The National Academy of Sciences, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Congressional Budget Office and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have separately concluded in multiple studies dating back about 20 years that fuel-economy standards force automakers to build more small cars, which has led to thousands more deaths in crashes annually. Go To Site

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In 2003, for example, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated that for every 100 pounds of weight taken out of a car weighing less than 3,000 pounds, the death rate goes up more than 5 percent; the increase is slightly less than 5 percent for those weighing more than 3,000 pounds. Two years before that, a National Academy of Sciences study estimated that the lighter vehicles required to satisfy CAFE were responsible for as many as 2,600 highway deaths in one year alone. And in 1999, a comprehensive multiple regression analysis by USA Today of the government's Fatality Analysis Reporting System data concluded that 7,700 people died for every one additional mpg attributable to CAFE regulation.