The following is an exchange with McAfee Customer Support when I tried to suggest they need a way to schedule updates for some time when it will not disrupt normal operations.
Let me preface this by saying I like McAfee better than the Norton/Symantec product it replaced.
The exchange:
RE: McAfee Customer Service - Service Request #46390186 (#6356-84950329-6680)
From: My Name
Sent: Fri 10/26/07 10:47 AM
To: McAfee Customer Support
I call this a completly useless response. It says:
"If you want technical support, you must join a chat board. In addition, you must know enough about our product to figure out which area your question belongs in."
"Alternatively, you can spend time in a chat mode even though all you want to do is drop a note requesting a product improvement."
To use a comon phrase, this is piss poor customer support.
> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:34:06 -0700
> From:
> To:
> Subject: RE: McAfee Customer Service - Service Request #46390186 (#6356-84950329-6680)
>
> Dear McAfee Customer,
>
> My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience you have experienced.
>
> We encourage our customers to contact our Technical Support Team directly so that they can assist you real-time with resolving the issue. You can contact our Technical Support Team via free internet chat by following the steps below:
>
> 1. Go to http://service.mcafee.com/TechSupportHome.aspx?lc=1033&sg=TS
> 2. Run McAfee Virtual Technician before you go to Chat.
> 4. Click on Continue but disregard the FAQ search page
> 5. Click on Chat and Email icon (on the left side of the page)
> 6. Choose your Country from the dropdown list and click Next
> 7. Click on Free Internet Chat then Next
> 8. Fill in the required information and click on Submit
> 9. Click on Download Chat Client
> 10. Click on Run and follow the prompts
>
> If you require further assistance, please reply to this email with the previous correspondence. Your reference number for this incident is 47600302.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> _______________.
> McAfee CS-Tier 1
>
> Safe online? Avoid dangerous web sites using McAfee SiteAdvisor™ — a FREE download from http://www.siteadvisor.com?cid=27092
> Don’t search or surf without it!
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: My Name
> Sent: Oct 25, 2007 10:49:59 AM
> Subject: RE: McAfee Customer Service - Service Request #46390186 (#6356-84950329-6680)
>
>
> It appears Cuatomer Support didn;t forward this to tech support when they realized that's where it needs to be.
>
> Might I suggest this is someething McAfee should consider a CS problem, the lack of internal communications.
>
> > Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:00:24 -0700
> From: >
To: >
Subject: RE: McAfee Customer Service - Service Request #46390186 (#6356-84950329-6680)>
> Dear McAfee Customer, >
> Thank you for contacting McAfee Customer Service. >
> As much as I would like to help you resolve your issue, I deeply regret that I cannot personally assist you because we at Customer Service, are not trained to handle technical issues and do not have the tools to correct such errors. >
> McAfee offers free and comprehensive technical support options. To avail free solutions to your concerns, please follow these steps:>
> 1. Go to http://service.mcafee.com
> 2. Click on the Technical Support link
> 3. Choose the appropriate Free Technical Support Options available: McAfee Virtual Technician, Frequently Asked Questions/Search, and Chat/Email>
> If you wish to speak to our online Technicians, you may choose our Fee-Based Support Options available. To do so, please follow these steps:>
> 1. Go to http://service.mcafee.com/LocaleSelect.aspx?lc=1033&sg=TS&pt=2&st=PHONE
> 2. Choose your appropriate Country and click on the Next button
> 3. Select the service option available>
> Should you need further assistance, please reply to this email including the previous correspondence. Your service request number for this incident is 46390186. > >
> Sincerely, >
> McAfee CS-Tier 1>
> Safe online? Avoid dangerous web sites using McAfee SiteAdvisor™ — a FREE download from http://www.siteadvisor.com?cid=27092.> Don’t search or surf without it!> > >
-----Original Message----->
From:
Sent: Oct 24, 2007 7:57:05 AM
> Subject: McAfee Customer Service - Service Request #46390186>
> Thank you for contacting McAfee Consumer Support. >
> We have recently opened a Service Request for support based on the information you provided us at our support website. Below you will find the details of this request for your reference.>
> - Order #: > - Service Request #: 46390186> - Created Date:
> - Description: We need a way to set the time automatic updates occur. Download and install temporarly takes over the system. I want to move it to the middle of the nught.>
> If there is one, I can't find it.>
> Thanks>
> Please feel free to visit us at http://service.mcafee.com for all of your McAfee related support needs.>
> Sincerely,
> McAfee Consumer Support
> EN> >
Friday, October 26, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Global Warming Delusions (Lifted From the WSJ)
Because it's too important to risk losing when they rearrange:
BE NOT AFRAID
Global Warming Delusions
The popular imagination has been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.
