I love how many PR faux-apologies seem to have as their basic axiom "the only thing that ever exists to make profuse apologies for is not communicating clearly." (Viz. the recent Netflix thing.)
I'm actually in favor of these kinds of things, but certainly you should be able to opt-out. So OnStar is behaving badly here (and, in fact, I think their behavior here should be illegal), but things like that Progressive discount I'm in favor of.
I also think we should have municipally owned cameras recording every intersection, so that if there's a crime we can just go to the tape.
With the progressive thing, you let them monitor you for six months to determine what discount you qualify for (which could be anywhere between 0-30%), and then you send them back the device but get to keep your discount for as long as you remain insured with progressive. So, it's not quite as big-brotherish as it sounds at first (everyone's initial worry: are they going to give me some discount now only to turn around and fuck me when I have an accident by, say, denying coverage because their shitty little devil box said I was going 3 miles an hour over the speed limit, or somesuch other nefarious nonsense that was in fine print on page 13 of the policy disclosures?). I'm not a progressive customer, but, if I were, even though I generally don't like privacy intrusions, I'd probably be willing to sign up for this.
I'd go a step further and say that this inclines me to become a Progressive customer.
Facebook is really ham-handed in its handling of the necessary compromises between privacy and efficacy, but such compromises are beneficial, I think.
cameras
Been done. It drives away street-corner dealers, which decreases violent crimes where they worked. No dealers, no change in crime rate.
http://www.urban.org/publications/901450.html
In general, ownership and error-validation of the data stream is an important point. I doubt that my insurance company will allow me to check that the device in my car is working properly by looking at its output, and they will certainly not share the read history of my files with me.
The aggregators of data like this (driving records, individual medical history, financial history) have too much power currently, so I'm opposed for now. In principle, the technology could be deployed well, but I'm not holding my breath.
Wow, 3 is interesting and surprising. Not so sinister, solves the problem of an ongoing stream.
And if enough people use it, they'll be able to raise the rates on the rest, putting a large premium on privacy.
And if enough people use it, they'll be able to raise the rates on the rest,
Only if every other insurance company starts a similar program (which isn't impossible, but that's what it would take). Otherwise, the privacy-valuers would just switch insurance companies.
I think there's a massive profit motive for them to be able to sort their drivers.
Suppose you have a car with OnStar but terminated the service. What happens when you press the button? Nothing? An offer to renew your service now for only $99.95?
My big idea is that what we need in this country is *consumer unions*. These are like workers unions, but for consumers. Kinda like the AARP or AAA, but you don't need to be old or own a car. This solves many many problems about the world.
For example, if you have some complaint about the way a company is treating you, you don't call the company *you call your consumer union*, who (if they agree with you) then contacts the company. (If you hassle them too much, of course they'll kick you out of the union.) This means that ordinary consumers get treated like companies (i.e. well) rather than like people (i.e. badly).
Also, just like bad tenants can get blacklisted by landlords (because you need a reference from your last landlord), tenants could now blacklist landlords by reporting misbehavior to the consumer union who then posts the information to all of its members.
The relevant point here is that instead of you personally auditing the correct functioning of Progressive's data collection, your consumer union would audit it on a randomized basis. If there were too many problems, bang consumer union threatens to move all the customers elsewhere.
Woooo boy would I not do well if the insurance company had a camera tracking my driving.
I'll report on 10 later today.
Does Progressive raise the rates of people it discovers drive around with two earbuds in? Because that crap irritates me. (One is fine. If you're on a phone call right now. With your dying great aunt Wilma. But keep it brief.)
Yes you'd have to pay a nontrivial fee to be a member of such a union, but the idea is that you'd make it back on your bills through increased bargaining power.
12.1: Holy speeding Jesus, ain't that the truth.
11 exist already, and are called "class action consumer lawyers" though IIRC from other threads you want to abolish consumer lawsuits and in practice the Supreme Court is doing the job for you.
11/14: something roughly similar exists. Feel free to sign up. They even put out a magazine, which you're probably heard of.
My big idea is that what we need in this country is *consumer unions*. These are like workers unions, but for consumers.
