"Bill Funk" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 7 Jan 2007 17:39:11 -0800, "William Graham"
wrote:

Yeah, but the heavier the vehicle the safer, and so everyone goes for the
heaviest they can get and/or afford....Soon the streets are full of tanks
that weigh 10,000 pounds each, with their occupants glaring out or their
little armored windows at each other.....Wouldn't it be better if they all
went for the lightest vehicle they could find? - Then we wouldn't be
paying
to haul all that scrap iron around with us all the time......I guess the
only way to reach that level of sophistication is for the price of the
fuel
to go through the roof, so nobody can afford to drive the tank.......


There will still be those who will drive a smaller car. It's human
nature.
And, even if everyone suddenly discovered that smaller cars got better
mileage, and then suddenly no one needed larger vehicles (through some
feat of magic), how do we shrink trucks down to under 3000 pounds?

The reality is, even if the CAFE standard were raised to 40mpg, larger
passenger vehicles would still be needed; a fact that eludes some.

That's right....As long as the trucks and other commercial vehicles are
sharing the same roads as private vehicles, we are going to have this
problem. Designing a safer cab for the passengers is about the best we can
do......