Volkswagen/ Clean Air Act

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/business/dealbook/thepotential-criminal-consequences-for-volkswagen.html?_r=0

The Potential Criminal Consequences of Volkswagen

This article is about the car company Volkswagen and the recent discovery by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is a government ruling on air pollution and car companies are required to certify their cars pollutants or emissions by doing official tests before they receive a "certificate" to be able to sell the cars. Volkswagen was basically caught cheating on the EPA tests because as it turns out, the cars ran one way on a test but ran differently (more polluting) when owners would drive them on the road. Volkswagen is accused of using a "defeat device" because what they did basically "defeat" the testing. This was done by using the complicated software and coding that is used to run car engines.

In my opinion, Volkswagen is cheating the government and its customers. They are lying to consumers, and falsified information about their products. Because the software is so complicated it shows that the way they cheated was by design. It's hard to believe that the leaders of Volkswagen did not know about the cheating. In fact, with the CEO resigning it shows that the car company not only cheated but has been cheating for a long time under the encouragement of their influential leaders.

This issue relates to government and politics because the Clean Air Act was passed by the US government as a law that is supposed to protect the environment and the public health. It is also a regulation of a private business sector because the law says that auto makers have to certify or test their vehicles and show that they are "clean" before they can sell to the public. Government makes laws to protect some people (car buyers) by regulating the actions of other people (car makers).