BY DANIEL B. BOTKIN
Sunday, October 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life--ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.
Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20% to 30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming--a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age--saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.
We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not.
The key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was: food--an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the change in mockingbird geography.
You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life--I've used the model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species.
I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.
Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.
The climate modelers who developed the computer programs that are being used to forecast climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not very realistic, but were the best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But I hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality.
A recent article in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming. Simply from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating--especially the author's Sherlock Holmes approach to figuring out what was causing the glacier to melt. That it couldn't be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.
We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a disaster. But during the famous medieval warming period--A.D. 750 to 1230 or so--the Vikings found the warmer northern climate to their advantage. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie addressed this in his book "Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000," perhaps the greatest book about climate change before the onset of modern concerns with global warming. He wrote that Erik the Red "took advantage of a sea relatively free of ice to sail due west from Iceland to reach Greenland. . . . Two and a half centuries later, at the height of the climatic and demographic fortunes of the northern settlers, a bishopric of Greenland was founded at Gardar in 1126."
Ladurie pointed out that "it is reasonable to think of the Vikings as unconsciously taking advantage of this [referring to the warming of the Middle Ages] to colonize the most northern and inclement of their conquests, Iceland and Greenland." Good thing that Erik the Red didn't have Al Gore or his climatologists as his advisers.
Should we therefore dismiss global warming? Of course not. But we should make a realistic assessment, as rationally as possible, about its cultural, economic and environmental effects. As Erik the Red might have told you, not everything due to a climatic warming is bad, nor is everything that is bad due to a climatic warming.
We should approach the problem the way we decide whether to buy insurance and take precautions against other catastrophes--wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes. And as I have written elsewhere, many of the actions we would take to reduce greenhouse-gas production and mitigate global-warming effects are beneficial anyway, most particularly a movement away from fossil fuels to alternative solar and wind energy.
My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it.
Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.
For example, right now the clearest threat to many species is habitat destruction. Take the orangutans, for instance, one of those charismatic species that people are often fascinated by and concerned about. They are endangered because of deforestation. In our fear of global warming, it would be sad if we fail to find funds to purchase those forests before they are destroyed, and thus let this species go extinct.
At the heart of the matter is how much faith we decide to put in science--even how much faith scientists put in science. Our times have benefited from clear-thinking, science-based rationality. I hope this prevails as we try to deal with our changing climate.
Mr. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of "Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century" (Replica Books, 2001).
BE NOT AFRAID
Global Warming Delusions
The popular imagination has been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.
BY DANIEL B. BOTKIN
Sunday, October 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life--ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.
Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20% to 30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming--a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age--saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.
We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not.
The key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was: food--an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the change in mockingbird geography.
You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life--I've used the model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species.
I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.
Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.
The climate modelers who developed the computer programs that are being used to forecast climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not very realistic, but were the best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But I hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality.
A recent article in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming. Simply from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating--especially the author's Sherlock Holmes approach to figuring out what was causing the glacier to melt. That it couldn't be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.
We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a disaster. But during the famous medieval warming period--A.D. 750 to 1230 or so--the Vikings found the warmer northern climate to their advantage. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie addressed this in his book "Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000," perhaps the greatest book about climate change before the onset of modern concerns with global warming. He wrote that Erik the Red "took advantage of a sea relatively free of ice to sail due west from Iceland to reach Greenland. . . . Two and a half centuries later, at the height of the climatic and demographic fortunes of the northern settlers, a bishopric of Greenland was founded at Gardar in 1126."
