Norway has one of the lowest crash death rates in the world, with fatalities dropping ~50% in the last decade. I asked a senior Norwegian transportation official what role car technology has played enhancing safety.
“None,” she replied. “We focus on road design and enforcement."
In the Washington Post, my take on Tesla Autopilot:
“Even if [Tesla owners] accept [Autopilot's risks], what about everyone on a public road or street who is not in a Tesla? None of us signed on to be a guinea pig.”
You will soon have the ability as a :pixelfed: member, to block specific domains, similar to Mastodon. This will block content and interactions from the domains you choose.
In Vox, I explained how federal policy encourages car bloat, making American vehicles more enormous, polluting, and dangerous than they'd otherwise be.
That's the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
My new article is a deep dive in Slate offering everything you wanted to know about car bloat, from its history to its business rationale to policy fixes.
Make no mistake: The increasing size of SUVs and trucks deepens myriad societal problems from road safety to inequality to climate change. And the problem is only getting worse.
Just a reminder that on the 4th of October, the US government will be testing their Emergency Broadcast System to check its compliance on the 5G band.
This will not, despite cries of shock and fear, cause a zombie apocalypse. But for those in a dangerous situation, domestically or otherwise, it can be extremely threatening, because many need to make use of hidden/burner phones which their abusers don't know about.
(Abusive family or significant others have a tendency to install tracking devices and similar spyware on any devices known to them.)
For those in an abusive situation, please stay safe, and if you have a phone or similar device of that nature, please take whatever steps you can to disable it if you need to keep it hidden. Some information can be found here.
Railroad companies have penalized #workers for taking the time to make needed repairs and created a culture in which supervisors threaten and fire the very people hired to keep #trains running safely.
Wisconsin’s #Dairy Industry Relies on #Undocumented Immigrants, but the State Won’t Let Them Legally Drive
Undocumented #immigrants in the state can own and register their vehicles, but they aren’t allowed to drive them, forcing many #farm workers to risk fines and #arrest.
“It’s a Catch-22 for a lot of folks,” advocates say.
Washington Post: Using AI to spot edible mushrooms could kill you
"Now, a new assortment of AI-powered mushroom identifiers are popping up in the Apple, Google and OpenAI app stores. These tools use artificial intelligence to analyze photos or descriptions of mushrooms and compare them to known varieties....With its high stakes and frequent mess-ups, mushroom identification is a bad candidate for automation, but companies are doing it anyway..."
(maybe paywall)
Hoboken, NJ has gone seven consecutive years without a traffic fatality. They've also seen a significant reduction in injuries, with significant injuries down 62% between 2022 and 2023. This has been achieved largely by lowering speed limits and redesigning streets.
My favorite mobility policy of 2023: Banning right-on-red
Inherently dangerous to pedestrians, ROR was widely adopted in order to conserve gas during the 1970s oil crisis (which, you might notice, ended decades ago).
Ann Arbor ditched ROR this year, and DC is about to. Denver, Chicago, and San Francisco may as well.
9 things you need to know about the inside story of how 3M allowed PFOS to seep into all of us while sitting on research that showed the chemical is toxic.