It would be great to have some sort of organisation that represented every individual in the country, and had the clout to take action on their behalf against, say, companies that treated their customers badly, or deceived them in some way.
We could call it "The Government".
Obviously consumer unions would have lawyers, and those lawyers would sometimes bring suits. But the legal system should be the last resort. Furthermore, there's lots of things that aren't *illegal* which you would nonetheless like to bargain for. I don't like paying more for a hotel than what AAA or AARP members pay, but certainly I can't sue the Hotel chain for not offering me the AAA rate.
I want something that's a combination of something like the link 17 and AAA/AARP. Does being a member of CU get you discounts? I can't seem to find any actual benefits of being a member of CU. (Certainly they do good work and are a good cause, but I think they're rather different than what I'm imagining.)
Friggin' Facebook. I tried to post a comment on someone's blog with the Facebook comment system today. Its bad enough that I have to use my real name, but I had to delete the comment as soon as I posted it because, after my name, Facebook inserted the words "Works at _____ _____", where ______ _____ is my employer, who would be seriously be not cool with having their name identified with whatever I choose to spout off about in my blog comments.
Yeah, there was this bloke called Michael Young who dealt with this stuff years ago. Google him.
Meanwhile, from the fashion dsquared:
I see Dsquared at Saks and shrug as I walk by. The clothes seem to say absolutely nothing about their owners except perhaps, "I spent a lot on this, and it's really not that interesting or thoughtful."
Without comment as they say.
22: I always giggle that D2's cologne is called He Wood.
12.1: Holy speeding Jesus, ain't that the truth.
I commute in a marked car with those stupid big numbers on the back. Some twit concerned citizen called my sergeant to complain that I was doing 80 on my way home. I work 2pm-12. At midnight 80 is the flow of traffic damnit. Nosy do gooders concerned citizens are going to force me to do the exact speed limit on the freeway and all the other cars will slow down because they're afraid to pass and it will just ruin things for everyone.
12: This reminds me of my pet idea that when you're talking to customer service you should be able to dial *69 or something and get a judge or third party mediator on the phone who could tell the corporation in question that they are being ridiculous.
I don't see how this can go wrong.
24: I've often thought it must irritate the hell out of cops when everybody in front of them slows down to exactly the speed limit at the mere sight of them. Especially when they're cops from a different jurisdiction.
Obviously cop cars should have a small light, the equivalent of taxi's "not for hire" indicator, so as to signal to surrounding citizens that it's okay to break the law in minor ways right now.
I hate it when large groups of people slow down to below the speed limit at the sight of a police car. Hey, we can still do 65, ok? No need to drop to 60 or 55. There have been a few times where I've been the only one passing people, but at or just below the speed limit,* and felt very self-conscious because of this.
*What's the precision of the equipment cops use to measure speed? Someone was telling me years ago that there's a small range where you can speed but stay within the margin of error (or whatever). It seems kind of silly to target that speed, though, if it even exists.
28.2: I always thought that as long as you were within 5 mph of the speed limit (maybe it was 8), you were okay. That might be less lax in, say, a school zone.
sorry, gswift. I have your back on the citizens assholes turning you in for speeding, but I don't think the officer's speeding prior to the stop is ever going to be a reason to exclude evidence when you get pulled over on some straight-up bullshit, so it's only sensible for the people to slow down. if you're arguing you should drive 85 so other people will feel safe doing 75...I like your way of thinking and agree every driver on the road shouldn't turn into a giant pussy driving 45 when they see a cop, but I just imagine you might have other guys, with numbers on their cars too, 4 miles up the freeway on one of those legal-only-for-cops U-turns. "but officer, I was riding right up this other cop's ass, and he was doing 95! also, I don't give you permission to search my trunk." doesn't sound like a real winner, if you see what I mean.
30 gets it right. I know a cop who pulls people over when he's driving the speed limit and they pass him. He basically uses his own speedometer as a radar gun. I don't know if has the balls to pull someone over if he is speeding and they match him, but honestly I wouldn't put it past him. Guy's an asshole.
This is probably the right thread to apologize for running that red light near Jordan Commons last year. In my defense, I am not a very good driver.
He basically uses his own speedometer as a radar gun.