Ladurie pointed out that "it is reasonable to think of the Vikings as unconsciously taking advantage of this [referring to the warming of the Middle Ages] to colonize the most northern and inclement of their conquests, Iceland and Greenland." Good thing that Erik the Red didn't have Al Gore or his climatologists as his advisers.
Should we therefore dismiss global warming? Of course not. But we should make a realistic assessment, as rationally as possible, about its cultural, economic and environmental effects. As Erik the Red might have told you, not everything due to a climatic warming is bad, nor is everything that is bad due to a climatic warming.
We should approach the problem the way we decide whether to buy insurance and take precautions against other catastrophes--wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes. And as I have written elsewhere, many of the actions we would take to reduce greenhouse-gas production and mitigate global-warming effects are beneficial anyway, most particularly a movement away from fossil fuels to alternative solar and wind energy.
My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it.
Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.
For example, right now the clearest threat to many species is habitat destruction. Take the orangutans, for instance, one of those charismatic species that people are often fascinated by and concerned about. They are endangered because of deforestation. In our fear of global warming, it would be sad if we fail to find funds to purchase those forests before they are destroyed, and thus let this species go extinct.
At the heart of the matter is how much faith we decide to put in science--even how much faith scientists put in science. Our times have benefited from clear-thinking, science-based rationality. I hope this prevails as we try to deal with our changing climate.
Mr. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of "Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century" (Replica Books, 2001).
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Highway Safety: Speed Limits
So far, we’ve agreed states have a responsibility to provide safe highways. I think we’ve also agreed speed limits are one of the major ways of providing safe travel.
How are speed limits set?
Many things go into setting a limit. Traffic, road entries and exits (access), type of environment (expressway, city street, young family neighborhood), even vehicle capabilities are included.
In the space of a blog it’s impossible to talk about every aspect so this discussion will be limited to interstate highways, that is expressways. They are consistent across state borders, built to standards set by the federal government. The standards are available from AASHTO (http://www.transportation.org/) as part of their publication, A Policy on Design Standards -- Interstate System
Standards were developed as part of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Nineteen fifty-six. Yes, with limited modifications, the interstate highways you drive today are designed according to 50 years old standards. That includes the speed limits on those expressways.
Well, if 70 was good enough then, what’s wrong with it now?
Seventy is no longer the safest speed. Not the safest because it is too slow for your safety.
Huh?
Time for more background.
Highway safety engineers have known for decades that the safest speed limit is the 85th percentile speed. That’s the speed 85% of all drivers drive at or below when given an unmarked speed limit. As with many speed related things, the reason for this is complicated. However, we can make a simple but true statement that covers most of it:
Too low a speed leads to driver inattention.
I heard that. You’re wrong, it’s not bull shirt.
If you want a personal example of the dangers of a too-slow speed limit,, take a drive on I-20 East into Alabama from Mississippi. There’s a 20 plus mile stretch with a 50 mph limit. No construction equipment, no barrels, no workmen, just a nice, fresh blacktop section where the 50 mph signs are still up. If you drive it at 50, you’ll begin suffering highway hypnosis before you’re half way through. Unless you’re in panic because everything, including 18 wheel trucks, is blowing past you going 20 to 30 mph faster.
Wonder why 70 is no longer the safest speed? Take a look at the car of 1975. Compare it to the 21st century models.
In 1975 tires were bias ply. They were short lived and far more prone to going flat. Today, tires are radial, often have 40,000 mile guarantees they outlive, and provide far more adhesion (grip) in all kinds of weather than those old tires did even on a sunny day.
The cars themselves are far more controllable. In 1975 most cars wallowed like a boat on a choppy sea. By the 21st century every car sold had much improved suspension and ride control (shocks and struts), far better than anything available when the standards were set.
These two factors alone, radial tires and improved ride control, increased safe speeds over identical surfaces by as much as 30% for every car sold. In some cases, such as the 550i, vehicles are so improved even a beginner could drive safely at nearly twice the posted speed. For those familiar with the Jackson, MS area, the north entrance and south exit to I-220 are marked at 50 mph. In that car, even a normal drive can negotiate those ramps at 80 to 90 mph safely – barring other traffic of course.
