Republicans Complain That Cars Have Become Too Safe, Say It Must Be Reversed

In the United States, where owning a car is mandatory for 92% of the population, increasingly high car prices cause a lot of stress. The average cost of a new car in the United States has recently hit record highs, while repossessions of lost car payments have reached their highest levels in 15 years.

Republican lawmakers are always looking for their next sacrificial lamb, and are now arguing that technology in cars is to blame. However, it’s not the infotainment software, radio keys, power seats, or over-the-air subscription services that it attacks, but safety systems that NHTSA says have saved 860,000 lives since 1968.

Yes seriously. as Wall Street Journal a reportQRepublicans are forming an inquisition headed by senator Ted Cruz to attack federal laws mandating safety technology in new cars. This includes proven, low-cost systems such as automatic emergency braking (AEB) – which is not scheduled to become mandatory until 2029 – and alarms to remind drivers not to forget their children in the back seat.

At Cruz’s direction, lawmakers subpoenaed three executives from Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers, along with a Tesla executive, “to explain rising vehicle costs.” The meeting is sure to be tense at the highest levels, because the auto tycoons are already aligned with Republican priorities.

Earlier this year, a lobby group sued the Department of Transportation on behalf of the auto industry over upcoming AEB requirements. The companies claim that the regulations “would significantly increase costs”, although many already place AEB in selected car models willingly.

However, when it comes to rising costs, a broader look under the hood shows that lawmakers are barking up the wrong tree.

In practice, technological gains in factory automation have enabled automakers to produce enough conventional cars to saturate the market. In an ideal world, the auto giants would pass these savings on to the consumer; Efficiency is supposed to reduce costs, after all. But this would reduce the profits of the auto industry, which goes against the logic that has driven car companies from the beginning.

Car seats are a great example of this. While seat design has an impact on safety during car accidents, the industry has taken it to another level, turning chairs into “electric seats” packed with biometric sensors, ventilation ducts, encoders, and motors.

Car seats themselves are just another item. But it has become filled with high-tech conveniences, and has become an entirely new industry — worth $50 billion as of early 2014 — that serves as a new avenue of profit for car companies, and a new cost for car buyers.

While high-tech systems are the most recent example, this is not a new phenomenon. As labor journalist Joe Andrews wrote in 1942: “To solve the problem of the stagnation of the automobile industry, and to find new areas of profit, [Ford] The company has expanded into all kinds of sub-fields. It has developed ethyl gasoline, which it has a monopoly on. I have invested in nylon, refrigerators, appliances and tools of all kinds.

It is an excellent example of how capitalism, if left to its own devices, turns to production for profit, rather than production to meet human needs. The point is that if Republicans were really worried about rising car prices, they would crack down on the auto monopolies that drive them higher — not the safety regulations that keep Americans alive.

More about cars: Tesla admits that its cars can never fully drive themselves