Hurley heave ho
“The administration now has an opportunity to name someone committed to both the safety and fuel economy programs that they run.” –Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, as told to the Detroit News on the withdrawal of Chuck Hurley’s nomination to lead NHTSA
It’s a shame that the nomination of Chuck Hurley to be the next chief administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came and went so fast.
Late yesterday, word got out that Hurley withdrew his name from consideration due to growing opposition from environmental groups over his interactions with the automotive industry. The Detroit News reported that much of the flak Hurley got came in part for his work at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the early 1990s, when he sided with automakers over the safety impacts of downsizing vehicles to increase fuel efficiency.
For starters, it’s surprising to see the opposition to Hurley’s nomination revolves around actions he took almost two decades ago – actions, I might add, that were about improving vehicle SAFETY of all things. His concern at the time – and it’s rightly placed – seems to have centered on the potential safety risks of smaller cars. That’s a good discussion to have, mind you.
He also seemed to be a good fit for NHTSA, based on his record. As I noted in an earlier post on Hurley’s nomination, he’s a former naval intelligence officer that went on to hold senior leadership positions with the National Safety Council (NSC) and IIHS over the last thirty years – working extensively with law enforcement on air bag and seat belt issues, teen driving, and child passenger safety – before going on to become CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 2005.
Yet from what I’ve seen of his record, he’s a guy that tends to stick to the facts, not the politics. While he supported the auto industry’s arguments against raising automobile fuel economy standards back in the 1990 – again, contending that such a move would result in smaller and more dangerous cars – he also suggested that automakers were exaggerating the safety benefits of antilock brakes back then as well, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a 1994 IIHS study comparing accident and insurance loss data for cars equipped with antilock brake systems to the same models with standard brakes, it found that claim frequency and the average insurance payments were roughly the same.
That doesn’t matter now, unfortunately, as Hurley withdrew his name from consideration before even getting a hearing in the Senate. Now we’ll just have to see who steps into the batter’s box next to take a swing for the top spot at NHTSA.
May 13th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
The next NHTSA secretary ought to take steps to shut the agency down and save the government some money. If not, Obama needs to choose the head of the National Motorists Association to lead the agency in another direction. It would be refreshing to have an administrator that would promote reasonable speed limits based on sound engineering principles, lane courtesy on the highway, and provide the public with a real disclosure of the cost of so-called safety requirements that are forcing subcompact cars to weigh 3000 lbs, driving down the average fuel economy. Of course, that is dreaming. I fear that Obama will choose some fuel economy zealot instead.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Sounds like an extremely qualified person to me. It’s no wonder they don’t like him. He doesn’t sound like a man that would sacrifice safety to the farce that is man-made global warming, er, climate change or whatever they’re calling it this week. It’s not surprising to me that good and honest men don’t seek to serve anymore. If they don’t conform to the gang of the week’s ideas and ideals, they will hammer him until he quits. He saw that coming and refused to be fresh meat for the senate.
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Trucks at Work: Sean Kilcarr comments on trends affecting the many different strata of the trucking industry -- light and medium duty fleets up through over-the-road truckload, less-than-truckload, and private fleet operationsAdvertisement
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