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Category: Cars

"Where we're going, we don't pay for roads!"

Yes, we need to reform how federal highway and bridge money is raised (though, frankly, having a dedicated revenue stream may be more trouble than it's worth; everyone benefits from the Interstate system, whether they drive a hundred miles a day or none at all).

But before we do that, we need to pay now for what needs doing now. The GOP reluctance to do anything with the current funding because of some "No New Taxes" pledge is hugely counter-productive — but understandable, if they would instead face an angry base complaining about how it could have been paid for by cutting all those welfare moochers that snuck over the border or something.




Oh Good, We’re Out of Money to Fix Our Roads—Again

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All your car are belong to us

If you own a GM car — bought, paid, for, have a title signed off by GM or the lender saying the car is yours … well, GM is fine with all that … all except that software that makes the various computerized bits of it work properly. That, GM maintains, it owns, has copyright to, and is merely licensing to car owners. Nobody, including the putative owner of the car, can examine it, let alone modify it … but without it the car won't run.

So, who actually owns your car?

Originally shared by +Les Jenkins:

It's GM's car. They're just letting you use it.




GM: That Car You Bought? We’re Really The Ones Who Own It.
Congratulations! You just bought a new Chevy, GMC, or Cadillac. You really like driving it. And it’s purchased, not leased, and all paid off with no liens, so it’s all yours… isn’t it? Well, no, …

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Have I got a dealership for you!

The car dealership model, if it ever served a good purpose, has long since outlived its usefulness and value … except to car dealers.

The question is, will (or can) the FTC do something about it beyond a mean letter to the states that have that model locked into law?




FTC doubles down on direct auto sales, says “it’s not just about Tesla”
New post points accusatory finger at protectionist dealer legislation.

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A (mostly) self-driving truck hits the roads

Though it still requires a live driver to take over in case of problems (undefined). This has the potential of improving road safety (given problems with over-worked truck drivers, etc.), but could (when taken to the next level) also imply some economic disruption as drivers lose their jobs.

Of course, in a fully automated setup, deliveries could be made faster, without that pesky downtime for sleep.

(How does a police vehicle wave over a fully automated truck? I guess that's one of the things a driver is for.)

I do have concerns about people being even more careless when merging around self-driving trucks (or the AI being less able to anticipate those sorts of stupid moves), so there's some definite room for reduced safety here, too.

Originally shared by +Yonatan Zunger:

The first road-legal self-driving truck has been issued a license plate by the state of Nevada. The vehicle is "NHTSA level 3" certified, which means that it can drive itself, but a driver is required to be able to take over control if the need arises. (Level 4, at which nothing has yet been certified, can operate completely autonomously, without any humans paying attention at all)

Daimler (which owns Freightliner) is pitching this as a solution for driver drowsiness, which is a significant issue for truck drivers. Going forward, this is likely to be an important milestone in getting autonomous transport into our day-to-day world.




Freightliner unveils the first road-legal self-driving truck
The autonomous big rig is meant to reduce driver drowsiness, and thus accidents.

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It's really difficult not to laugh

Largely because we've all been there (well, not there, but analogously), letting our concern about a little thing override our caution about a big thing.

It's much more hilarious when it's someone else.

Originally shared by +Erica Wright:

Car wash! #lol #fail #carwash

 

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Yes, wearing your seat belt is important

Even if you're a good driver. Because someone may rear-end you into the lane where a truck is oncoming.

Originally shared by +Les Jenkins:

Ouch.




Dash cam reveals the human bouncing that happens inside a car crash
Thankfully, it’s okay to laugh a little at this scary footage of a man bouncing around inside his car while a SUV rear ends him into an oncoming semi truck. That’s because Daryl Peterson, the driver in the car, managed to walk away from the crash without a scratch or any injury at all. Thank God for airbags and seatbelts.

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Always kind of nice to see a stereotype fall

I don't know if it's an anomaly or what, but I've always gotten fast and pleasant service from the Colorado DMV office over on County Line Rd. in Littleton. Renewed my license today, and was in and out in about 40 minutes.

