Making quiet cars loud...

so we are talking about making electric cars louder

I have said this before: Instead of making quiet cars louder, wouldn't we have just as much safety by making loud vehicles quieter? A car with loud pipes makes every ordinary car too quiet for pedestrians to hear. So, I would be willing to make a quiet car a little louder when we finally do something about loud cars.

Carbon offsets, Guilt, and Karma

Apparently, you can purchase a carbon offsets from airport kiosks to counteract the carbon impact of your flight. NPR correctly asks how someone would know if what you buy is really offsetting your flight. But are they right to suggest that a person who does this is trying to "offset guilt"? Isn't that begging the question?

It seems the media can only discuss environmental motivation in terms of guilt absolution-

What about simply trying to minimize our carbon footprint because it will help reduce global warming? Or because we feel it is a duty to future generations? Or out of a sense of virtuous self-reliance? (we clean up our own messes?)

Perhaps, unconsciously, a part of us is hoping the earth will recognize that we are good people who "feel bad", so the earth will forgive us. But in the long run, it is the earth's facts, and not the earth's emotions, that will "knock us right on the head", as John Lennon said of Instant Karma. It would be good if the media focused more on that, and less on concepts like guilt.

Banning Road Bikes on Roads in Iowa

Via Joel Patenaude: A "safety" group wants to ban bikes from Iowa's rural roads.

You can see how this went down: More people are enjoying the sport of biking, which leads to more frustrated drivers of gasoline powered entitlement machines. They can't merely say "we don't like to have to slow down for bicycles", so they raise it as a safety concern and throw in a bogus conflict with agricultural interests for good measure.

Here is a way to deal with safety concerns: Put governors on all cars that keep them at 65 mph. Better yet, connect the governors to an electronic system that keeps them at 55 on rural roads, and automatically slows them to 45 when they approach farm machinery, bikes, or road construction.

"Hands Off Driving"

Third Eye used this phrase in the comments section of a Wired article on technology that enables the blind to drive. I like the phrase "Hands Off Driving, but the technology that enables the blind to drive will also mean no one ever has to-it will be the cars that do the driving.

Climate science arguments.

I hope people who don't believe in what the climate scientists are saying will be laughing at us 20 years down the road. Until then, here are all your climate science rebuttals in one place:

Do we really want to Drive anymore? (continued)

Matthew Yglesias on Cell Phones and Driving.. Matt mentions the strange disregard for the dangers of automobiles.

Soon, two facts are soon going to dawn on our consciousness:

Driving is usually so boring that we would rather be doing something else.
Cars are soon going to drive themselves more safely and efficiently than we can drive them.


With self driving cars, we will be able to eat, text, watch a movie and even try out that new Belgian ale while watching the scenery go by. And no, you shouldn't be doing that now.

So, how will people get their need for speed? On the racetrack. Just as amateur golfers have fueled the growth of golf courses in this country, you will see more race tracks developed for folks who like to drive fast. And those folks won't be sharing the race track with families in minivans heading to WalMart.

Solving the energy crisis and the lack of public restrooms on the road...

Peemobiles

Do we really want to drive anymore?

We would rather eat instead, apparently.

What I need to know and what I want to know

What I need to know: How am I responsible for the problems in the world? What must I do to solve them?

What I want to know: How are other people to blame for the problems in the world? How can I demonize them to justify myself?

Walter Cronkite, RIP