That's a standard way of handing out tickets -- the cop matches speed, reads her own speedometer, and gives a ticket based on that speed. Your guy sounds like a jerk, but the basic technique is normal in NY.
I am not a very good driver.
The combination of this and Zipcar makes driving slightly more exciting -- any car I'm in is unfamiliar. If you see a car on the road with one of those big Zs on the side, be aware that whoever's driving it probably isn't quite sure where the windshield wipers are, and may begin to swerve erratically if it starts raining.
If you see a car on the road with one of those big Zs on the side, be aware that whoever's driving it probably isn't quite sure how to drive at all, where they're going, what the rules of the road are, and possibly what direction they should be looking in.
I once had to pull over to find the headlight switch in a rental car.
All the more reason we should all be driving riding in those new automatically driving cars. Robot cars.
It seems like a due process violation to me. I'd never previously heard of such a thing. I'm horrified to hear it's normal in NY; I'd hoped this guy was an aberration.
All the more reason we should all be driving riding in those new automatically driving cars. Robot cars.
God no and from my cold dead hands.
38: It's pretty normal here as well, which of course is why everybody slows down to the exact speed limit regardless of what the cop is doing.
I always figured it annoyed the hell out of cops, who really don't want to be stuck behind you in a 35 mph zone.
39: You think? Stupid idea on any number of fronts, but I've heard nothing but praise about the idea so far.
I just don't want yet another pleasure taken away by computer geeks.
42: I may not have been clear: it's an idiotic idea. First, it means that I have to know where I'm going, in advance, at all times? That's silly. Maybe I decide to detour and check out that new place that I just remembered is near here. Am I to suddenly shout out, "Hang on, let's go, uh, left, I think, here, to that new place, I forget what it's called, um, I think it's over in that neighborhood, yeah, yeah, this looks familiar, so, uh, I'm not sure, I think we've gone too far, maybe go around the block and pull over somewhere available and I'll walk?"
Remote controlled self-driving cars hardly deserve to be called a "car" without any sort of modifier (like "railroad" in "railroad car").
42: I may not have been clear: it's an idiotic idea. First, it means that I have to know where I'm going, in advance, at all times?
You must love public transit.
Are the cops relying on their own speedometers relying on people not to challenge the ticket in court or is there nothing wrong with the practice?
I suppose the willingness to challenge could be related to the magnitude of the violation, but how could the cop prove what speed you were going beyond "faster"? And how precisely calibrated is a police car speedometer?
Not to mention that I'm apparently addressing this robot car as though it's a person.
42: you find bumper-to-bumper traffic pleasurable? That is deeply strange.
I'm surprised by the number of times I've been on public transit and thought, "oh, this bus/train goes by such and such a place, why don't I stop there on my way?"
Also, people, nobody is ever going to make a self-driving car where you can't switch out of that mode and back to manual. Are you all insane?
switch out of that mode and back to manual
And it's going to make everyone learn to drive a stick!? What kind of tyrannical skynet car is this?
I am worried that we'll go to a system where every interstate in the country is wired with autocontrol for cars, so you get on the freeway anywhere and all of a sudden Google is driving your car at 50 mph evenly spaced from every other driver. Fuck that noise.
52: so the hypothetical risk that in some dystopian future a vastly unlikely regime of iron-fisted control of people's driving habits will keep you from blowing across the desert at 100 miles an hour on the few occasions you're able to escape the backup in LA is enough to prevent you from having any interest in solving all current traffic problems, thereby reducing your commute by god-only-knows how much and giving you hours a week of additional time to spend with your child and/or cave buddies?
having any interest in solving all current traffic problems
That seems excessive.
I've heard that if 15% of cars on the road were self-driving that would be enough to eliminate all current congestion.
Well, if that 15% is other people, awesome.
so you get on the freeway anywhere and all of a sudden Google is driving your car at 50 mph evenly spaced from every other driver. Fuck that noise.in' A, man. I'll break out a sandwich, then maybe the newspaper. I may drift off after a while. Wake me when we're there.
58: seriously, though, you like driving in heavy freeway traffic? That's a relaxing, pleasant part of your day?
solving all current traffic problems,
Ha ha. Automated cars will mean a huge increase in traffic, since parcels to be delivered and drunks will roam the roads in their teeming cockroach hordes. Latent demand.
