Urban Life
Safe-driving campaigns don’t work nearly as much as we need them to. It’s time to spend the money better.
It’s hard to dispute the urgency of protecting American road users; traffic deaths are rising at the fastest rate on record, particularly in urban areas. On a per capita basis, walking, biking, or driving is significantly more dangerous in the United States than in other developed countries. But how helpful are the many, many education campaigns found across the United States? How many lives are they saving?
Thoughtfully designed and implemented, education programs can and do induce safer travel behaviors, especially if they target a specific audience with new and actionable information. But all too often, education campaigns reiterate messages people already know, like the dangers of speeding or texting while driving, or emphasize humor or fear, which generally fails to shift behavior. Worse, they put the ultimate onus for safety on the individual, sapping resources that could go toward more systemic solutions.
Tires Pollute More than Tailpipes, Report Claims
Believe it or not, rubber particulates from tires may pollute more than gasses emitted from vehicle tailpipes. Varying by compound, the emissions created by tires come in the form of expelled rubber particles which eventually reach waterways or soak into nearby soil. According to Emissions Analytics, a UK-based vehicle data specialist, tire-wear particles account for emissions at a rate 16 times greater than the maximum tailpipe emissions allowed for modern cars in the UK.
Over a tire's lifespan, it will emit an average of 1850 times more particles than the actual tailpipe emissions of a modern gas car. How did they come up with this whopping statistic? Data was collected using proprietary particulate sampling equipment over the course of 1000 real world miles in combination with precision scale weight figures on all four tires. Hundreds of brand-new and used tires in addition to various driving styles created additional variables in particulate mass emissions measurements.
Emissions Analytics cautions that such figures need careful scrutiny. "The fundamental trends that drive this ratio are: Tailpipe particulate emissions are much lower on new cars, and tire-wear emissions increase with vehicle mass and aggressiveness of driving style," the company report reads. "Tailpipe emissions are falling over time while tire wear emissions are rising as vehicles become heavier and added power and torque is placed at the driver’s disposal.
History of Bumper Cars And How They Work…
Chevy Corvair – The Weird, Quirky, Cheap and Yeah COOL Compact
As the television commercial in late 1965 said ... "A most unusual car, for people who enjoy the unusual. Independent four-wheel suspension that's almost like riding the wind, road grabbing traction, quick-response handling."
I think it’s silly that liberals are getting all worked up about tuning of diesels. π
I think it’s silly that liberals are getting all worked up about tuning of diesels. π
Emissions standards are good from the factory but may not be practical or desirable in all areas. Some parts of the country have unhealthy air, and they have annual emissions inspections for automobiles and other restrictions. Plenty of other locations are rural and have relatively pure air, where the emissions equipment is good to have but not essential for clean air purposes.
Many diesel pick up truck owners install tuners and remove emissions equipment. Tuners can improve fuel economy, reliability and performance. They can make it better to tow heavy loads or for tractor pulls, or for the fun of rolling coal. It’s not to say stock emissions don’t have a place anywhere but for those who choose to disable controls outside of pollution control areas, so be it.
Some pollution crosses air basins and people drive from one community to the next. Even the most backwoods farm kid might drive into a city’s air basin with their dirtier emissions than stock truck. But that doesn’t matter because they are a minority, and their one vehicle is balanced out by many cleaner vehicles on the road. Most fleet vehicles will never be modified and even the majority of most truck owners will not be bothered to buy a tune or take off unnecessary emissions equipment.
And while you can model the impact of these emissions and make enormous sounding numbers on the impact to the environment, such numbers rarely take into account overall urban emissions or that many vehicles are operated outside of emissions basins. A much more important stragety should be to focus on new vehicles from the factory and emissions compliance in air basins that are currently not in compliance.
Now I understand that liberals and Joe Biden’s administration is looking for as many ways as possible to punish rural residents and conservatives who didn’t vote for them to the greatest extent possible. But government power shouldn’t be used to punish your political enemies.
Automakers Promised Technology Would Make Roads Safer. It Hasn’t.
Earlier this week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released the latest road fatality statistics. It is “grim reading,” the latter being a phrase that regularly appears in news articles about American road death statistics for the past half-century. 42,915 people died while trying to get where they needed to go on U.S. roads last year. That’s 117 people on average each day, or about the number of people you can stuff into a large regional jet. One plane going down every day for an entire year