One thing I don't understand is the nature of the new DOT standards. They're not laws, right? So really, automakers don't have to comply with them (and I read somewhere that they can still choose to comply with the old standards.) So what force do these rules even have? I'm guessing it's like FDA regulations, which aren't really laws either, but which companies comply with because, well, I'm not exactly sure why.
Right, they might as well have done nothing at all. And in the timeframe of the "changes" (2008), these "regulations" are meaningless.