I mean, I completely understand the joy of driving. I had a ridiculously juvenile (but ridiculously fun) car when I lived in California, and it was fun as hell to blast across the desert to vegas or ride the switchbacks in the mountains or drive inappropriately fast around semi-industrial LA wasteland late at night or whatever. On the other hand, spending an hour each morning stuck on the 10 listening to KCRW until I wanted to punch Nick whatsisface in the throat? That I could skip.
Oh, of course I understand that in reality these robot cars must surely be like public transit, which I enjoy using when I'm in a city that actually has it. I still had fun writing 43.
I miss living in a city that has a decent public transit system, to be honest.
61: I agree that traffic expands to fill available capacity (which is why I said "current" traffic problems) but the freeways of LA are pretty much already full of drunks and parcels to be delivered.
No, of course not, traffic sucks. But losing control over driving for a significant period (like, aside from the worst moments of rush hour) would feel like a real loss to me. If the robot car world reduced traffic without killing the pleasure of steering and directing an automobile for me, fine.
Also, I actually 100% honestly hate car traffic less than sitting on a crowded subway or, god forbid, a crowded bus, for the (almost always) longer commute. Seat heat, autonomy, and good music! I recognize this is a minority view here.
The thing I don't get, probably because I've never once looked into it despite having first heard about the auto-driving auto-car idea decades ago, is how you distribute the auto-drivers among the non-auto drivers. It seems like you could end up with chaos. Or maybe phalanxes of autodrivers interspersed with the last bastions of individualism, swerving wildly in a desperate attempt not to get crushed.
I absolutely 100% do not miss having to drive on a daily basis. I was just thinking about that this morning, how lovely it is to only have to drive for pleasure or the occasional large-scale errand.
each morning stuck on the 10 listening to KCRW until I wanted to punch Nick whatsisface in the throat
You can't really blame Nic Harcourt, who thankfully has long since exited the scene, on the traffic.
ridiculously juvenile (but ridiculously fun) car
I don't think Power Wheels are street-legal, yo.
Now I'm wondering what Tweety had. What would be an appropriately "juvenile" car that he would drive? A souped up Integra? An Rx-7? An old M3? Camaro?
Maybe he was more of a micromachine man. Maybe he was the micromachine man.
Early '90s Honda Civic hatchback with a grapefruit-shooter muffler. Color: primer grey.
66: The auto-driven (robotically transported) should need to be segregated, much as public transport is. I've missed any explanation about why robot cars are better than just public transport. Yo. Are these robot cars going to be electric vehicles, so that they don't just continue to contribute to the pollution problem?
If it's about parcel delivery, well, honestly, that's a can of worms.
I understand, Halford. I totally, absolutely love driving and I don't even have a fun car. Granted, my Apple iTransport probably wouldn't have smashed into a parked SUV before I even put 3000 miles on it, so there's that.
66: I think that misunderstands how self-driving cars will be implemented in practice; rather than a phalanx of cars traveling in an impenetrable pack, you'll have individual cars that can autonomously maintain distance, merge or change lanes. Actually you already have most of those things in production cars. What worries me is that people won't want to turn on the auto-drive because they'll realize that they can blast through the unaggressive self-driven cars like idiot teenagers while facing less danger that they'll run into somebody who isn't paying attention.
70: none of those; someplace between option one and option three.
74: you like driving in stop & go traffic? That's the part that confuses me. If I could take the wheel when I could enjoy myself and then pass it off to Kitt when traffic sucks and comment here instead, that sounds pretty okay.
Ah! Good choice.
What worries me is that people won't want to turn on the auto-drive because they'll realize that they can blast through the unaggressive self-driven cars like idiot teenagers while facing less danger that they'll run into somebody who isn't paying attention
Oh, no reason to worry about that from me. Why, none at all.
turn on the auto-drive
Ah, it would be opt-in? That's totally different! Then it's kind of like cruise control. Does anybody ever use that, cruise control? I always thought it was kind of dangerous, actually. It made me nervous when my dad turned it on while highway driving.
