In making automobiles more safe and ecologically friendly, we’ve often lost sight of the basic cost benefit factor — I think this is probably more true in the safety than in ecology — and one of the things that is precious about the American automobile industry is that it provided a cheap and reliable means of transportation for practically everyone in society, and then when those vehicles became used vehicles, it gave cheap and mostly reliable transportation to everybody, to the point where the Oakies in the dust bowl were in Model T fords and not on foot. When we undertake to make the automobile this humming, electronic device that provides a perfect egg of safety and closure and creates no adverse externalities (as people like to say these days) we lose sight of the purpose of the damn thing in the first place. And the purpose was to allow freedom — freedom and horizontal mobility to the masses. That’s why cash for clunkers was just sinful. You’re taking a bunch of perfectly good vehicles, inexpensive vehicles that could be used by people without much in the way of material means, and crushing them. If someone took a valuable resource — something that could really be useful to people — and destroyed it, they’d be in jail if they were private citizens.
P.J. O’Rourke, “P.J. O’Rourke Likes Puppies and America, Dislikes Flip Flops at the Airport [Texas Book Festival Interview]”, Austinist.com, 2010-10-08
October 9, 2010
QotD: The American car
September 9, 2010
Terrafugia moving swiftly towards terribly expensive, impractical
The ever-hopeful reporters at The Register‘s flying-car desk are lowering their expectations for the Terrafugia Transition:
The firm behind the world’s most plausible near-future flying car has pushed back delivery dates again, and suggested that vehicles may wind up costing substantially more than had been planned.
Terrafugia Inc, engaged in developing the Transition “roadable aircraft”, made the announcements in a statement issued yesterday. The company says it is now setting up for “low volume production” in a new facility in Massachusetts, and that this “could allow low volume production to begin as early as late 2011”.
The most recent Terrafugia forecast had suggested that initial deliveries would begin in 2011, but it now appears that actually the company will only commence building the aircraft at that stage. Furthermore, Transitions were originally expected to sell for $148,000: Terrafugia now says the initial price is “expected to be between $200,000 and $250,000”.
Along with the pushback in production dates, the design has been down-rated for carrying capacity: now only 330 pounds of passenger and cargo when fully fueled. That won’t be enough for two average American men, never mind their kit.
Ever wonder why Japanese cars didn’t become popular at first
Even with an American ad agency working for them, the market wasn’t ready for this in 1969:
September 2, 2010
Rival electric car manufacturers already positioning for dirty ad campaigns
Lewis Page rounds up the GM-versus-Tesla ad campaigns of the near future:
As US motor mammoth GM gears up for the launch of its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt, it has applied to trademark the term “range anxiety” — meaning the fear suffered by battery-car owners regarding their ability to get home again after a given journey. Upstart battery car maker Tesla Motors has issued a panicky and unconvincing statement in response.
[. . .]
GM feels that “range anxiety” is a major reason why its original EV-1 battery car of the 1990s failed.
”We’ve been here before,” says GM marketing honcho Joel Ewanick. “We have first-hand experience with what the issues are.”
In short, the difficulty with an all-electric battery car is that there is little certainty of actually being able to complete any journey even close to the vehicle’s rated range, as battery endurance is highly variable — and manufacturers can’t publicise the worst-case (or even perhaps the likely-case) figures. If they did, nobody would ever buy their products.
[. . .]
Meanwhile, reputable Swiss boffins have lately pointed out that in fact a VW Golf powered by one of the new, super-low-emission injected turbodiesels is responsible for less carbon emissions over its lifespan than one with a li-ion battery running on typical grid power.
So, to wrap up the discussion briefly, nobody will be buying Tesla Roadsters or Government Motors Volts for their economic virtues: they’ll be buying them as expensive status-signalling devices to show off their (real or imaginary) environmental awareness.
Feeling old
Yesterday, I had to go down to the MTO office (“DMV” for our American friends) to renew my driver’s licence and get the 2011 plate sticker for the Quotemobile. It was a pretty ordinary lineup for the middle of the day, with perhaps a dozen people ahead of me. When I got to the wicket, however, the clerk looked to be all of maybe 14. Absolutely the youngest person I’ve ever encountered in a place like that who wasn’t holding hands with mommy or daddy.
