Really? This was actually advanced as an argument?

This is Joseph

How does one even parody this?

At the same time, the draft says that people will drive less if their vehicles get fewer miles per gallon, lowering the risk of crashes.

If the goal is to discourage driving by making it more expensive, there are an entire suite of carbon tax, gas tax, and congestion tax proposals that I think bear looking into.  These will recue driving and make everyone safer.  Or what about cheap bus service?  These big and heavy vehicles are pretty safe for their passengers and tend to have better safety records than single occupancy vehicles.

What if we reduced parking in cities?  Would that not make people drive less?  Or banning cars altogether?

I mean if the goal is to get people out of cars, why would decreasing fuel efficiency standards (to make the gas cost per mile less) even be in the top ten reason?

Now I know that the argument is also to make the cars cheaper (so people buy kore modern cars) but the wonderful thing about a super-high gas tax is that you could use some of that money to reduce tariffs and sales tax on new cars.  Everyone wins.

The thing with cars is that there is an efficiency (in terms of transport) and safety trade-off.  We can rethink it, but this seems like the worst policy decision to make in order to accomplish the stated goal.