Quotulatiousness

February 26, 2010

Is the Corolla the new Pinto?

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

David Harsanyi examines the different treatment Toyota is getting from the US government (majority owner of the former #1 US automaker):

The Toyota horror is well on its way to transforming the Corolla into the Pinto of the 21st century. Who knows? Perhaps the worst is true about Toyota. Perhaps it is hiding something. Maybe Toyota thought it was infallible. Maybe it is evil. Right now, though you might not know it, it’s all just a bunch of maybes.

There have been to this point 2,600 reported incidents of “sudden unintended acceleration” reported to Toyota — a company that used to sell 9 million cars yearly, most of them in the United States. This yet-to-be defined glitch — maybe a floor mat sticking — has reportedly caused more than 30 deaths.

What we do know is that anyone involved in a Toyota-driven accident now has a scapegoat. And, if they’re smart, a lawyer.

All of a sudden, Toyotas are dangerous. Edmunds.com, which reviewed more than 200,000 complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past decade, found that Toyota ranked fourth- best among the top 20 automakers in the overall number of complaints per vehicle sold.

General Motors came in six spots lower. Then again, GM is special — or, rather, developmentally disabled. Thus, the U.S. government has the majority stake (with funding extracted from taxpayers) in Toyota’s main competitor. It also has the power to drag the CEO of its chief rival to Washington to nearly badger him into cutting off a pinky in one of those ritual atonement ceremonies.

And while Toyota is being subjected to show trials, what would happen if an American car company had to announce a big recall? No need to wonder:

Then there is the administration. Less than a year ago, Ford — a private, non-government good ol’ American corporation — issued the largest single recall in its long history. A total of 4.5 million vehicles were recalled after it was learned that faulty switches were fire hazards.

At the time, the Obama administration’s overmatched Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gently prodded customers “to pay attention.” When news of Toyota’s problems began to emerge, before we even knew what it was all about, LaHood told Americans to “stop driving” them. (He later claimed to have misspoke.)

In spite of the media’s best efforts to blacken the brand, I’m still very happy with my Toyota Tacoma. If I had to go and buy another vehicle tomorrow, Toyota would still be my first stop, and would most likely be the brand I’d buy (Honda would be a distant second).

February 23, 2010

More market-rigging to favour Government Motors

Filed under: Economics, Germany, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:09

If you’re a fan of German sports cars, this might be a swan song for your preferred makes and models:

In a few years, by 2016 to be exact, P.J. O’Rourke’s “ass-engined Nazi slot car” may be history in the U.S.A. Gone. By that time, Porsche needs to have a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) of 41.4 mpg — if President Obama gets his wish. Mission impossible, says Porsche. Jack Baruth, stock up. Porsches will be extinct.

On May 19, 2009 President Barack Obama proposed a new national fuel economy program. If signed into law in May this year, as currently planned, the law will throw a nasty punch, beginning in the model year 2012.

Porsche-Lobbyist Stefan Schläfli talked to the German Edition of the Financial Times, before taking off for Washington for a last ditch effort to save the endangered species. Says the FTD: “Hardest hit will be German producers of premium brands which sell big-engined large cars. Critics in the German camp don’t think this is a coincidence. The formulas used to calculate the maximum permissible values are tailor-made for U.S. manufacturers. Basis for the calculation will be wheel base and track width — highly unusual criteria.”

A short and compact Porsche is faced with much stricter limits than a Corvette. Not to mention a pick-up. Large manufacturers turn into a CAFE-society, and can offset their thirsty oinkers with smaller cars. Porsche doesn’t have that option. Neither does Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and other eclectic brands.

Now that the government has a major financial stake in GM and Chrysler, they don’t even need to pretend to be even-handed in their regulatory fixes.

February 11, 2010

Audi’s target market

Filed under: Environment, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:45

Who is Audi trying to sell their little green Panzerkampfwagens to? Folks who think the ad wasn’t Gorewellian enough:

“The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police,” writes Grist magazine’s David Roberts on the Huffington Post. The target audience, according to Roberts, is men who want to “do the right thing.” He’s certainly right that the ad isn’t aimed at people (whom he childishly mocks as “teabaggers”) who worry that their liberties are being eroded.

But the message is hardly “do the right thing.”

To me, the target demographic is a certain subset of spineless, upscale white men (all the perps in the ad are affluent white guys) who just want to go with the flow. In that sense, the Audi ad has a lot in common with those execrable MasterCard commercials. Targeting the same demographic, those ads depicted hapless fathers being harangued by their children to get with the environmental program. MasterCard’s tagline: “Helping Dad become a better man: Priceless.”