He was definitely in the right place: he’d already mastered the bureaucratic mumble, the never-make-eye-contact-with-the-client, and the dull, listless attitude. Other than his age, he looked like he’d been doing the job for decades . . . and hated it.
I felt quite sorry for him.
September 1, 2010
“The Stig” to be unmasked
As I mentioned a while back, the BBC went to court to try to prevent a book publisher from revealing the identity of Top Gear‘s mysterious race car driver “The Stig”. The court has ruled against the BBC. James May, one of the presenters on the show, had this to say:
“Obviously I’m now going to have to take some legal action of my own, because I have been the Stig for the past seven years, and I don’t know who this bloke is, who’s mincing around in the High Court pretending it’s him.”
August 25, 2010
Bans on texting while driving have not measurably improved highway safety
This report should come as no real surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention:
The two biggest highway-safety issues right now, as far as Washington is concerned, are runaway Toyotas and distracted driving. But what if these aren’t the most important factors driving the nation’s annual highway death toll, which averages about 100 fatalities a day?
That’s the view of Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who says the U.S. Transportation Department, Congress and the media have gotten sidetracked by issues like texting while driving.
“There’s nothing rational about the way we set highway safety priorities,” Mr. Lund says in the Insurance Institute’s Aug. 21 “Status Report” newsletter.
Mr. Lund’s organization is the safety research and advocacy arm of the insurance industry. The IIHS has been critical of the government’s highway safety policies over the past few years, usually arguing that the government wasn’t moving fast enough to require better crash-prevention technology from auto makers.
Mr. Lund and the Insurance Institute also say recent laws banning motorists from using mobile phones behind the wheel don’t correlate with a significant reduction in accidents.
“You’d think from the media coverage, congressional hearings, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s focus in recent months that separating drivers from their phones would all but solve the public-health problem of crash deaths and injuries,” he wrote. “It won’t.”
August 23, 2010
Unmasking “The Stig”
A court case will decide whether HarperCollins can publish a book that reveals the identity of Top Gear‘s anonymous driver:
Publisher HarperCollins is in a legal dispute with the BBC over a book that reveals the identity of Top Gear‘s The Stig, BBC News understands.
Both sides appeared in London’s High Court on Monday after the BBC confirmed it was trying to halt its publication.
The Stig regularly takes to the track on the BBC Two show, but never removes his helmet on screen.
The BBC says the publication of the book breaches contractual and confidentiality obligations.
HarperCollins declined to give any official comment.
The dispute comes amid suggestions from several newspapers speculating that the character’s true identity is former Formula Three driver Ben Collins, based on the financial reports of his company.
August 3, 2010
July 31, 2010
USDOT holding back Toyota report because it’s too favourable to Toyota?
Toyota has been claiming for quite some time that they have found no fault in their cars that could cause unintended acceleration. The US government’s report is reported to support that claim, but officials have been delaying the release of that information:
Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation have at least temporarily blocked the release of findings by auto-safety regulators that could favor Toyota Motor Corp. in some crashes related to unintended acceleration, according to a recently retired agency official.
George Person, who retired July 3 after 27 years at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in an interview that the decision to not go public with the data for now was made over the objections of some officials at NHTSA.
“The information was compiled. The report was finished and submitted,” Mr. Person said. “When I asked why it hadn’t been published, I was told that the secretary’s office didn’t want to release it,” he added, referring to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Olivia Alair, said NHTSA is still reviewing data from the Toyota vehicles the agency is examining. “Its review is not yet complete. The investigation remains ongoing,” she said.
It could be suspected that the reason the government doesn’t want to release the report is that it pretty much exonerates Toyota after their trial-by-media over the sudden acceleration issue. The US government’s holdings in GM and Chrysler make them effectively competitors with Toyota, and the media has done a fine job of trying to depress Toyota sales (to indirectly benefit GM and Chrysler).
