They crafted what’s known as “model legislation” that would allow them to continue selling recalled used cars, so long as they disclosed open recalls to customers somewhere in a stack of sales documents. They then turned to their army of lobbyists – more than 600 on call in 43 states – to help get the measure passed, one state at a time.
The effort is paying off. About this report This story was produced as part of a collaboration between USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 30 reporters across the country were involved in the two-year investigation, which identified copycat bills in every state. The team used a unique data-analysis engine built on hundreds of cloud computers to compare millions of words of legislation provided by LegiScan.
In the past five years, versions of auto dealers’ copycat bill have been introduced in at least 11 states – California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia. So far only Tennessee and Pennsylvania have adopted them, but Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey and New York still have measures under consideration.
The success of auto dealers’ effort is a case study in how special interest groups with deep pockets go from state to state with model legislation – copy-and-paste measures that can be handed to friendly lawmakers in any state – to get the policies they want, often with little public scrutiny and sometimes with tragic consequences.
Electric buses are trending. As the world burns, municipalities around the country are seeking ecologically-minded solutions to reduce fossil fuel consumption, and some cities are turning to the magic of electric buses. And, if civilization persists, predictions expect the number of electric buses in the world to triple by 2025.
I really look forward to riding and seeing CDTA's electric bus 🚍 fleet around. It's a new technology and there is still certain to be issues but I think electric buses are the future of urban transportation. The technology needs to be continued to be refined and infrastructure built but now is the time to do it.
An official with the Tennessee Department of Transportation said it's still not clear what caused the bridge's concrete railing to come crashing down onto the I-24 merger with I-75 below. However, officials are confident the bridge is structurally sound and will not cause further injuries.
The bridge was inspected in the middle of last year and showed the bridge was structurally fair, according to TDOT regional bridge manager Steve Hutchings. "It had normal problems that an older bridge would have, but there was nothing structurally wrong with it," he said. "There was no reason for us to suspect anything like this would happen. Everything was in good condition."
Observation: When parts of your bridge fall off, even when it's just a concrete guide rail, it hardly wins over public confidence. It actually, is similiar, at least in the piece that fell off, to the bridge in Syracuse.
After an out-of-control Tesla Model S plowed into a stand of palm trees on a highway median outside Fort Lauderdale last month, police rushed to put out the ensuing blaze using a department-issued fire extinguisher. It was a wasted effort. The car kept on burning after the crash, which killed the driver.
The police may not have known lithium-ion batteries inside electric vehicles, once ignited, can’t be put out with chemicals from a conventional extinguisher. The battery fires are susceptible to a self-destructive chain reaction known as thermal runaway, causing a feedback loop of rising temperatures. The Tesla fire stumped a series of first responders in Florida. Firefighters eventually doused the flames with water, which seemed to work, but the wrecked car reignited twice more after being towed away. That prompted what a police report later termed “extraordinary measures,” including a call to Broward County’s hazmat unit for advice on stamping out the fire once and for all.
The accident illustrates the challenges faced by first responders unfamiliar with the special characteristics—and hazards—of electric vehicles’ powertrains. Safety experts say the only way to extinguish a lithium-ion battery inside a car is with thousands of gallons of water, much more than what it takes to stop a fire in a typical gasoline engine. The other option is to just let it burn itself out. “It’s such a difficult fire because it takes so much water to put out,” said Robert Taylor, fire marshal in Davie, Fla., where the crash occurred.
According to PennDOT spokesman Ron Young, PennDOT goes through 1.6 million gallons of paint on road projects statewide every year. As Young pointed out, you could fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools with that much paint and still have about 300,000 gallons left over. All that paint can cover 114,000 miles. To put that in perspective, the Earth has a circumference of 24,901 miles.