For those that can’t get to Alabama, I-220, or don’t believe their own experiences, let’s look at some speed related statistics.
You may have heard of Autobahns. Those real high speed, sometimes unlimited speed, interstates in Germany. I’ll bet you’ve also heard how dangerous and deadly they are.
Not so according to statistics from the International Road Traffic and Accident database (IRTAD). Here are the numbers for 2006:
Injury Accidents per 100,000 Population.
Germany 408
USA 647 (2004, US 2006 numbers were not available)
Deaths per Billion KM
Germany 7.8
USA 9.4
Let’s also look at a report dating back to 1992 for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. The report, titled Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits (http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html), makes a couple of very interesting statements. I quote.
Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent
And
Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.
There we go. For 15 years, states have known setting speed limits too low could kill you. For at least as long, the policy makers have known of the improvements in cars After all, they do drive.
A few states have acted on this information, if in an unofficial way. One state has an 80 mph policy on interstates. The speed limit sign may say 70 but you won’t get a ticket unless you’re over 80.
Why haven’t the others acted? I suggest it’s a conflict of interest. They know, because their staff engineers told them, higher speed limits are safer. They don’t act because they want the ticket revenue.
What can we do about it?
I doubt educating our legislators will help. They’re the ones who get and spend the money from those tickets.
Our best bet is probably a young law firm, eager to make a name and a few bucks for themselves. A class action suit on behalf of traveling salespersons and others whose livelihood is affected by time lost to a ticket hungry state.
If they do it right, the results will be 3 speed limits. 80 for cars and smaller trucks, 70 for anything with a trailer or over some heavy weight, and, at last, a minimum speed because we all know how dangerous it is to come up on some moron doing 35 when you’re traveling at 70.
Lawyers, where are you?
------------------
First post in the series.
How are speed limits set?
Many things go into setting a limit. Traffic, road entries and exits (access), type of environment (expressway, city street, young family neighborhood), even vehicle capabilities are included.
In the space of a blog it’s impossible to talk about every aspect so this discussion will be limited to interstate highways, that is expressways. They are consistent across state borders, built to standards set by the federal government. The standards are available from AASHTO (http://www.transportation.org/) as part of their publication, A Policy on Design Standards -- Interstate System
Standards were developed as part of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Nineteen fifty-six. Yes, with limited modifications, the interstate highways you drive today are designed according to 50 years old standards. That includes the speed limits on those expressways.
Well, if 70 was good enough then, what’s wrong with it now?
Seventy is no longer the safest speed. Not the safest because it is too slow for your safety.
Huh?
Time for more background.
Highway safety engineers have known for decades that the safest speed limit is the 85th percentile speed. That’s the speed 85% of all drivers drive at or below when given an unmarked speed limit. As with many speed related things, the reason for this is complicated. However, we can make a simple but true statement that covers most of it:
Too low a speed leads to driver inattention.
I heard that. You’re wrong, it’s not bull shirt.
If you want a personal example of the dangers of a too-slow speed limit,, take a drive on I-20 East into Alabama from Mississippi. There’s a 20 plus mile stretch with a 50 mph limit. No construction equipment, no barrels, no workmen, just a nice, fresh blacktop section where the 50 mph signs are still up. If you drive it at 50, you’ll begin suffering highway hypnosis before you’re half way through. Unless you’re in panic because everything, including 18 wheel trucks, is blowing past you going 20 to 30 mph faster.
Wonder why 70 is no longer the safest speed? Take a look at the car of 1975. Compare it to the 21st century models.
In 1975 tires were bias ply. They were short lived and far more prone to going flat. Today, tires are radial, often have 40,000 mile guarantees they outlive, and provide far more adhesion (grip) in all kinds of weather than those old tires did even on a sunny day.
The cars themselves are far more controllable. In 1975 most cars wallowed like a boat on a choppy sea. By the 21st century every car sold had much improved suspension and ride control (shocks and struts), far better than anything available when the standards were set.