The difference is that MasterCard’s ads were earnest, creepy, diabetes-inducing treacle. Audi’s ad not only fails to invest the greens with moral authority, it concedes that the carbon cops are out of control and power-hungry (in a postscript scene, the Green Police pull over real cops for using Styrofoam cups). But, because resistance is futile when it comes to the eco-Borg, you might as well get the best car you can.

H/T to Ghost of a Flea for the link.

February 1, 2010

The bureaucratic response to pedestrian fatalities

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

Along with the politicians’ leap to regulate, the bureaucracy is responding in a highly predictable way to the high number of pedestrian fatalities in the Toronto area this year: ticketing jaywalkers.

I don’t mean to minimize the impact of these accidents. Several years ago, someone very close to me was killed by a car while crossing the street. Without going into the details of the incident, I can tell you that I understand firsthand the pain of losing a loved one in a sudden, senseless way.

Yet, it’s no salve for a mourning family to know that the men in blue are out making a show of ticketing jaywalkers (and at intersections nowhere near where the fatal accidents took place, no less). That’s not education. It’s wasting valuable resources for the sake of appearing to be “doing something.”

The one sensible bit of advice for pedestrians I’ve heard come out of the recent rash of deaths is this: Don’t assume it’s OK to cross just because you have a green light (or friendly white walking man) on your side. Look around with your own eyes. Check the intersection and take a glance behind your back. In other words, don’t blindly rely on someone or something else — a driver or a traffic indicator — to keep you safe.

Interestingly, it’s precisely the opposite of the message the police are sending every time they dramatically nab a pedestrian for not slavishly following the rules. Go figure.

I drive into downtown Toronto a couple of times each week. Every day, I see pedestrians doing stupid, dangerous things. Every week, I see drivers going too fast, making sudden lane changes, and turning without signalling or appearing to visually check before turning. Given all that, it’s amazing that there aren’t more accidents.

Posting police officers on busy intersections to hand out jaywalking tickets is an almost complete waste of time and effort, but (as so often is the case) it provides a visible mark that the city is doing something about the problem. The fact that the something is useless doesn’t deter the bureaucracy: that’s a feature, not a bug. No newspaper or TV reporter is going to be able to say the city isn’t doing something. Mission (bureaucratically) accomplished.

January 27, 2010

Is it open season on Toronto’s pedestrians?

Filed under: Cancon, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:16

Toronto has had a remarkable spike in the number of pedestrian fatalities this month. Last year, two pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents in the city. This year (so far) there have been 14. There are a number of possible answers as to why this is happening, but you can always trust politicians to leap at the answer that inconveniences the largest number of people:

That increase prompted City Councillor Bill Saundercook (Park-dale-High Park) to lobby for the city to reduce speed limits in areas identified as hot-spots — those areas with a high amount of pedestrian activity.

Mr. Saundercook, who co-chairs the city’s pedestrian committee, says decreasing the speed limit by 10 kilo-metres per hour in those key areas will increase reaction time and hopefully prevent the kind of accidents that have been happening over the last three weeks.

That may or may not help: the police have not definitely identified excessive speed as the primary or even major contributing cause to the high number of fatal accidents. If past experience is any guide, it might actually frustrate drivers by forcing them to go slower than the “natural” driving conditions in that area, encouraging more speeding. Of course, the city is looking at a big budget shortfall, so increasing the chances for issuing speeding tickets might be the real reason for the suggestion.

Constable Hugh Smith, of Toronto Police traffic services, said that all the fatalities so far this year were preventable.

“All the fatalities this year have been due to some kind of human error,” he said. “These were either pedestrians walking into a live lane of traffic or a motorist not taking the time to come to a stop, or turning a corner unsafely.”

January 18, 2010

Nostalgia’s over-rated

Filed under: Humour, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 19:14

John Scalzi looks at a few things folks tend to get all misty-eyed and nostalgic about. Here’s why he thinks you’re on crack:

1. Stupidly expensive long-distance charges. [. . .] When my sister briefly lived with me when I was in Fresno, between the two of us we could generate $600 phone bills on a monthly basis, at a time when I was paying $400 a month for an apartment. Yes! I was occasionally paying more for my phone bill than I was for having a place to eat and sleep. Naturally, this was madness.

[. . .]

2. Crappy old cars. Which cars qualify as crappy old cars? In my opinion, pretty much all of them. Pre-catalytic converter cars were shoddily-constructed, lead-spewing deathtraps, the first generation of cars running on unleaded were even more shoddily-constructed 70s defeat-mobiles, the 80s were the golden age of Detroit Doesn’t Give a Shit, and so on. You have to get to about 1997 before there’s a car I would willingly get into these days. As opposed to today, when even the cheap boxy cars meant for first-time buyers have decent mileage, will protect you if you’re hit by a semi, and have more gizmos and better living conditions than my first couple of apartments.

