Government officials like Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood spend much of their time justifying their positions by tilting at national windmills like the “epidemic” of distracted driving, generally with relatively modest results. And yet, despite the massive increase in mobile device use over the last decades or so, on-road deaths per vehicle mile traveled are at an all-time low. So here’s a new “epidemic” for Secretary LaHood: lane discipline. Every time I take to the freeway, I’m absolutely shocked by the number of people driving at or below the speed limit in the left lane, and the number of people who stay in the fastlane even when there’s nobody to pass. And I don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence to know lane discipline is a problem in America (or, at least in the Pacific Northwest). According to the PEMCO Insurance Northwest Poll,

43 percent of Washington drivers don’t know that impeding the flow of traffic in the left lane is against the law.

To which I say “bullshit.” Not only is it illegal to impede left lane traffic in Washington (and Oregon, where I live), but the freeways in both states have regular “keep right except to pass” signs, so the ignorance defense doesn’t really apply. People simply don’t care about maintaining lane discipline, and ignore any sign that urges them to do so. Clearly signage and the National Motorist’s Association’s Lane Courtesy Awareness Month aren’t doing the trick… and neither does giving the finger.

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The debate over 2025 CAFE standards will continue to rage all summer long, but if there’s one thing I learned from the industry lobbyists that I spoke to in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago, it’s that the media debate severely lags the conversation that’s going on behind closed doors. It’s a frustrating situation for commentators who hope to influence the process, but then D.C. debates are rarely about the ideas anyway. But environmental groups who hope to come between an industry that’s already relatively well-positioned for short-to-medium-term standards and a government that’s more interested in helping the industry than ever are still hoping to bring some public pressure to bear on an issue that, according to my sources anyway, was already largely settled weeks ago. Bloomberg [via AN [sub]] reports that

The auto industry is pressing the Obama administration for a promise to reevaluate rules that may more than double U.S. fuel economy standards by 2025 before they become final…

Still under negotiation are details of the midpoint review, including the timing, whether there will be a judicial review and whether the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Department and California’s Air Resources Board will coordinate efforts, Gleberman said.

Environmental groups oppose the midterm review, saying it’s a gambit by automakers seeking to kill the program at the halfway point, when a president more friendly to the industry may be in office, said Dan Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign.

According to my sources, a mid-way review of 2017-2025 standards was agreed to in principle by all the major stakeholder stakeholders some time ago. And for obvious reasons: with disruptive new technologies under development and the trajectory of fuel prices remaining an unknown quantity, nobody knows precisely what technologies will be available and what the market will demand come 2017. Like California’s ZEV mandate, a push to kill the mid-term review makes CAFE even less responsive to the market than it already is. If anything, environmental groups should embrace a review of current standards because there’s a good chance fuel prices will be higher and the nation will be more determined than ever to sacrifice for higher emissions standards. Besides, if CAFE loses touch with the market and has no opportunity to sync back up, the industry could be in for another disastrous downturn. And no matter how pro-regulation you are, it’s tough to argue that CAFE should be totally unresponsive to market forces. Unless you know exactly what the market will look like in 2025 (in which case, let’s start a hedge fund), trying to set 2025 emissions standards in stone now makes no sense at all.

Voters in Washington state will decide in November whether to slow down the state’s push toward tolling. Initiative 1125 prohibits lawmakers from diverting toll road revenue and other levies on motorists toward non-transportation purposes. It also forces politicians to vote directly on any toll hikes.

“If there’s going to be tolls, there has to be accountability and transparency,” initiative co-sponsor Tim Eyman of Voters Want More Choices wrote in an email. “It’s simply not too much to ask for taxpayers who are being forced to pay twice for their roadway infrastructure (the highest gas tax in the nation and tolls) that the legislature be required to follow the law and abide by the Constitution.”

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Last week I wondered aloud about where the UAW stands on fuel economy, inspired by the union’s apparent flip-flopping between supporting the companies that employ its workers and backing its environmental allies on the left with talk of its commitment to green jobs. And after expressing concern about proposed CAFE increases, it seems the UAW is flopping back towards the environmentalist side of the equation, joining the so-called “Blue-Green Coalition” of labor leaders and environmental groups in expressing its vague support for “strong” emissions standards in a letter to President Obama [PDF]. But with CAFE negotiations coming down to within 5 MPG or so of a final “number” for the 2052 standard, the letter’s lack of commitment means it’s still not clear where the UAW comes down in the policy debate. So instead of highlighting the union’s commitment to the environment, the letter ends up serving as a window into the UAW’s cynical, yet self-deluding side.

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Drivers often get the run around when dealing with the traffic ticket bureaucracy. When fighting city hall, individuals usually have no little hope of prevailing. Motorist Harry A. Church realized that with red light cameras, the system was outsourced from city hall to a company that could be more easily sued. After being double-billed by the Australian red light camera company Redflex Traffic Systems, Church filed a lawsuit that has been taken up by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

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If you asked an auto industry lobbyist, say, a month ago, what the big fights were over in CAFE negotiations, he probably wouldn’t have said “the number.” In the parlance of the Potomac valley, that means everyone at the table knows that at some point they’re all going to join hands and sing kumbaya over one highly symbolic number. Not surprisingly, the numbers that everyone in DC has been looking at fall right in the middle of these four scenarios… not coincidentally the tipping point where hybrids swing from a quarter to nearly half the market. But are these WSJ [sub] charts even accurate? John Krafcik, CEO of Hyundai Motor America and the industry’s CAFE contrarian implies that it’s not for everyone, telling Automotive News [sub] that

Honestly, our focus isn’t on hybrid. Our focus is on optimizing internal combustion and getting as many fuel-efficient vehicles out there, across the lineup. That’s the way you do it. If you look at the math, if you look at how CAFE math works, volume trumps everything.