I have Tom Cruise Control. It's a vehicle-based entertainment system that prevents me from watching Top Gun more than once a day.
81: so, right. Imagine cruise control that adapts to the traffic in front of you by keeping a safe distance, and changes lanes if it has to due to construction or other traffic conditions. That's pretty much the near future of self-driving cars.
Haha, "so". All the more pleasing for being unintentional.
75: The phalanx part was a joke. The swerving wildly part was also a joke, basically reversing the dynamic that worries you. I decided to go for joking instead of clarity.
Essentially, I have the same worries, which leads me to be skeptical. How many people are going to keep turning the auto-drive on if their car keeps slowing down in response to every Halford who cuts in too close? I'd think that would be annoying, although I guess if you maintain a reasonably high speed, it's ok.
Pfui! If it were found that instituting self-driving cars on a universal basis cut fatalities in half, which I think is a trivial achievement if such a state of affairs is feasible, that's 20,000 deaths a year averted in this country alone; it would then be completely legitimate and, I think, the only moral thing for the government to outlaw manual driving.
Halford and his ilk can still be indulged in their sick vices, of course. On closed courses 10 miles from nowhere.
And it's going to make everyone learn to drive a stick!? What kind of tyrannical skynet car is this?
It's like the health care bill, they have to get buy-in from the lobby that would be losing out. In this case the lobby is the steadily diminishing number of people who view driving as a source of "fun". All those people know how to drive a stick, so the cars will retain that option for the time being.
85: maybe the chip-tuners will get into the act, reprogramming auto-drive modes to be more aggressive.
Or to put it another way: I don't think anyone would ever agree to the phalanx idea, so that's out. Beyond that, I guess I'm pessimistically imagining a downward spiral in which eventually you reach the point where the auto-driven cars are handling stop and go traffic automatically. That does still seem better than having to deal with it yourself, though.
you like driving in stop & go traffic
I don't encounter it very often.
Enforcing existing speed limits with already installed transponders and cameras would save lives also, but is not being done. So would mandating zoning laws that allowed people to drink near their homes rather than out at the edge of town.
There's been an automated car driving around Berlin for a few weeks.
I'm talking legitimacy, not likelihood.
90: well, then you're neither the problem nor the target market, I'd wager.
I suspect most Americans would go along with auto-driving cars if all the cars had built-in televisions.
I absolutely 100% do not miss having to drive on a daily basis. I was just thinking about that this morning, how lovely it is to only have to drive for pleasure or the occasional large-scale errand.
Bah. I start a contract gig on Monday; I'm looking forward to the work, and to making money again, but it's at least a 45-minute drive from home. Not looking forward to it at all.
85: maybe the chip-tuners will get into the act, reprogramming auto-drive modes to be more aggressive.
Next step, we'll have people explaining how to jailbreak your Mazda Miata so that it'll drive on the shoulder.
95: much better than the disturbingly large number of people who have non-auto-driving cars with built-in televisions.
If it were found that instituting self-driving cars on a universal basis cut fatalities in half
I seriously doubt such a thing would be found. Much of what Sifu's been saying seems to focus on heavy-duty congested trafficways. An awful lot of driving occurs otherwise.
On the hand, I'm given pause. A friend of mine has recently found himself subjected to a morning highway commute that he says is just fucking nuts. People drive like complete idiots, very dangerously, and it should be outlawed, that's how bad it is. Shocking. So huh. Maybe so.
There was a time when I had an incredibly enjoyable 45 minute commute, I must admit. It was a reverse commute, and part of it was over a bridge with very good visibility (you know, in case I wanted to keep an eye peeled for any... special... cars). Arguably it should have taken quite a bit more than 45 minutes.
20
... Does being a member of CU get you discounts? ...
No (unless you mean discounts on their own products). Discounts are totally against their mission which is providing independent objective product information.
... I can't seem to find any actual benefits of being a member of CU. ...
The actual benefits are access to the above mentioned independent objective product information. I find their ratings useful when making major purchases.
You should save until you can purchase a lieutenant colonel.
81
... Does anybody ever use that, cruise control? I always thought it was kind of dangerous, actually. ...