These two factors alone, radial tires and improved ride control, increased safe speeds over identical surfaces by as much as 30% for every car sold. In some cases, such as the 550i, vehicles are so improved even a beginner could drive safely at nearly twice the posted speed. For those familiar with the Jackson, MS area, the north entrance and south exit to I-220 are marked at 50 mph. In that car, even a normal drive can negotiate those ramps at 80 to 90 mph safely – barring other traffic of course.
For those that can’t get to Alabama, I-220, or don’t believe their own experiences, let’s look at some speed related statistics.
You may have heard of Autobahns. Those real high speed, sometimes unlimited speed, interstates in Germany. I’ll bet you’ve also heard how dangerous and deadly they are.
Not so according to statistics from the International Road Traffic and Accident database (IRTAD). Here are the numbers for 2006:
Injury Accidents per 100,000 Population.
Germany 408
USA 647 (2004, US 2006 numbers were not available)
Deaths per Billion KM
Germany 7.8
USA 9.4
Let’s also look at a report dating back to 1992 for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. The report, titled Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits (http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html), makes a couple of very interesting statements. I quote.
Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent
And
Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.
There we go. For 15 years, states have known setting speed limits too low could kill you. For at least as long, the policy makers have known of the improvements in cars After all, they do drive.
A few states have acted on this information, if in an unofficial way. One state has an 80 mph policy on interstates. The speed limit sign may say 70 but you won’t get a ticket unless you’re over 80.
Why haven’t the others acted? I suggest it’s a conflict of interest. They know, because their staff engineers told them, higher speed limits are safer. They don’t act because they want the ticket revenue.
What can we do about it?
I doubt educating our legislators will help. They’re the ones who get and spend the money from those tickets.
Our best bet is probably a young law firm, eager to make a name and a few bucks for themselves. A class action suit on behalf of traveling salespersons and others whose livelihood is affected by time lost to a ticket hungry state.
If they do it right, the results will be 3 speed limits. 80 for cars and smaller trucks, 70 for anything with a trailer or over some heavy weight, and, at last, a minimum speed because we all know how dangerous it is to come up on some moron doing 35 when you’re traveling at 70.
Lawyers, where are you?
------------------
First post in the series.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Highway safety: An Overview
The first thing anyone has to say about highway safety is it’s you, the driver, who has the ultimate responsibility. You have to make sure your vehicle is safe. You must drive it in a safe manner. (Yo, you, the dumb ass in the black Honda SUV on 20 West in Birmingham. Just so you know, next time you cut someone off that close they may not back down. If it weren’t for the woman passenger, I would have let you put yourself into a Franchitti flip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3NO_zYCvb4 ) And you must make sure you watch out for that dumb ass and other incompetent drivers.
The states have a responsibility; a lawyer might say a fiduciary responsibility to provide highway users with a safe travel environment. They own the roads. Some states go so far as to charge a specific use fee. All the continental states and Canada collect use fees under the guise of gas taxes and the International fuel tax agreement, IFTA.
There are four main areas of state responsibility:
Speed limits. Neither too high nor too low.
Safety enforcement. Everything from whacked drivers like dumb ass to unsafe vehicles.
Road conditions. Good surfaces, de-iced and well drained, with safe crash barriers and good emergency spaces.
Licensing. Let’s face it. American driver’s licensing requirements are a joke. A very bad, dangerous, joke.
I’ll discuss each of those areas in future entries.
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Future entries:
Speed Limits
Safety Enforcement
The states have a responsibility; a lawyer might say a fiduciary responsibility to provide highway users with a safe travel environment. They own the roads. Some states go so far as to charge a specific use fee. All the continental states and Canada collect use fees under the guise of gas taxes and the International fuel tax agreement, IFTA.
There are four main areas of state responsibility:
Speed limits. Neither too high nor too low.
Safety enforcement. Everything from whacked drivers like dumb ass to unsafe vehicles.
Road conditions. Good surfaces, de-iced and well drained, with safe crash barriers and good emergency spaces.
Licensing. Let’s face it. American driver’s licensing requirements are a joke. A very bad, dangerous, joke.
I’ll discuss each of those areas in future entries.
--------------------------------
Future entries:
Speed Limits
Safety Enforcement
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