(Colorado actually has an online facility to do this, but I was late in renewing.)

So … kudos where kudos are due.

 

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Hi-ho, Hi-ho, to smog check I must go…

Hi-ho, Hi-ho, to smog check I must go…

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Life (and traffic) finds a way

This is just sort of fascinating to watch. So much could go wrong, but over the couple of minutes here the expected bloodbath of vehicles and pedestrians never quite happens.

I wouldn't recommend texting while driving in Addis Ababa, though.

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Real Driving Is Messy

For all we pretend that driving is about rules and information, it's really about making a lot of judgment calls and being flexible and aware enough to not just understand the 99% of the time that things are as remembered and planned, but the 1% of the time that things aren't as expected: the construction zones, the poor drivers, weather, debris in the road.

Until Google or other autonomous cars can handle that stuff, they won't be more clean Disney-style oddities.




The dirty secret of Google’s self-driving cars

They’ve 700,000 miles, but mostly the same few thousand miles, over and over again — because the cars only work if every single light, piece of street furniture, and other detail is mapped and verified by armies of human…

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Deeper Treading on Me

Well, got some new tires for +Margie Kleerup's car for the winter, so I feel like I've done my part to keep the family safe. Unless, of course, the car crashes in a horrible, twisted-metal fireball because I cheaped out by buying the tires at the tire-and-elk-jerky place by the side of the highway. Which would be very sad, and I would feel duly guilty.

 

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The Myth of Free Enterprise (Car Dealership Edition)

Not that any political party is at all clean in these kind of sweetheart deal shenanigans, but any pol who praises free enterprise on the one hand and on the other restricts the market to favor the existing model and incumbents like this ought to turn in his or her membership in the Adam Smith Club.



Georgia dealers want Tesla store shuttered for selling too many Teslas

Imagine owning the most popular automaker in the United States. Now imagine a special ​interest group eliminating your ability to serve over 10 million Americans unless you did business with their unique cartel. That’s in essence what happened right before Labor Day weekend, when the Georgia Auto Dealer Association filed a petition with state officials seeking to cancel Tesla’s right to sell its cars in the state of Georgia.

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Kids, do NOT try this at home

Not that it was intentionally done here, either, but … someone critted their saving throw, that's for damn sure.

Reshared post from +Les Jenkins

If you're going to smash your motorcycle into the back of another car on the freeway, then you may as well do the impossible while you're at it. Luckiest motherfucker ever.

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The Crowdsourcing of Speed Limits

People tend to go at a pretty constant speed along given thoroughfares, regardless of the actual limit unless there is a known speed trap.  Raising the speed limit doesn't actually make people drive much faster; lowering it doesn't really slow them down.  People have a sense of what is appropriate for a given thoroughfare.

So why not set speed limits based on that?  The answer is twofold: (a) locals along the road want a slower limit because they think it will actually make people drive more slowly, and (b) cities and their police departments want a slower limit because they know that people will still drive faster, leading to speeding ticket revenue generation.

(h/t +Yonatan Zunger)

Reshared post from +Kirill Grouchnikov

Traffic engineers believe that the 85th percentile speed is the ideal speed limit because it leads to the least variability between driving speeds and therefore safer roads. When the speed limit is correctly set at the 85th percentile speed, the minority of drivers that do conscientiously follow speed limits are no longer driving much slower than the speed of traffic. The choice of the 85th percentile speed is a data-driven conclusion — as noted Lt. Megge and speed limit resources like the Michigan State Police’s guide — that has been established by the consistent findings of years of traffic studies.

Is Every Speed Limit Too Low?
Americans nearly universally speed, and excess speed is a factor in many accidents. But what if higher speed limits made roads safer?

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Idling cars are the devil's gas mileage

Back in the Dark Ages, when everything was carburetors and clay tablets, I was always taught something more like the five minute rule — that the cost of gas burned in starting the motor was about five minutes worth of operation.  Not surprisingly, more efficient engines (and better starters) make that rule a lot smaller.

