Green Options

In a sudden reversal, Transport Canada announced on Tuesday that it would release the results of hundreds of tests on child car seats conducted since 2003.

Prior to Tuesday, they were refusing to publicly release the six years’ worth of tests — paid for with the public dollar — because “there may be a potential for unfair material damage to the private sector without cause.”

On Monday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on this issue.  They learned that these tests were similar to ones carried out by the NHTSA in 2008, which revealed problems with some seats, such as failures in side impact crashes and numerous cases of infant seats detaching from their bases. These results led to recalls and changes in car seat safety policies.

As you might expect, this news prompted considerable backlash.

Who hasn’t been enraged to read about how Ford and G.M. can make perfectly good little gas sippers in Europe, but just can’t bring themselves to make a fuel efficient car for us back home?

Well, now that they need some funding from us, here’s an idea. Let’s fund Detroit just to set up their efficient European car factories — back here, where they are really needed. Let’s get some better gas mileage out of their money troubles.

Apparently, it only costs $75 million to completely retool a plant, to produce an efficient little car instead of the gas-guzzling behemoth they were fobbing off on us fools all these years.