This might be a contender for the most confused a human being has ever been and still sounded confident. This is olympic-level nonsense. I don’t agree with emissions standards, because it interferes with fuel efficiency, but because I’m attempting to make a point about how Americans will be stuck driving older cars because they can’t afford new ones – which I admit are safer – I’m suddenly pretending to care about the air pollution produced by these older cars, even though, generally speaking, I don’t care about air pollution caused by cars.

The idea that fuel efficiency standards will be to blame for “hundreds of fatalities” because people will be holding onto their older cars, because efficient cars are more expensive up front, and older cars become less safe over time, is convoluted insanity. If you have to twist yourself up into these kinds of knots to make your point, perhaps your point is not as good as you think it is.

Full contextual analysis of Section 3.10: Department of Transportation here.