Of course, I also recall auto touring in Italy a few years back, where the diesel cars we had automatically shut themselves off when you were stopped at a traffic signal, starting as soon as you release the break and put your foot on the gas. Now that's efficiency.

If Your Car Will Be Idling for More Than 10 Seconds, Just Turn it Off
There are plenty of occasions where you might find your car idling. In a long drive through, picking someone up from work, or just sitting in your driveway. If you’re idling longer than 10 seconds, though, you’re better off turning off the engine.

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Are safety guidelines an endorsement?

I find myself increasingly against lane-splitting whenever I travel back to California, largely because it's not done safety, and it being legal means its done by a lot of folk in an unsafe fashion.

That having been said, the idea that the California Highway Patrol can't post safety recommendations and guidelines around the (legal) practice without being seen as endorsing it seems — dumb. And not conducive to safety.

(h/t +Mary Oswell)

CHP stuck in the middle on motorcycle lane-splitting
The California Highway Patrol has withdrawn its safety guidance on motorcycle lane-splitting.

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License plates and free speech

Interesting (split) ruling from the 5th Circuit, confirming the idea that license plates with messages, symbols, etc., are personal speech by the person displaying them (not state speech by the government issuing them), and therefore Texas cannot block license plates by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, including the Confederate flag.

Aside from the curiosity that Texas was actually fighting this, it's an interesting ruling in that it implies that pretty much anyone with enough committed support can get any sort of viewpoint statement or symbolism put on a license plate (short of obscene materials, presumably). Church of Satan? Black Panthers? Gay Rights? Islamic Jihad? Role Playing Gamers?  Now's your chance, if the state can't block you (though the risk you run from other motorists, vandals, or from increased police scrutiny, may be another matter).

Or, alternately, states can simply go back to, y'know, issuing plain old license plates.

Federal Appeals Court Orders Texas To Issue Confederate Flag License Plates
This is a genuinely difficult case, although for reasons unrelated to whether Texas engaged in viewpoint discrimination by refusing to print license plates that display a symbol used by racist, slaveholding traitors.

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Rust in peace

A "traffic jam" of abandoned vehicles near Chatillon, Belgium. There are a variety of questions about their origin (or even their vintage), but the images are still haunting.

Reshared post from +Before It’s News

Photos Of A Traffic Jam Stuck In The Woods For 70 Years http://b4in.org/f5cv

Around the town of Chatillon, Belgium, the end of World War II left a few creepy hallmarks of the armistice in the form of long lines of cars left abandoned by the hundreds in the woods.

While one theory goes that the cars belonged to Americans who left them in a hurry on their way off the continent, Bored Panda points out that no one really knows for sure.

While there were initially four giant pileups with over 500 cars, only one remains rotting in the woods, a monument to the inexorable creep of entropy.

More photos http://b4in.org/f5cv

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Ah, those golden, smelly-and-pestilential days of yesteryear

Yup, 1,250 tons of horse droppings in NYC per day, back before those Evil Internal Combustion Engines took over. Sure, cars and trucks have their own problems and costs and environmental impact — but all that manure (and the more-than-occasional dead horse) had both olfactory and significant health issues.

In 1893, 2.5 million pounds of horse manure filled NYC streets per day
Think New York summers are pungent now? Imagine what it must’ve smelled like at the turn of the 20th century. Before the introduction of the automobile, horses were leaving about 2.5 million pounds of shit in the streets per day.

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Run-run-run-runaway!

Runaway truck ramps are always fascinating to me — does it really take that much uphill space on gravel to get a brake-less truck to a stand-still?

Well, apparently so …

(h/t Mary)

Twitter / CSP_Eagle: Semi-truck on the runaway truck …
Connect with your friends — and other fascinating people. Get in-the-moment updates on the things that interest you. And watch events unfold, in real time, from every angle.

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