The Lost Opportunity in Biden’s Big Infrastructure Bills

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The Inflation Reduction Act will reduce emissions—and entrench car culture.

Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 9,560 people had died in traffic crashes in the first quarter of 2022—a 20-year high.

The reasons aren’t simple. Experts have blamed everything from emptier pandemic-era roads that encouraged drivers to hit higher speeds to, uh, people’s declining mental health. But by far the most convincing explanation points to a long-known but fixable problem: American roads are designed in uniquely dangerous ways.

Add that to the fact that the United States—unlike Australia, Japan, and many European nations—does not require car manufacturers to test for pedestrian safety, only passenger safety, and the statistics appear like grim consequences of inaction: The US allows its drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians to die at rates far higher than those of its peer nations.

With two large infrastructure bills, President Joe Biden had a unique opportunity to bring the US up to speed. But experts say that the administration’s efforts mostly miss the mark, advancing key goals to combat climate change but failing to deal with traffic deaths.

[The bills] are not likely to significantly affect traffic safety except for in the negative form,” the Urban Institute’s Yonah Freemark tells me. “The primary benefit of the infrastructure law is investing in major highway projects and in, frankly, larger, heavier vehicles and electric cars.”

By prioritizing cars above alternative forms of transportation, the Inflation Reduction Act locks in the nation’s use of mining-intensive electric car batteries while doing little to reduce auto dependence. As David Zipper warned at Slate, these investments could even mean that the “transition to electric cars” will “further worsen the deadly carnage on America’s roads.” To understand why, you have to look at the details.

First, there are the tax credits pushing electric vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act specifically incentivizes the purchase of larger vehicles that are more likely to cause traffic deaths. As a report by the Climate + Community Project, a policy collaborative, notes, “The IRA would provide specific incentives for the purchase of resource-intensive SUVs and trucks, by allowing people buying such trucks costing up to $80,000 to take advantage of tax credits—compared to only $55,000 for sedans and other smaller cars. Sedans are much less likely to injure people in crashes than larger trucks.”

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