[. . .]

3. Physical media for music. Audiophiles like to wank on about the warmth of vinyl, and you know, maybe if you take your vinyl and put it into special static free sleeves and then store those sleeves in a purpose-built room filled with inert gases, to be retrieved only when you play that vinyl on your $10,000 turntable which could play a record without skipping through a 7.5 earthquake, ported through your vacuum tube amplifier that sucks down more energy than Philadelphia at night, maybe it is warm. Good for you and your warm vinyl.

[. . .]

4. Smoking allowed everywhere. You know what? It did suck to have smokers at the table next to you at a restaurant. It did suck to have a movie theater haze up. It did suck to be walking in the mall and have some wildly gesticulating smoker randomly and accidentally jam the lit end of his cancer stick into your face.

December 31, 2009

Tweet of the day: Ohio

Filed under: Randomness, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:45

Radley Balko is in transit across Ohio. He’s finding it less than entertaining:

radleybalko: driving thru ohio. motto: nothing much to look at, but you’re gonna be here awhile.

radleybalko: ohio. new motto: yep. you’re still here.

I haven’t driven in every state, although I’ve managed to visit most of ’em east of the Mississippi, and Ohio is always the state I hate driving through:

. . . Ohio must be located in a time warp, because the drive from Cincinnati to Toledo seemed to take weeks, not the three or so hours it should have done . . .

In either direction:

The drive south along the I-75 went relatively smoothly, at least once we got out of the rutted road section between the bridge and the Ohio state line. I don’t know if Michigan deliberately leaves that stretch of road in poor condition to discourage locals from escaping or if it’s a full employment scheme for alignment shops at the exits. Either way, it’s almost the worst stretch of road we encountered during the entire trip.

As mentioned before, the I-75 between Toledo and Cincinnati seems to exist in a universe where time has no meaning. Entire geological epochs seemed to pass as we endlessly drove towards the intermediate towns. I’m certain that the continents re-arranged themselves twice in the time it seemed to take between Lima and Dayton.

Driving through Cincinnati at 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday is rather like a combination of riding the Wild Mouse, taking a speed-reading test, and riding through a buffalo stampede. The very worst drivers, of course, had Ontario license plates.

Of course, not having driven in any state to the left of the Mississippi River (aside from California), I’m sure that some of those square-ish territories could challenge Ohio for the title. You know, those places that only ever appear in the “Odd News” section, like Missouransas, Oklarado, Wyotana, South Iobraska, and Nevazona.

November 27, 2009

Cars for an under-served market: aging boomers

Filed under: Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:14

Jim Shea looks at the design innovations needed to serve the new growing market for appropriate vehicles for aging baby boomers:

What is missing is a vehicle specifically designed to accommodate baby boomers and their ever evolving driving needs.

The car I have in mind for this huge block, the Coupe de Coot, would include the following characteristics:

Size: The older people get, the larger the vehicles they prefer. If Buick made buses, you wouldn’t be able to get a parking spot at the senior center. The Coupe de Coot would make a Hummer look like a Mini Cooper.

Windows: They would be large and wrap-a-around to afford excellent visibility in all directions at all times. Also, the glass would automatically tint after dark to produce a night-vision goggles effect.

Turn signals: The interior indicator lights would be the size of frying pans, flash like emergency strobes when engaged, be accompanied by a Big Ben-level bonging sound, and automatically turn themselves off after an hour.

H/T to Kennedy How for the link.

November 13, 2009

Red light cameras are great . . . for increasing traffic fine revenues

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:09

For driver safety, not so much:

In Los Angeles the LAPD claims accidents are down after they installed cameras, but are they telling the whole truth or just trying to make money off motorists?

We crunched the numbers and the results may surprise you.

“Your data is shocking to me,” Sherman Ellison said.

Ellison is a ticket attorney and part time judge, who believes the cameras are there for one reason.

“No question. Purely a revenue generating device,” Ellison said.

Is it money or safety? We wanted to know actual numbers of accidents at red light camera intersections to see if they really went down.

When we asked, the LAPD became very defensive. The sergeant in charge told me in an e-mail, “The city would hope that it is the goal of KCBS/KCAL to discuss the positive aspects of the photo red light program.”

So we filed a public records request. The department charged us more than $500 for a computer run. When we got the numbers back, they told a different story.

We looked at every accident at every red light camera intersection for six months of data before the cameras were installed and six months after.

The final figures? Twenty of the 32 intersections show accidents up after the cameras were installed! Three remained the same and only nine intersections showed accidents decreasing.

If the reason for installing red light cameras was to increase public safety, they’re a failure. If, however, the real reason for installing them is to increase municipal revenue streams, they’re a slam-dunk success.

