Editorial: A Blind Spot on Rearview Cameras

Safety is a big issue for Americans, but many dangers persist simply for lack of political will to confront them.

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A case in point involves rearview cameras in cars to prevent deaths and injuries that occur when drivers are backing up. On average, backover car accidents kill some 230 people a year, mostly children and mostly in accidents in which a parent or other relative is driving. Another 18,000 people are injured annually in backover accidents. Yet the Obama administration has balked at carrying out a law that requires rearview technology in new cars.

The delay is inexcusable. The rearview law, enacted by Congress in 2008, gave the Transportation Department until February 2011 to issue a rule telling automakers how to comply. But the department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, which vets new rules, have virtually paralyzed the process.

The budget office sat on a draft rule for 19 months, from December 2011 to June 2013, at which point the Transportation Department withdrew it, saying it wanted more time to study the issue and setting a new deadline for a final rule of January 2015. Understandably fed up, safety advocates sued last week, asking a federal court to order the department to issue a final rule within 90 days.

The law gives the secretary of transportation the flexibility to extend the deadline if it "cannot be met." That flexibility has obviously been abused. The delays are political, not the result of procedural or technological problems. The rearview rule is one of many held up by the federal budget office during the election campaign in 2012; the new deadline for the rule would delay it beyond the 2014 midterm elections. The unavoidable conclusion is that the delay is an administration ploy to avoid Republican charges of "job killing" regulations, while placating the auto industry, which opposes the rule as too expensive.

That objection, by the way, is bogus. One reason the industry doesn't want mandatory rearview cameras is that it makes more money selling them as options. The added cost to a car is small — $160 to $200, according to a government estimate from 2010 — and that is surely too high now, given the technology's declining cost.

Recently, the Transportation Department added rearview cameras to its list of recommended safety features, a move that is supposed to encourage carmakers to include them. The gesture is a half-measure that sidesteps the department's legal obligation. The simple fact is that the administration has failed to execute the law. The court should require it to do so.

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