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I'm getting real tired of the argument that people are shit drivers. No one seems to have to prove it, everyone is just supposed to take it for granted. The truth is, driving is pretty safe as it is. If drivers were that bad, then human driving just wouldn't work. There would be pileups every day.

From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration via Wikipedia:

For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day.

So ummm ... there are pileups every day. Any other objections?

Who gets to determine the "value" of someone?

Lots of people do. The DOT, for example. They think the value of an American's life is a bit under 10 million.

And, before you get the pitchforks out, this is actually pretty good - in Russia, for example, public opinion polls put the value a human life to ~$71500.

This smacks of authoritarianism. I don't think it'll do well here in the States, and ditto for their move to govern the car to no more than 112.

Geely^WVolvo drivers don't want to go that fast anyway, I don't think any of the people in the market for one of those cars will ever notice the limiter. Hell, I had a 115 MPH limiter on my 240SX and it was not a significant issue in normal life, even though that was a sports car. It was gear-limited to about 124 anyway.

These drivers don't want to drive drunk, either, so as long as the car doesn't have to phone home it's not likely to reduce sales at all.

The goal in the USA is zero highway fatalities so this is just a preview of the kind of hardware that will eventually be mandatory in all new vehicles... worldwide, really.

On June 29th, 2011, the Department of Transport's Office of Inspector General issued a detailed (23 page) audit report that examined the Federal Aviation Authority's approach to Risk Management.

You can read the report directly here.

This report, published in June 2011, documents in stark detail that the approach taken by the FAA - to significantly scale back oversight of aircraft manufacturers - represented significant risk, even if that activity were performed adequately.

In more detail, the report explains how the FAA took the decision to delegate responsibility for the hiring of individuals to serve as "FAA engineers" - essentially the supposedly independent inspectors who are intended to be able to objectively assess the effectiveness of the design and modification procedures conducted by the company that hired them.

If that wasn't bad enough, the report goes on to say that once the FAA had conducted initial inspections [the document quotes a 2 year time window of monitoring] it then stepped back from even an oversight role. In other words, there was no way that the FAA could have had any confidence that the modifications introduced with the 737 MAX aircraft were actually functional as claimed.

If you read around this news story in search of more details, you might find a couple of other relevant pieces of information. Staggering pieces of information...

One is that Boeing's design/development process broke down, so that when the "final" aircraft was reviewed / safety inspected by their in-house "FAA engineer", all the presented paperwork showed that the force imparted on the contol column by MCAS was set at relatively low, original design levels. In truth the design had changed, to the extent that one of the pilots in Lion Air flight incident had been attempting to fight the controls with over 100lbs of force - and had failed to overcome the aircraft's systems.

Another is that the sensor input to the MCAS system that turned out to be closely related to the problem may have been basing decisions on a single, faulty attitude sensor.

Whatever the causes of the two recent failures in terms of the operational characteristics of the two aircraft involved, I think the 2011 Inspector General's report clearly shows that both of these events were clearly avoidable and could have been prevented had the FAA leadership performed their duties responsibly.

The new regulation doesn't make clear if that's allowed though.

Really? From page 1 of the regulation:

"This IFR does not restrict passengers or crew members from bringing personal items or electronic devices containing lithium cells or batteries aboard aircraft..."

If your laptop contains a lithium battery, then it "contains lithium cells or batteries".

It says batteries installed can be brought on,

So if your laptop has a battery installed in it, it has a battery installed in it.

and batteries in devices on cargo flights can be in the cargo hold at 30%

This has been a rule for a long time.

but it doesn't make an exception for batteries in devices in the cargo hold on passenger flights

Other than saying explicitly that it doesn't prohibit them, you're right, it doesn't "make an exception". The sentence just prior to the one I quoted summarizes the rule. It:

1. prohibits the transport of lithium ion cells and batteries as cargo ...
2. requires lithium ion cells and batteries to be shipped at not more than 30% state of charge aboard cargo-only aircraft when not packed with or contained in equipment, and
3. limits the use of alternative provisions for small lithium cell or battery shipments to one package per consignment.

Now, read those three things again, and tell me where there is a prohibition on lithium batteries installed in your laptop packed in checked baggage. Note: checked baggage is not "cargo", and passenger aircraft carrying your sorry ass somewhere isn't a "cargo-only aircraft". https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/site...

For those who would prefer to see the actual Interim Final Rule rather than a press release you can go to https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/site...

For those who would prefer to see the actual announcement rather than discussion of it on an add ridden site with auto-play video you can go to
https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news...

Who, exactly, thought this was a workable idea? Two inches into the asphalt and covered with tar? I can't imagine how one, let alone a group, of civil engineers and the city's own engineers could be okay with this idea. I have so many questions.