But that would be an unfair thing to suspect, wouldn’t it?
July 30, 2010
Chevy’s re-Volt-ing new song
Iowahawk tries to find the right way to introduce the new Chevy Volt (click through to get the full linkulacious glory):
Consider, if you will, Chevy’s once proud musical history: In the Fifties, Dinah Shore famously saw the USA in her Chevrolet. In the Sixties the Beach Boys saved their pennies and saved their dimes for a 4-speed dual quad positraction 409, while Shutting Down a 413 Superstock Dodge with a fuel injected Stingray; Paul Revere and the Raiders countered with a porcupine Chevelle SS 396. Those vatos from War rocked the Seventies gas crisis in an Impala Low-ri-der, while Sammy Johns was alright with makin’ love in his creepy Chevy Van. In the Eighties, the Dead Milkmen sang the praises of a Bitchin’ Camaro; In the Nineties the Ramones further egged it on with Go Little Camaro Go.
Fine iPod selections all, and in praise of a revered American car brand. Now behold — if you dare — the brave new world of government-sponsored Chevrolet song.
July 26, 2010
McGuinty’s governing style on display again
New rules on young drivers to come into effect very soon:
Starting on Aug. 1, this coming Sunday, drivers under the age of 22 in Ontario must have a blood alcohol reading of zero, regardless of what level of licence they possess or how many years of driving experience they have. This is a major change to Ontario’s system of licensing drivers. Twenty-one-year-old drivers, who may be fully licenced and mature and experienced, will be breaking the law if they have a beer a few hours before driving to the grocery store.
And our friendly Ontario government has announced this change in the dead of summer, on a Monday before a long weekend, and given the people of Ontario exactly six days to find out they might be about to break the law. Surprise, kids! You’re a drunk driver now!
[. . .]
How many times does the McGuinty government plan on making mistakes like this this summer? First there were the maddening rule changes surrounding the G20 fence, which weren’t announced and apparently didn’t even exist at all. Then there was the eco-fee debacle, where Ontarians were hit with a tax they weren’t told was coming into effect, with predictable public outcry. But those things may pale in comparison to the completely justified outrage if this government starts suspending licences this weekend. If there is reason to think that this measure will save lives, then I’m all for it, but for heaven’s sake, you have to give people more than six days’ notice.
(Calls placed to the Ministry, and to the office of the Minister herself, were met with total confusion this morning. When asked how the rule change was enacted — through legislation that had been quietly passed, through an order-in-council or through a simple administrative amendment — a Ministry spokesperson claimed not to understand the question.)
Every time the Ontario government does something like this you have to assume either they’re afraid to take any advance heat for new laws and regulations or that they want to ambush as many unsuspecting breakers-of-new-unpublicized-rules as they possibly can. Either way, it’s no way to run a government and retain the support of the governed.
July 15, 2010
QotD: Auto history repeats itself
In the twinkling of an eye (by the standards of bureaucratic time, which is slower than geologic time but more expensive than time spent with Madame Claude’s girls in Paris) the thing was done. On March 7, 1989, the DOT-NHTSA-ODI-TSC-OPSAD-VRTC . . . effort produced an eighty-one page report written by an eight man group of engineering savants with more than fifty years of college among them. This document presented evidence from exhaustive experiment and analysis that proved what everybody who understands how to open the hood of a car had known all along about SAIs: “Pedal misapplications are the likely cause of these incidents.”
Yes, the dumb buggers stepped on the gas instead of the brake. [. . .] Anyway, the truth was out at last. The government had released a huge report showing that there was no such thing as unintended acceleration in automobiles. Stand by for huge government reports on fairies stealing children and poker wealth gained by drawing to inside straights. Meanwhile, cars did not fly away of their own accord. They could be safely left unattended.
