait a second. Who in God`s name would be criminal enough to be driving those larger, midsized vehicles?

Well besides evil parents who want to protect their families - try Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Yep, our fearless leaders Obama and Biden have the luxury of bullet-proof, tank-proof and smart-car proof transportation for themselves and their adorable offspring. Basically, if they hit us: they live, we die.

Unless, of course, we stick to buying the cars we want to buy, and not what the government wants. Which can only mean an inevitable punitive tax against evil people like us. Fact is, there is no huge demand for collapsible sippy-cup cars, because people prefer safety over economy. So the only way to get us into deadlier cars is to make it a financial burden to own the safe ones.

Red asphalt is often paved with good intentions.

You know, if the Democrats would just let us go and get the oil we have on our own lands and off our coasts, the fuel mileage standards would be pretty meaningless. However, thanks to their reluctance to disturb Mother Gaia and to fight global warming which ended in 1998, people will be grievously injured and killed riding in small cars because they can't afford or can't get bigger ones.