Safety
Today I feel compelled to bring up road safety. Cross' sister's untimely death (and that of her friend in the passenger's seat) seems like a horrific road accident that may not have been avoidable. Who knows whether the same holds true for 3 friends who drowned yesterday in the Passaic River as their SUV sunk on the way home to Newark from a birthday party in Jersey City (see "3 Drown in SUV Horror Plunge" http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/32663.htm). One really has to wonder, however, if the 3 friends were of sound mind and body, since their final, terrified call was to a friend, rather than 911...
While Ralph Nader's vote-fliching is enough to piss any right-minded American off, his past efforts as a road safety advocate have proven transformative. I'm sure he's proud of the now national Click-It-Or-Ticket campaign, and of imposing reasonable speed limits to heighten our guilt as we exceed them.
Traffic fatalities really make me think about the degree of autonomy on America's roads. It's really quite shocking. There's really very little to prevent a motorist from using his/her vehicle as a weapon of moderate destruction -- think of Billy Joel. While expressways that resemble Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, with inflexible tracks laid down the center of each lane are hardly in order, perhaps some fusion of the technology which informs large-vehicle drivers of obstacles in close proximity to their cars, and an autopiolot feature which takes control of the vehicle when a collision scenario is likely is in order. Inklings of this sort of driver awareness-detector system have been in certain vehicles for decades. My old (1982) BMW 525i had an O2 sensor in the passenger compartment. There could have been any number of reasons for its existence, but monitoring passenger health never seems like a bad idea.
It's a terribly tough challenge, though, for any driving enthusiast to figure out where to draw the line between freedom to motor, and freedom from accident and injury. It's surprising that the IIHS doesn't have a category for this topic, but they do have one on the Segway: http://www.iihs.org/safety_facts/safety.htm
Oh well.
While Ralph Nader's vote-fliching is enough to piss any right-minded American off, his past efforts as a road safety advocate have proven transformative. I'm sure he's proud of the now national Click-It-Or-Ticket campaign, and of imposing reasonable speed limits to heighten our guilt as we exceed them.
Traffic fatalities really make me think about the degree of autonomy on America's roads. It's really quite shocking. There's really very little to prevent a motorist from using his/her vehicle as a weapon of moderate destruction -- think of Billy Joel. While expressways that resemble Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, with inflexible tracks laid down the center of each lane are hardly in order, perhaps some fusion of the technology which informs large-vehicle drivers of obstacles in close proximity to their cars, and an autopiolot feature which takes control of the vehicle when a collision scenario is likely is in order. Inklings of this sort of driver awareness-detector system have been in certain vehicles for decades. My old (1982) BMW 525i had an O2 sensor in the passenger compartment. There could have been any number of reasons for its existence, but monitoring passenger health never seems like a bad idea.
It's a terribly tough challenge, though, for any driving enthusiast to figure out where to draw the line between freedom to motor, and freedom from accident and injury. It's surprising that the IIHS doesn't have a category for this topic, but they do have one on the Segway: http://www.iihs.org/safety_facts/safety.htm
Oh well.
posted by Matty at 4:44 PM
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