But then Krafcik oversees a brand that doesn’t just sell lots of high-efficiency cars, it sells very few pickups… resulting in a sales-weighted fleet fuel economy 35.7 MPG in the first half of this year (as calculated by Hyundai). Did we mention that the 2016 passenger car standard is 37.8 MPG, at which time it figures its non-hybrid Elantra will get 50 MPG combined on the CAFE test? And nobody can look at Hyundai’s six-month sales performance (up 26%) and argue that Americans don’t want to buy fuel-efficient cars. In short, Hyundai is proving that automakers who can make money selling appealing, fuel-efficient cars need not binge on hybrids Even, according to the EPA’s final rule on standards through 2016, for manufacturers trying to sell as many pickups as possible.

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Three Southern California cities are taking steps to rid themselves of red light cameras. In Westminster, the city council decided unanimously on Wednesday to ask voters to ban the use of red light cameras in a referendum scheduled for November 2012.

“We gave very clear instructions… to city managers that this red light camera system will not be discussed or considered to be installed in any part of our city,” Councilman Andy Quach said on Wednesday. “Tonight is basically a reiteration of that already existing policy…. The council has historically never liked anything that could be considered monitoring its citizens by Big Brother.”

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The highest court in Massachusetts believes there is no due process problem with charging motorists $300 to challenge a $5 or $15 parking ticket. On Thursday, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the appeal procedures in the city of Northampton satisfied constitutional requirements even though motorists were denied an in-person hearing to contest the legitimacy of a citation. The city only allowed people either to pay the fine in full or send “a signed statement explaining his objections.”

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The European Commission’s competition authority has a problem:

The Commission had to launch a formal investigation into aid for a large investment project by BMW for the manufacturing of electric cars. The formal investigation will allow the Commission to gain an insight into the emerging market of electric cars, a market for which it has not examined regional investment aid before.

A subsidy is a subsidy is a subsidy, right? Apparently not…

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Beginning December 1, North Carolina will join Australia in having laws on the book mandating the seizure of vehicles for certain speeding offenses. On June 23, Governor Bev Perdue (R) signed the “Run and You’re Done” bill into law which authorizes a county sheriff to take and hold the car of anyone accused — not convicted — of speeding away from a police officer. The state House and Senate passed the measure unanimously.

Under the new law, the confiscation becomes permanent if a judge believes the car or motorcycle was used to elude a police officer while speeding more than 15 MPH over the limit with at least one other aggravating factor, such as having someone under 12 years old in the vehicle or the vehicle was at some point in a highway work zone, regardless of whether any workers are present.

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In 1998, South Carolina lawmakers mandated that police use dashboard mounted cameras to document the arrest of anyone arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). The state supreme court on Monday ruled that the town of Mount Pleasant was not in compliance with this statute, which states a suspect “must have his conduct at the incident site and the breath test site video recorded.”

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Electric vehicles present all kinds of challenges to the traditional ways of understanding cars. From design to differentiation, from range to refueling, EVs simply act different than the internal combustion-powered cars we’ve been refining for centuries now. And yet, through consumer incentives and subsidized charging stations, governments seem to be barreling headlong towards the goal of simply replacing our gas cars with electric ones, as if the two were fundamentally interchangeable. Sadly this is not the case, and a study by Project Better Place and PJM Interconnection [PDF] illustrates in stark terms just how costly an unplanned, uncoordinated rush to electric cars can be.

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Transportation Secretary and Supreme Allied Commander in the War On Distraction Ray LaHood is quite chuffed about initial pilot program results for his latest offensive against in-car cell phone use, and he’s taking to the airwaves to declare victory. The programs, modeled on the “Click It Or Ticket” and “Over The Limit, Under Arrest” initiatives combined an advertising blitz and waves of enforcement to crack down on the behavior, but more importantly to send the message that distracted driving is as serious a problem as drunk driving or not wearing a seatbelt. Thanks to the relative success of these earlier programs, the DOT has a strong template for its pilot anti-distracted driving campaign, the enforcement components of which took place in April, July, and October 2010 and March-April 2011. But was the “Phone In One Hand, Ticket In The Other” program actually as successful as LaHood claims?
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Police are not alone in the ability to secretly use GPS devices to track someone without his knowledge, the New Jersey Superior Court’s Appellate Division ruled Thursday. A three-judge panel made this decision in the context of a privacy invasion suit brought by Kenneth R. Villanova against Innovative Investigations Inc after his now ex-wife hired the private-eye company to spy on him. She intended to document alleged infidelities prior to filing for divorce in May 2008. At the firm’s suggestion, Villanova’s wife installed the tracking device on her husband’s GMC Yukon-Denali which followed the vehicle’s every move for forty days.

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When the White House opened negotiations over the next round of CAFE regulations for 2017-2025, I reckoned the automakers and regulators were “working in nearly unprecedented harmony.” Well, not so much any more. The WSJ [sub] reports that, although work on “the big number” is proceeding well, in the words of IHS Automotive’s Michael Robinet

This becomes a lot more politically divisive as they become much more specific in terms of the footprint of the vehicle.

In short, the original sin of CAFE, the two-tier system that drove SUV “light truck” sales and saw the creation of “trucks” like the PT Cruiser and HHR, has returned to haunt the latest round of negotiations. And, according to the WSJ, Japanese and Korean manufacturers are complaining that the new rules will motivate consumers to buy less-efficient offerings, and in turn give the Detroit manufacturers an unfair advantage. The kumbayas are over, and the gloves are off… but just how unfair are the newly-proposed rules?

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