As if Americans are too stupid to back out of their own driveways, here come the federal regulators to remedy the situation....
From Bloomberg -- U.S. auto-safety regulators proposed requiring backup cameras on all new vehicles by 2014 to prevent drivers from backing over pedestrians, a rule that may cost as much as $2.7 billion.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which published the proposed rule today, said an average of 292 people die each year from back-over accidents, which primarily kill children and the elderly. To equip a new-vehicle fleet of 16.6 million produced in a year would cost from $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion, the agency said in the proposal, calling the cost “substantial” and saying it might reduce back-over deaths and injuries by almost half.
I'm sorry if people run over their own kids with the car in the driveway, but come on! If you have little kids or wandering seniors at your house, how distracted and careless do you have to be to not take the time to check behind the car before backing up? This is a self-regulating problem and the government doesn't need to mandate anything. The consumer car market will determine if we want to pay for backup cameras on our cars.
I swear, it's like these federal regulators think that if they aren't restricting the activities of Americans either by force or by cost, they aren't doing their jobs. Or worse, they just dream up pointless regulations with which to torment us, just because they have the power to do so.
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