Jeffrey A. Rosen, who became general counsel at the Transportation Department in 2003, was a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis, a powerhouse law firm that has defended GM in numerous product-liability suits and represents the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
Rosen denied using his position to benefit automakers.
"We have issued a number of major rules in the two years that I have been here," he said. "Some of them are supported by industry, some are opposed."
Michael S. Greve, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has written that preemption is crucial to protect the economy from "trial lawyers, ambitious state attorneys general and parochial state legislatures."
But critics say the preemption push contradicts the conservative ideals of a limited federal government and states' rights -- principles espoused by Bush.
"This is the most aggressive federal government in the history of the United States," said California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, a Democrat.
Some say the election calendar is spurring the moves.
"The message has been clear in the last couple of years that if industries are going to get protection, they need to get it now," because no one knows what will happen in the next election, said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.
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Rollover accidents kill more than 10,000 people in the U.S. each year, and seriously injure an additional 16,000. Consumer groups say better roofs would have saved thousands of victims over time.
Automakers counter with the "roof dive" theory -- that rollover victims fall head-first to the roof as it strikes the ground, injuring themselves whether the roof holds or buckles. Thus, they say, the value of stronger roofs is practically nil.
Brian O'Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, called this argument "patently nonsense." If it were true, he said, people would be "just as well-off in a rollover in a convertible as a hardtop."
The highway safety agency always has agreed that roof failures can cause death and injury. Its roof-crush proposal estimates that 596 deaths and 807 serious injuries a year are linked to roof collapse.
Its proposed rule would increase the force a roof must withstand in a rollover from its current 1.5 times a vehicle's weight to 2.5 times -- at a cost per vehicle of about $12. It would cover large trucks and SUVs of more than 6,000 pounds for the first time. The agency also is considering requiring stability control systems to reduce rollover risk.