To their defense, I believe that is now they install traffic signals all of the time. The question is, why did they think they could do this on such a large scale.

According to a report from what appears to be a very anti-fossil-fuel organization*, the US spends $20 billion per year on fossil fuel subsidies. Sounds like a lot right? But it turns out the US collects $35 billion in fuel taxes.

Now there's probably some non-monetary benefits that's not being counted, but if the government is making $15 billion a year from it, I don't think it's a subsidy overall.

* Their mission is apparently "exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the coming transition towards clean energy"

Regardless of the reasons (or potential solutions), an energy strategy based solely around renewables results in higher energy prices. The only countries I've heard that have relatively affordable renewable energy are those with excellent geography for hydroelectric power and has a low population relative to land area, which are unfortunately not that common across the world.

Until a country actually manages lower their electricity costs with renewables, most other countries should approach it with caution.

...one could also have hidden this in general taxes similar to the subsidies for fossil fuel or nuclear.

I heard this a few times, so I looked into it. According to a report from what appears to be a very anti-fossil-fuel organization*, the US spends $20 billion per year on fossil fuel subsidies. Sounds like a lot, but then I remembered that there's fuel taxes. Turns out the US collects $35 billion in fuel taxes. Now there's probably some non-monetary benefits that's not being counted, but if the government is making money from it overall, I don't think it counts as a subsidy.

* Their mission is apparently "exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the coming transition towards clean energy", so I'd take their numbers with a slab of red Himalayan rock salt

Is that a self-selecting sample?

"In 2004, the average age of motorcycle riders killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes was 38, whereas in 2013 the average age was 42."

Note that by 2015, the average age of all motorcyclists was 48. Which makes me wonder if doctors involved in organ donation are seeing an over-representation of certain cases - young, dumb, and helmetless guys. Older, wiser folks may still die, but they may be more likely to wear much more protective gear, thus causing more injuries that prevent them from being organ donors.

Every road and highway in the US is already a toll road, via the gas taxes collected (which, nominally, are supposed to pay for the roads - but rarely are dedicated to that purpose). In California, the State makes ~$0.50 per gallon; with about 15 billion gallons of gas purchased annually, that's around $7.5 billion in tax revenue, which is well above CalTrans (and local municipality) spending on road repair. Gas taxes are the tolls we pay to maintain the road - it's just often that the pot of money is raided for non-road use and thus poverty is claimed when it's time to raise more taxes/tolls for roads.

In 2014, about $324 billion (page 5-18) was spent on all transportation initiatives by local, State, and Federal agencies. This includes transit as well as roads. Those same Governmental agencies collected about $355.1 billion (page 5-21), making transportation more than self-sufficient - if it was all spent on transportation.

The Federal Government made $39 billion in gas and road taxes alone, even through it spent just $33 billion total on all transportation (a large portion of which went to transit). Of that $39 billion in revenue from roads, the Federal Government spent just $3.2 billion supporting roads.

Far from "capitalist roads killing you with tolls", we're already being excessively tolled by the Government - it's just done a gallon at a time.

I don't know that it's common knowledge, but asphalt is actually highly recyclable. Granted, the sources are generally industry-based, but even studies don't put the rate at lower than 90%. Granted as well that not all roads are strictly asphalt.

But it seems strange to highlight the fact that one could recycle sections as though other road materials aren't able to be recycled.

Of course, these tunnels are blatant violations of all tunnel safety regulations: They don't comply with railroad tunnel safety requirements, highway tunnel safety requirements, or even the most lax of mine safety requirements.

There are no Federal train tunnel safety requirements whatsoever. The Federal Railroad Administration "determined that regulating bridge or tunnel structural conditions or requiring inspections would not be cost-effective to FRA when considering the cost of implementation and enforcement."[Page 22] What little Federal oversight of railroad bridges and tunnels exists happens only as part of track inspection, and there is no Federal standard to which those inspectors work.[Page 23]

There are no Federal highway tunnel safety requirements either. The only thing that exists are preliminary recommendations from the NTSB and a committee to conduct research about the possibility of issuing guidelines from a group of state departments of transportation representatives, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials T-20 Tunnels committee. Neither of those existed before the ceiling collapse in the I-90 connector tunnel in Boston in 2006.

What voluntary, industry association guidelines exist are intended to deal with designs where internal combustion engines are allowed to operate inside them and, in the case of highways, where every vehicle uses its own independent steering to navigate the tunnel. Neither is the case in a Boring Company tunnel. Boring Company tunnels are effectively subway tunnels. The New York City subway system tunnels are just 18 feet high at the center, less at the edges. Boring Company tunnels are 14 feet high. You're telling me that 4 foot difference is the difference between life and death? I call bullshit. Whether or not you can walk out of a 14 foot tunnel in the event of a fire depends entirely on the ventilation system and fire safety systems in the tunnel. There is no public information whatsoever about what those systems may be in Boring Company tunnels, so no conclusion is possible at this time.