I use it when driving long distances. It reduces the workload on the driver. Perhaps it does encourage some dangerous behavior as for example I am a little more reluctant to disengage it than I probably should be for optimum safety. On the other hand when using it I no longer find my speed has crept up unexpectedly because I wasn't paying attention.
Also, I want a robot car. I hate driving in cities.
Can't you just buy consumer reports for the individual large purchases you need without becoming a member? Anyway, I'm in favor of what they do, but it's not at all what I was talking about. I want to be a member of a larger entity so that large companies will treat me like another business and not like a person.
I understand why everyone slows down when they see the marked car but for the love of christ get out of the fast lane. I assume no one wants to do their commute with a cruiser on their tail so I generally think getting in the fast lane and going a tad faster than the flow of traffic is the humane thing to do. Around here the "speeding" barrier is generally 10 miles over. If you're under 10 over odds of getting pulled over are pretty slim because it's just too easy to get guys going faster than that.
I know a cop who pulls people over when he's driving the speed limit and they pass him.
Wait, like on the freeway? If it's a school zone or a residential area with a lot of kids around or something I might use that to have a conversation with someone but not a ticket. The only other time I've used that is when I've needed an excuse to pull over one of the local chronic felons or a bunch of kids flying gang colors or something.
IMO I prefer to be addressing an actual public safety issue and I honestly don't think there's really much of anything gained by making the flow of traffic on the freeway go 65 instead of 75. It's why I really don't care if motorcycles speed. I've yet to be on a motorcycle crash where anyone was hurt but the rider. Go as fast as you want on that thing dude, organ donations gotta come from somewhere.
This is probably the right thread to apologize for running that red light near Jordan Commons
Ha, I live not too far from there. That's the movie theater we usually go to. There's a light rail stop there now because of the soccer stadium across the street.
On closed courses 10 miles from nowhere.
Phew. I mostly drive on a closed course 500 miles from "anywhere" and so won't have my driving experience destroyed by geeks.
UP, you've said it several times now, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean by how businesses treat each other. You mean 'as much like shit as we can get away with'?
There's a light rail stop there now because of the soccer stadium across the street.
This is America?
This is America?
The team is even good! Beat L.A. for the championship in '09. Seems like this place has kind of kept under the radar when you hear mass transit discussed. You always hear Portland brought up as a model of a smaller city doing that kind of thing but there's been a big push here for rail during the last 15 years.
65- You can get one of those toy steering wheels, a la Maggie Simpson, that you can use to pretend you're steering the car.
I always thought 15 over was the key limit because below that it's some lower grade of violation that won't result in the insurance company jacking up your prices. On Nantucket they give out tickets for going 25 in a 20 zone that cost something like $400.
I heard that you're not supposed to use cruise control when it's raining because if you hit a puddle and plane the car will think it needs to speed up which will make the wheels spin even more and kill you. That seems like a design flaw, the cruise control should know that if it manages to accelerate the wheels 30mph in a second that something's not right.
38, 46: The practice I'm thinking of stands up just fine in court, but it's not "I was going 75 and he passed me". It's "he passed me, and I sped up to match his speed by maintaining a constant distance for one minute. During that minute, my accurately calibrated speedometer read 95." This seems reliable to me, and it gets by in court.
I always thought 15 over was the key limit because below that it's some lower grade of violation that won't result in the insurance company jacking up your prices.
I'm not sure how the insurance company does things but our first few tiers on the speeding fines are
1-10 over = $90
11-15 over = $115
16-20 over = $165
21-25 over = $240
Common to "sell" the ticket by writing for a lower tier than they actually clocked you at.
114: That makes more sense. It seems like it would have to be that unambiguous in order to stand up. If you maintain that speed with a cop behind you, you really must not be paying attention. That alone deserves a ticket.
Probably holds up on egregious speeding but seems sketchy if you push it to something like 5 over. I have no actual firsthand knowledge of how accurate my speedometer is. I don't even know if fleet management tests that stuff.
I want a robot car that's been programmed according to four simple principles.
You always hear Portland brought up as a model of a smaller city doing that kind of thing but there's been a big push here for rail during the last 15 years.
SLC does seem to be oddly ignored in planning circles when it comes to this.
