20 Apr 2022 The Plan to Kill the Family Car

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is using “the phony rise in highway deaths” to “kill cars to save you and me.”

The alleged goal of the Biden Administration’s new National Roadway Safety Strategy is to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. Zero! And while this is an obviously impossible task, it makes the ulterior motive more evident: “The secret sauce to his plan is making car ownership miserable for you and me.”

In a commentary published by The Economic Standard, Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper and American Commitment’s Nathanael Bennett explain that the mechanism to deaden America’s passion for vehicle ownership is taxing people – and minorities, in particular – into submission:

Buried in the bureaucratic morass that makes up the 42-page plan is the big killer: thousands of speed cameras will be installed around the country. For good measure, [Buttigeig] also plans to bribe your state and local governments to dramatically lower speed limits.

The public purpose: slow down drivers and save lives. Although Orwellian surveillance techniques have become a staple of the left the last two years, none will wreak havoc on the wallets of Americans like this. Data from cities and states who have already implemented speed cameras has shown a dramatic increase in the number of tickets doled out each year, but no sign of improvement in lowering auto related fatalities. 

As more cameras lead to more tickets, studies show this doesn’t necessarily make roads safer. Likewise, slower speeds don’t always save lives.

Speed is not even the killer it is made out to be by camera advocates. In a Missouri study cited in the commentary, more than two-thirds of traffic deaths were due to drivers not wearing seatbelts.

And there is an additional angle that should concern and outrage the left’s equity activists.

Rigid automated enforcement creates a disparate racial impact, as the commentary noted that “[t]he rate of citations in these neighborhoods was double that of non-minority neighborhoods.”

With all of these things considered, it is clear that safety is not the real goal of the Biden Administration and its supporters:

Rather than saving lives, traffic cameras and artificially low speed limits are the easiest way for federal, state and local governments to create a steady flow of income and “drive” down interest in car ownership. Let’s also not forget the bounty this will provide to the insurance industry.

Under the guise of “public safety” Buttigieg and his colleagues plan to use taxpayer dollars to build and install thousands of machines that will fund their other irresponsible spending habits. Combined with insurance companies’ higher rates for “speeding” there will be less money in your pocket without any life-saving benefit. Gasoline prices are high enough now and when this new plan is added to the picture, we could see significant drops in car ownership.

“Seeking zero highway deaths sounds nice until you realize the actual goal is to undo the 20th century’s greatest mobility invention – the automobile,” Horace and Bennett wrote. “Automotive ownership is one of the greatest ways for Americans to exercise freedom. Let’s not let this latest far-left scheme to kill cars succeed.”

To read all of their commentary – “Buttigieg’s Latest Scheme to Shut-Down Your Family’s Car” – at The Economic Standard website, click here.