November 2, 2009

Ford reaps financial benefit from not joining Government Motors

Filed under: Economics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:18

The New York Times has the unexpectedly positive financial news from Ford:

The Ford Motor Company on Monday posted a surprise third-quarter profit of $997 million and said it had its first profitable quarter in North America in more than four years.

The carmaker also said it increased its cash reserves by $2.8 billion during the quarter, ending September with $23.8 billion.

For all of 2009, Ford, the only Detroit automaker to avoid bankruptcy this year, has had a profit of more than $1.8 billion. It reported $834 million of income in the first half of the year.

October 2, 2009

The destruction of Saturn

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:51

Tim Cavanaugh looks at the GM division that once looked like the solution to so many of GM’s problems:

I would not recognize a Saturn if it ran me over, but the brand showed every sign of becoming competitive, with the above-mentioned loyal customers and policies on haggling and customer service that have (so I’m told, though I have seen first-hand evidence to the contrary) since become industry standards. Saturn was hamstrung by something not mentioned here: It was for girls.

Those “officials in charge of GM’s other brands” (and at the UAW, which never liked Saturn Corp.’s more flexible contract) were status-stunted males so disgusted by the idea of innovation that they consciously chose to starve something every normal retailer would give a limb for. Saturn customers didn’t just like the product but felt real fondness and familiarity toward the brand. And this wasn’t treated as an opportunity to exploit but a problem to be solved.

General Motors isn’t the only American company that can screw up a wet dream. It’s probably not even the screwup company that is getting the most taxpayer dollars to keep screwing up. But it’s the most toxic. What’s good for America is the total liquidation of General Motors and the firing of every person, labor and management, who works for the company.

The few folks I knew who bought early Saturn models seemed very happy with their vehicles, and remained that way . . . until Saturn became just another branch of General Motors. Then, for the most part, they appear to have moved on, but not to other GM vehicles.

September 29, 2009

If you like bad drivers, you’ll enjoy this collection

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:07

Twelve stupid car crashes, including this one, which illustrates that you don’t need to be travelling fast to flip your vehicle:

H/T to Lois McMaster Bujold, “Whom the Internet has lately taught the definition of the word ‘schadenfreude‘. Plus how to spell it.”

September 28, 2009

You know the stories about “they built ’em better in the old days”?

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:13

Here’s an interesting video from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), pitting a 2009 sedan against a 1959 model at a combined speed of 80 mph:

In the 50 years since US insurers organized the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, car crashworthiness has improved. Demonstrating this was a crash test conducted on Sept. 9 between a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. In a real-world collision similar to this test, occupants of the new model would fare much better than in the vintage Chevy.

“It was night and day, the difference in occupant protection,” says Institute president Adrian Lund. “What this test shows is that automakers don’t build cars like they used to. They build them better.”

Even with the video evidence, not everyone will be convinced. This is my favourite quote from the Slashdot thread on the topic (I think the comment is offered in an ironic tone):

But then again, back in the 50’s we didn’t need all these fancy crumple zones, seat belts and air bags. Men were real men. Hell, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts any man from the 50’s driving that Bel-Air would have jumped right out of that wreck to help the crying sissy-boy with a cut lip driving that Malibu.

September 10, 2009

Magna wins the competition for Opel

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Germany — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:49

The German government has settled on Canada’s Magna as the winner in the bidding for Opel (GM’s European presence, including Britain’s Vauxhall):

Earlier, there had been rumours that GM could be planning to try to keep control of its European arm.

Magna was the German government’s preferred bidder. The decision must be approved by the Opel Trust, which is due to hold a press conference shortly.

Magna has pledged to keep all German plants open.

“I am very pleased about the decision that’s been made and it is along the lines that the federal government has been advocating,” Chancellor Merkel said.

“But it’s also along the lines that the employers and the employees of Opel wanted.”

GM_Europe

September 2, 2009

More on the Michael Bryant incident

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

CTV News has additional information on the victim in Monday’s traffic incident involving former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Bryant:

A cyclist who was killed in a collision in downtown Toronto earlier this week was involved in a confrontation with his ex-girlfriend that brought police to her home less than an hour before he was fatally injured.

Police arrived at a home where the former girlfriend of Darcy Allan Sheppard lived on George Street, just after 9 p.m. on Monday. Officers were reportedly there to deal with a disturbance of some type.

Toronto police Const. Tony Vella said officers escorted Sheppard away from the scene and there were no allegations of criminal activity.

[. . .]

The Globe and Mail reports Sheppard had 61 outstanding warrants for his arrest in the province of Alberta at the time of his death.

The warrants were related to allegations of fraud, the newspaper reported.

Well, this story certainly gets more involved at time goes on.

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