Since the price of gasoline in the US is increasing again, the talk making ridiculous claims about gas prices are too. For example, I recently received a chain email titled “Buy AMERICAN Gasoline”. This particular email (which I won’t help spread by posting a link) claims that we should buy “AMERICAN” gasoline or we will [...]
Yesterday I was talking with another grad student, and the topic of self-driving cars came up. He thinks they are a good idea, I don’t. In high school and college, I would have thought they are an interesting project that I would like to work on. I still think the research is interesting, but I [...]
To continue on my latest post… GMAC Insurance released their 2010 National Drivers Test results. The findings are interesting: If taken today, 18.4 percent of drivers on the road – amounting to roughly 38 million licensed Americans – would not pass a written drivers test exam. The national average score was 76.2 percent; a score [...]
This is surprising, according to the latest ‘Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report,’ Fort Wayne ranks eleventh for longest time between accidents among drivers in the two hundred largest cities in the country. Even more surprising, 11th is down from 6th last year. I never would have guessed, but apparently drivers in Fort Wayne are involved [...]
I ran across the paper ‘Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings’. The authors conducted a survey to study how perceptions of energy use compares to the actual use of various appliances and transportation methods. For the appliances, they had people compare energy used to the power a 100 W lightbulb consumes in one hour. [...]
According to statistics cited by Sarah Meyer (of the Indiana BMV) in testimony before an Indiana General Assembly Committee, teens who have taken driver’s education classes are involved in more accidents that those who haven’t. Meyer did mention that the results could be skewed by the fact that teens who complete a formal driver’s education [...]
Bicycling around Indiana’s country roads, I’ve noticed that many drivers make unnecessarily dangerous passes. The road is wide open, but they still come uncomfortably close to hitting me. But unlike the typical close pass, the driver continues to move to the left after passing me, often driving in the opposite lane for up to a [...]
I updated my simple fuel economy calculations with the new changes to the CAFE standard. Unlike yesterday’s post, this is a prediction of fuel economy for all cars and light trucks actually on the road, not just the CAFE standard for a particular year: The the definition of light truck in the CAFE standard includes [...]
New fuel economy standards have finally been issued. The long overdue update will rase the CAFE standards from their 1990 levels. This will be beneficial for the environment, health, national security, and will save car owners money: Together, EPA and NHTSA estimate that the average cost increase for a model year 2016 vehicle due to [...]
My brother and I saw kids driving on the sidewalks in one of the cheap toy electric cars. We got to thinking: How many adults are against electric cars because of their experience with these toys? When I was the appropriate age for a toy electric car, I knew other kids who had them. The [...]