If you believe that federal regulators are concerned with the formulation of policies based on data -based evidence, a case currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit will leave it scratching your head.
The case involves a terrible regulation of the Biden administration promoted by a great job. In defending this regulation, which requires that load trains include at least two people, the lawyers of the United States Department of Transportation lean strongly not in data or evidence, but in the “common sense.”
This, of course, is much more than trains. It is a microcosm of a much greater problem.
Emotion -based regulation is a destructive way to regulate the complex and dynamic American economy, unless it favors the least freedom and dynamism found in the European continent. In the case of this American rule, the government admits that it has no real evidence that the teams of two people are safer than the teams of a person. Instead, the agency has asked the court to postpone what calls a “common sense Product of reasoned decision making. “
This language may sound like a harmless bureaucratic boiler. It is anything but.
It represents a dangerous precedent, one by which agencies can set aside their legal responsibility to document the real market failures that require regulation, to present cost-benefit analysis or even to show substantive security concerns.
You may agree that two are better than one, but “common sense” is the new legal standard, then everything is worth.
What follows? Regular package delivery drones because “it feels safer” to keep humans in some kind of joystick? Do you require that each grocery store have cashiers in each payment lane, even if 90% of customers use auto-checkout, because “it feels safer” see someone behind the counter?
Security and security are obviously important. That is exactly the reason we should demand real evidence.
Government's own data does not support the notion that demanding crews of two people would improve security. My former colleague Patrick McLaughlin showed that there are No reliable and conclusive data To document that a person's teams have worse security records than the teams of two people. Many USA Railways have a lot operated safely with crew of one person, such as do Amtrak trains that transport Washington's elite along the east coast. We also have a lot of data from Europe and other nations where members of a single crew operate.
Then there are compensation problems. It is important to require that a member of the additional crew increases labor costs, which could divert the funds from critical areas, such as road maintenance and equipment or innovations to improve safety (automation, accident prevention. systemsetc.). In fact, historically, the security improvements on the railroad have been promoted more by Investment in infrastructure and innovation, no crew size.
As a result, railroads have invested billions in automation and security technology to reduce the risk of human error, which is the main cause of railway accidents and can contribute For disasters such as the 2023 wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, which continues to launch a lever on the industry.
So why the impulse to maintain such a rule now? The answer, unfortunately, but as expected, is politics. This mandate has been a long -list article for the desire list for a great job. More crew members means more union quotas. For elected officials, it means more campaign endorsement. For the rest of us, it means greater costs and more things that move on road roads, which will increase traffic deaths.
The broader question raised by this case is whether the federal regulation has abandoned the basic principles of the American system. Historically, agencies were expected to demonstrate a convincing need for regulation backed by real world data. Now, apparently, the load is turning: unless the regulated part can demonstrate that the rule is unnecessary, the rule is.
In this European style approach for regulation, with which I am familiar, the default control is in the hands of bureaucrats who simply presume that they know better. This is what the American system was designed to avoid.
This trend is not only visible in rail policy. In all sectors, federal agencies are using vague justifications and broad interpretations of the legal authority to impose scanning mandates, often with little concern for how innovation, private investment or economy in general affect. The courts, unless they firmly retreat, run the risk of becoming rubber stamps for regulatory overreach.
If the 11th circuit defends this rule for “common sense” reasons, the consequences could be of great reach. I would indeed say to all agencies that do not worry about assembling a registration based on evidence or performing rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Just appeal to intuition and call it one day.
That result would be one that offends genuine common sense.
Veronique de Rugy He is a senior research member at the Mercatus Center of the George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with the creators Syndicate.
