How dare you?
It’s no secret road fatalities have been on the rise in the past few years. There’s plenty of debate about what’s causing this phenomena, despite all the new safety technology included in cars these days. Well, NHTSA Administrator Steven Cliff has decided to focus his regulatory agency’s energy squarely on speeders as the problem. For anyone who has dug into the issue extensively, this truly is a face palm moment.
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That’s not to say speeding isn’t dangerous, because it does introduce a level of danger. But to boil the complicated problem down to a single factor is what we’d expect from a former CARB official, which is Cliff’s background. Simplicity of thought is his secret sauce, like super simplicity of thought.
“We have a new speed campaign that’s going to be kicking off in a couple of weeks,” NHTSA Administrator Steven Cliff told Reuters in a recent interview.
That campaign aims to create a cultural shift so speeders are socially shamed and ostracized for their egregious acts. Cliff seeks to paint speed to "be as undesirable and seen as negatively as other types of bad" habits when behind the wheel. That’s interesting considering so many view texting and driving as a despicable thing to do, yet obviously there are still plenty of people who do it. It’s almost like the government can’t control such things.
Even more exciting, Cliff told Reuters automakers could be facing even bigger fines for not hitting their fleet fuel economy standards, thanks to NHTSA deciding on graduated fines back in March. He claimed officials on Capitol Hill are considering using the seized money to develop “cleaner technologies.”
Cliff is also pushing to get more self-driving cars on roads across the country, you know because he’s a huge safety advocate. We already know if there’s a problem with one of these cars, a human driver will automatically be blamed because technology is perfect, after all.
