A study released by General Motors asserts that tougher rules in improving the fuel efficiency for cars and trucks would lead to smaller vehicles and cause more highway deaths, according to The Wall Street Journal. The GM study said that raising the nation’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules on cars, sport/utility vehicles, and vans would force manufacturers to build lighter vehicles, which could result in 400 additional highway deaths and from 1,000 to 2,000 more highway injuries annually. The study tested the latest vehicles equipped with driver-side airbags and found that modern safety devices don’t outweigh the danger of being in lighter vehicles. Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington advocacy group, said that the GM study failed to consider what would happen if light trucks, the main focus of the CAFE debate, were the only vehicles that got lighter due to CAFE increase. GM said that their study, which didn’t include pickup trucks, couldn’t tell if reduced weight of a vehicle would help or hurt safety in crashes involving just one vehicle. In two-vehicle crashes, GM said the study found that decreasing the weight of a heavier vehicle such as an SUV would save the lives of some of the occupants of a smaller vehicle such as a small car when an accident occurs. But GM said that even if the weight of a heavier vehicle were reduced, the occupants would fare worse in some crashes.