Oh, we're claiming 4K per YEAR now? That's rich.
For a nice explanation of how this crap statistic got started, might want to go here:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030120&
s=easterbrook012003&c=2
and scroll about two thirds of the way down. In a nutshell:
'The NRC's findings have been relentlessly misrepresented by Detroit's lobbyists and by the White House, which seeks to justify inaction on SUV fuel waste at the same time that it may ask American soldiers to die in Iraq in part for the politics of oil. Lobbyists and administration officials have repeatedly stated that the NRC study concluded that if the MPG rules for SUVs were made stricter, 2,000 people would die from weight reduction in future SUV designs. Yet the NRC asserted no inescapable relationship between weight and occupant safety. (Pickup trucks, among the heaviest of vehicles, are also among the most dangerous to drive or to ride in.) What the NRC study really says is that imposition of the original federal fuel-economy rules caused 2,000 avoidable deaths between 1976 and 1993 because the rules led to people buying econo-boxes; and the early econo-boxes had almost no safety engineering.'