. . . So the truth was out, and we people who like automobiles and can tell our right foot from our elbow should have been glad. But there was, in fact, no reason to celebrate. This message from the federal bowl of Alpha-Bits had cost us taxpayers millions of dollars and came too late to save Audi from the ignorance, credulity, opportunism and sheer Luddite malice directed toward that corporation and its products. Furthermore, the Department of Transportation press release introducing the SAI report absolved the paddle-shoed, dink-wit perpetrators of sudden acceleration. It just let Betty Dumb-Toes and Joe Boat-Foot right off the hook:
NHTSA declined to characterize the cause of sudden acceleration as driver error. Driver error may imply carelessness or willfulness in failing to operate a car properly. Pedal misapplication is more descriptive. It could happen to even the most attentive driver who inadvertently selects the wrong pedal and continues to do so unwittingly.
The next time I get pulled over by the state highway patrol, I’m telling the officer, “You probably intend to ticket me for speeding, which would be driver error. But pedal misapplication is more descriptive of what occurred. It could happen to even the most attentive driver who inadvertently selects the wrong pedal and continues to do so unwittingly.”
P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire US Government, 1991
June 8, 2010
Attention drivers: Ohio police can now just “estimate” your speed
. . . and then write you a ticket based on their estimate, no further proof needed:
Police don’t need radar to cite you for speeding.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled this morning that an officer trained to estimate speed by sight doesn’t need an electronic gauge to catch speeders.
The 5-1 ruling was a defeat for 27-year-old Akron-area motorist Mark W. Jenney and speeders across the state. Jenney had challenged a visual speed estimate by a Copley police officer, but a trial court and the 9th District Court of Appeals upheld his conviction.
So, Ohio drivers, expect to see your state assess a lot more speeding tickets (a nice form of revenue for the depleted state coffers), now that the police have been given carte blanche. There’s little reason for them not to treat this as a newly imposed tax on drivers: no evidence is required, other than the officer’s estimate, and the court clearly isn’t too worried about the legal implications of this.
As Eric Moretti says:
Hey “Supreme Court Justices” why don’t you guys get this part of what laws are supposed to do through your thick skulls. It’s safe to say that officers might be trained to identify speeds, and they might even be great at it — but it blasts the notion of burden of proof being on the state out of the water. You didn’t just blast it out, you nuked that fish to dry land. There is no factual evidence when officers have the ability to do this, “I think you were going 120 mph.”
Where is the public recourse for police officers who abuse their abilities? We have to take an officer’s (the state) word that we committed a crime? Did you guys even go to law school?
May 26, 2010
More on the Michael Bryant case
It’s rather surprising how strongly this Globe and Mail editorial expresses the paper’s approval of the decision not to press charges against former Ontario attorney-general Michael Bryant:
Everyone deserves justice, even a former Ontario attorney-general driving an expensive car who finds himself in an altercation with a cyclist in which the cyclist is killed. Irrespective of whatever wealth, power or connections Michael Bryant may have, he was an Everyman. Anyone might find himself in his place one day, reacting in fear and panic to a wild, unexpected aggressor, and subject afterward to police charges and condemnation by the community. When criminal charges were dropped against him yesterday, it was a good day for justice.
Much of what was publicly believed about Michael Bryant’s fatal encounter on Aug. 31, 2009, with Darcy Sheppard turns out to have been false. He did not swerve across a street and ram Mr. Sheppard into a light post or tree or mailbox. He was not speeding along at 60 to 100 kilometres an hour.
Nor were any of the terrible events that night emblematic of the problems that car drivers and cyclists have sharing the road. Mr. Sheppard was simply a man out of control. Given that he paid for his actions with his life, it may seem an unnecessary further blow that he now be publicly judged. But it is necessary, because another man, Michael Bryant, was facing up to life in prison if convicted of criminal negligence causing death. He, not Mr. Sheppard, had the power of the state lined up against him. And everything that happened proceeded inexorably as a result of Mr. Sheppard’s own actions.
Other than the initial flurry of interest in the case immediately following the incident, I didn’t follow the details. This is an excellent example of media coverage severely biased against the defendant: what little I thought I knew about the case made it seem to be an open-and-shut case of vehicular manslaughter. As the Globe editorial points out, very little of what I “knew” about the case (from the media) turns out to have been true.
