The Pelosi plan, frequently endorsed by Mr. Obama, to force Americans into smaller vehicles through the imposition of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards has already destroyed two of America's big three car makers, led to 15% unemployment in Michigan, and will now carry on to kill more Americans than have died in battle since WWII while handing major American industrial markets to China.
CAFE's first and most obvious victims were the traditional American car makers since neither Crysler nor GM could hope to meet their existing union and related obligations selling the small, cheap, vehicles neeeded to meet the mandate against foreign and American non union competition.
Less obviously, the new standards will gradually force Americans into lighter vehicles and thus increase the average weight disparity between colliding vehicles on America's roads.
What happens when a light vehicle collides with a heavy one is that the people in the lighter ones lose - CAFE, in other words, will have roughly the same effects on American roads as a staged effort, with trucks converting first, to shift Britain's roads and fleet to left hand drive.
A summary of applicable research through to 2003 has this:
According to a 2003 NHTSA study, when a vehicle is reduced by 100 pounds the estimated fatality rate increases as much as 5.63 percent for light cars weighing less than 2,950 pounds, 4.70 percent for heavier cars weighing over 2,950 pounds and 3.06 percent for light trucks. Between model years 1996 and 1999, these rates translated into additional traffic fatalities of 13,608 for light cars, 10,884 for heavier cars and 14,705 for light trucks.
The latest CAFE standards seem designed to force a 1,200 pound average passenger vehicle weight reduction over 12 years - suggesting that Pelosi et al will eventually kill more Americans via CAFE than died in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea combined.
The bottom line is simply that force equals mass times acceleration. I drive a 1999 Volvo V70R weighing in at about 3,900 pounds empty. If that hits a bridge abutment at 50MPH its three and half feet of crumple space give it 0.1 seconds to stop - a maximum G force of 22. If a 1,600 pound "green" car hits that same abutment at the same speed, its 12 inch crumple space gives it 0.03 seconds to decellerate, at a maxG of 76. (All numbers are approximate.)
If these cars were to collide at a combined 100MPH the crumple zones wouldn't rebound, but the effect would be broadly similar to what happens when the bat hits the ball: 0.07 seconds after impact that "green" car will be doing 30MPH in the same direction as the Volvo. During this 0.07 seconds I'll experience a maximum of about 12G, he'll suffer about 90. Bottom line: I live, he dies.
When President Bush and the Congress took the 9/11 war back to Iraq and Afghanistan they did so on the best information available - including information about Islamic terror's lust for weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's demonstrated eagerness to form common cause with anyone promising to kill Americans.
In contrast, the Pelosi democrats, the same people who howled after the fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction didn't exist, base their attack on American lives and the American economy on politizing resource scarcity - something both economic theory and practice show doesn't exist.
The simple answer, in other words, to the question of why small cars kill is that force equals mass times accelleration, but the larger answer is democrat political expediency.