Speaking of speed limits, the speed limit signs in the part of Canada I drove through today* don't have units on them. Every once in a while there's a sign saying that they're in kilometers/hour, but nothing on the signs themselves. This seems odd.
*The far northwestern part of British Columbia and the adjacent part of the Yukon. Speed limits on the highway were 90 and 100 respectively.
British Columbia's highway speed limits seem to low for how people actually drive. The residential limits might actually be a bit fast (usually 50k/hr).
As for SLC, I was more aware of the light rail than the soccer.
The soccer team is actually pretty well-known among people who know about these things, I understand. (I am not such a person.)
British Columbia's highway speed limits seem to low for how people actually drive.
I was certainly going well over 90 km/h on that part of the highway. There was basically no one else on it, so I don't know what's typical. I passed a logging truck at one point; it was going pretty slow.
106
Can't you just buy consumer reports for the individual large purchases you need without becoming a member? ...
Sure you could (or maybe you can't I don't know how easy it is to buy individual issues particularly the one from several months ago you need for the particular purchase you are making). You could even just consult a library copy.
... I want to be a member of a larger entity so that large companies will treat me like another business and not like a person.
Send out your resume. At IBM we could rent cars for personal use at the corporate rate which was a good deal (at least I think it was a good deal). But large entities often pay more attention to the interests of the top people than those of the foot soldiers. Which is to say I wonder how much of any savings you would actually see.
Near the U.S. border, there's always a non-insignificant number of people who drive more or less the speeds you see on I-5 on the other side, which has a slightly higher limit. But there's lots of people who keep close to the limit too, so you can end up with big differentials between adjacent lanes. Combine that with a layout that's somewhere between interstate and regular highway (separated, but on/off ramps are not really built for speed at merge) and it seems more dangerous. But I have no idea what the actual accident rate is.
As for the rest of BC, I haven't driven enough to know what it's like. I've heard others complain about the limits, though. I guess there's no counterpart to 70 mph zones, much less the higher limits found in some states.
much better than the disturbingly large number of people who have non-auto-driving cars with built-in televisions
This is specifically illegal in the UK, and ISTR there was some trouble about satnav devices (in that it's a telly-like screen where the driver can see it).
I've heard that if 15% of cars on the road were self-driving that would be enough to eliminate all current congestion.
Any 15% or a carefully selected 15% including all the arses that are holding everybody up?
115. Those are the first few? Are you still just writing tickets on up from there, for e.g. 100 mph in a 65 zone (30-35 over)? That sounds like it should merit a bigger stick. Here you'd almost certainly be disqualified.
The team is even good! Beat L.A. for the championship in '09. Seems like this place has kind of kept under the radar when you hear mass transit discussed. You always hear Portland brought up as a model of a smaller city doing that kind of thing but there's been a big push here for rail during the last 15 years.
That's because all Republicans hate mass transit, and yet your city consists entirely of Republicans. Nobody can comprehend this situation you seem to be describing.
128: I remember reading that you frequently get campaigns in the US against mass transit - as in, residents of an area actually explicitly saying "no, don't make the transport links to our neighbourhood any better" - because they're worried that it will allow The Other to take the tube to their street and steal their cattle. Maybe SLC, being relatively Other-free, doesn't have this dynamic.
Plus it seems odd to have a single scale. It's way, way more dangerous to go five over the limit in a residential area than on the highway.
Before we worry about that we need to index them to income. And vehicle weight.
129: That's almost exactly why my subway line stops where it does instead of going through two more (wealthy) towns and to a useful highway location. I occasionally wonder if the same kind of argument would be used 30 years later, but there's no chance of anyone proposing that kind of expansion now either.
129 is also why the LA subway does not (yet) go to the westside.
On the other hand, re: 132, we do seem to be kind of on the verge of maybe extending some subway lines again, which would be about damn time.
Maybe, with the occasional 5-year delay, and on existing right-of-way, and with no funding for operations. So very, very maybe.
128: SLC went for Obama.
I think Portland's transit system is over-rated. As far as I can tell, the main difference between Portland's public transit and other comparable cities is that in Portland middle class people take the bus and in other cities they don't. I suspect the driving force is again the overwhelming whiteness of the city.
