Backup Camera May Become Mandatory

Posted on December 5, 2010 
Filed Under HOURS OF SERVICE, IN THE NEWS, POLITICS

This was in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday December 4. Apparently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a proposed rulemaking Friday which will mandate backup cameras on all new cars by 2014.

Oh my. Where does it end? You read about the out-of-control EPA, and how the GOP is going to stand up to Lisa Jackson and her governing-by-fiat EPA, but the EPA is just the tip of the iceberg. What about Ray LaHood and the DOT? Is anyone going to stand up to him? According to the article, NHTSA estimates there are 292 fatalities from backing accidents every year. This rule supposedly will reduce the number of these fatalities. Nowhere in the article, however, does it quote any sort of data or study proving these backup cameras will prevent these type of accidents. If you are in such a big hurry, that you backup without looking, what makes one think you’d look at a backup camera?

My car has a backup camera. I do not find it useful. I use my mirrors, and look where I am going when I back up. I have never had a backing accident. I don’t need the backup camera, but it came standard with the car. According to the article, these cameras add $400 to the cost of the car. I suspect it may be more. I don’t want or need this camera; why should I have to pay for it?

I have no illusions. I am certain this will become a rule. No one has restrained these executive agencies since… well, as long as I can remember, which would be 1990. Democrat, Republican Presidents…. all sides of the same coin. The executive agencies like DOT, EPA, OSHA, etc. simply make rules, rules, on top of rules, and no one stops them. No one in the White House stops them. No one in the Congress stops them. The courts don’t stop them. The President and the Congressmen don’t run the country. The unelected bureaucrats do.

In a few days, FMCSA (which is a part of DOT), will announce the new hours of service rules. They will be more restrictive. Drivers will not be able to drive as many hours. Carriers will be less productive. They will have to hire more drivers to move the same amount of freight. Existing drivers will not be able to work as many hours, and will probably make less money. These new rules will not save one life. There is no data to suggest otherwise. In fact, the DOT has spent the last 7 years arguing the existing rules are safer and save lives. Now they will argue the opposite, just to keep up the facade this is all about safety. It’s the same deal with mandating the electronic on-board recorders. Again, no link to safety, but argue that anyway, just so this government takeover of our lives and businesses feels warm and snuggly.

Somewhere in the last 50 years, we became way too comfortable with the government telling us what to do. Where does it say the government has the right to tell me what kind of safety equipment I have to buy? Where does it say the government can force a business to utilize a GPS-based tracking system on its vehicles? Yeah, I know, the statists all whip out their copies of the Constitution and say, see, says here in Article I, Section 8, the Congress has the power to regulate commerce. It doesn’t matter if the other 4 pages of the Constitution contradict that commerce clause, all they see is “Congress has the power to regulate”, which they interpret to mean, “Congress has the power to regulate without restriction. That’s not what it was intended to mean, and if we keep letting the unelected bureaucrats steal our freedoms, we will all be poorer for it.

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