We got a mailer the other day from our incumbent state rep, asking for money and swearing that he would fight with his last breath to keep commuter rail trains from going through our district. Dude! We're in the middle of the goddamned city, and the rail lines are already built. Hopefully there's a more-progressive alternative we can protest vote for (likely, given the city).
129, 132, and 136 are all totally right. The Metro avoiding Georgetown in DC is another example.
Here, there should be a subway line to the Westside (sorta, Culver City) opening this year, though, and it seems likely we'll see a real Westside, Wilshire blvd subway soon (which IIRC is estimated to be immediately among the most used in the USA immediately after opening.
The bus system in LA is actually (now) very good and not hard to use, but (a) it is totally full of poor nonwhite people and (b) it's harder than driving and (c) there's built in cultural resistance, which I share at a deep gut level. If this were whiteyland like Portland I'm sure the bus would get better press.
137: That one's kind of interesting. The line through the city is not well-built for revenue service (so many grade crossings!) and it's not like there would be a stop anywhere useful, so I sort of see the argument. But I'm generally in favor of more transit, so I'm not ready to condemn the idea.
139: and it goes right by that elderly high-rise. But nonetheless: more trains!
This whole "no transport links for us" attitude is completely bizarre to me. They're hugely desirable in London - every property ad lists the distance to public transport, usually as the first item - and it's the poorest areas that tend to have the worst transport - certainly when it comes to the Tube.
That's mostly true here as well - property ads listing proximity to (good) transit are all over the place (and often significantly exaggerated). The resistance is among people who already have a large investment in a non-transit home and lifestyle.
Sure. It's just that there's not really any such constituency in London, because a non-transit lifestyle isn't really viable unless you're extremely rich. The closest I can think of was opposition to the West London Tram, which would have run along one of the main corridors in west London. But that was nothing to do with "the wrong sort of people" and everything to do with expectations of traffic disruption.
In my experience, complaints about expectations of traffic disruption often are the respectable proxies for the less-acceptable-in-public complaints about "the wrong sort of people". A few people do get truly agitated about traffic and parking in its own right, but mostly it's the all-purpose cover complaint.
I would love for a light-rail line to go in on our main stretch of traffic clusterfuck. It's a ten-mile drive up Route 29 from downtown to the airport, and all four lanes in both directions are routinely filled with people going 30 mph (in a 45). Seems like a great choice for putting in a rail line right up the middle, albeit one that costs a gazillion dollars. (Instead, the local debate is how to spend a gazillion dollars building one or two parkway/bypasses for cars.)
I really doubt it in this instance. Partly because most of that corridor isn't especially upmarket to begin with - the tram route didn't reach as far as the posh bits of Notting Hill. Partly because in the UK trams are stereotypically used by people who wouldn't use a bus and would otherwise drive. And partly because it really would have caused a lot of traffic disruption. The Uxbridge road isn't very wide with lots of single lane sections and they were planning to divert traffic on to residential side streets.
Yeah. I live near that proposed tram route, and to the extent that you (in 144) are thinking of a 'wrong sort of people', the proposed route is through places where those people already live. It's not particularly middle-class, or particularly white.
I was living in Acton at the time they did the consultation. I was all for it, not being a driver.
I drive, but not on that particular route. I only drive if I'm leaving London. I rarely drive in London itself. Although to be honest, much of that route seems quite well served by the Central Line (and has decent connections to the District and Picadilly lines at Acton and at the Ealing end).
I've heard of SLC's transit, even as a actually-existing 'string of pearls' plan. I hadn't heard about the soccer, though.
Autodrive cars will sell when they make them feel more exciting and agency-affirming than driving, probably using techniques polished in GTA. This will not reduce fatalities significantly until the autodrive cars and the flocking road cones learn to channel and slow the overclocked mods and the remaining human leadfoots. However, Google Goggles for memorial sites for your drive-time-podcast buddies will become a minor classic artform of our civilization.
121: I seem to remember reading that speed limits are based on both safety and fuel efficiency, right? Engines are optimized and most efficient at a certain speed, so you can conserve energy by driving that speed? If so, then given that Canada seems more environmentally-friendly than the US, that might have something to do with it.