Stop blathering about things you know nothing about.

In 2016 Amtrac got One Billion Three Hundred Eighty Five Million dollars in grant money, from the U.S. Department of Transportation ->Federal Railroad Administration. That's in addition to the money they get for, you know, selling tickets...
https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0249

They also got over a Billion dollars in 2009 as part of ARRA.

So, if a Senator has clout and says Hop, they should check back for parameters after they are in the air...

This brings us to the national poll of unreported accidents, which finds that 30% of all crashes are unreported https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.g.... So, fine, let's up that from 5.5 million accidents to 7.15 million accidents. Humans still drive 450,349 miles without an accident. Your link gives me a 404 so I can't look at the document you provided (and I will withhold personal comments). However, this link https://qz.com/1220576/the-rac... indicates Waymo has hit 30.500 miles without an interaction in November 2017. However without much consistency. Also, we know that Google is picking where and when they drive, don't drive in bad weather, constantly check sensors, etc etc. Even doing that, they seem to be 30,500/450,329 = 6.8% as safe as a human.

If your start or destination is in the neighborhood then you're not "through traffic" and you can be routed there.

You seriously need to take up with these guys. https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/HTM...

From the regulations:

ROAD CLOSED—LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY (R11-3) or ROAD CLOSED TO THRU TRAFFIC (R11-4) signs should be used where through traffic is not permitted, or for a closure some distance beyond the sign, but where the highway is open for local traffic up to the point of closure So if that sign is there, why don't you tell a policeman that you know better, and have him follow you to the point where you turn onto the next street which under your bizarre system, also must have a Road closed to through traffic. Than see what happens. Sounds like a great test case.

I'm certain he'll realize the error of the rules and tell you to just drive wherever you feel like driving - rules are silly anyhow.

That analysis assumes every one of Waymo's interventions was to stop a certain accident. Which is probably not true. But we don't know how good their safety drivers are at intervening only when there would be an accident. (And that's not necessarily data you can ever be certain of.) They might be really good at it and it might be 90%, which doesn't change your analysis. Or they might be super-cautious and only 10% of the interventions were actually required, making it a factor 3, not 30, away from human drivers.

(Reading more closely, you're assuming the average driver has 3-4 accidents in their lifetime? That seems low, especially if minor accidents count. this source claims 16 million accidents a year in the US on average. This government source claims ~3+ trillion miles driven per year... which comes out to a bit under one accident every ~200k miles, so despite my surprise, thinking you underestimated accidents, I ended up estimating fewer accidents.)

I am serious; if you took some of the worst drivers today and gave them self driving cars with existing tech, you would be saving lives and reducing accidents.

No, you won't. The worst drivers frequently have their license pulled. The worst drivers are already taken of the road.

The remaining drivers will average perhaps three to four accidents over their lifetime, with the odds of a fatality so small it's hardly a rounding error (source). The average american drives 13,476 miles per year (source). Figure on a 40 years worth of driving (giving *YOUR* argument the benefit of bias here), we're looking at 500k miles with a non-fatal accident every 125k miles at worst, and every 250k miles at best for the average driver. We can't say what the fatal accident rate is because it is below 1 for the average driver.

Current *BEST* measured self-driving needs human intervention every 5600 miles (or so says Waymo). It is nowhere near comparable to the 125k miles (worst case). Current SDC is so far off average human drivers they are not even comparable.

In summary, current BEST SDC will have an accident every 5.6k miles. Current human drivers will have an accident every 125k miles. Your assertion makes no sense.

won't get close to the amount of supervision even the best SD system in existence needs.

550K miles doesn't even begin to cover the fender-bender rate. You're quoting a number similar to *police-reported* accidents. According to the DOT "In 2016, there were an estimated 7,277,000 police-reported motor vehicle crashes in the United States, resulting in 37,461 fatalities and 3,144,000 people injured." That's roughly 440K miles per _police-reported_ crash, not 550K.

Problem is most accidents aren't police reported, and certainly not fender benders. Apparently, the average driver has an accident every 18 years. 18 x 12K miles is 200K miles.

Think about this: 550K miles is roughly a lifetime of driving for most people, yet I don't know anyone who's never had an accident of any sort. With an average accident rate of 550K miles as you state, accident-free driving would be routine. Yet, commercial drivers get safety awards and bonuses for 500K accident-free miles. Let's just say that many pro drivers never see that bonus money.

Recharging overnight is fine but if you forget to plug your car in overnight, you may not be able to get to work the next morning [...]

Depends on where you work.

Many electric cars get over 200 miles on a charge and pretty much all of them will get over 100 miles. Figure that 85% of Americans travel less than 25 miles to work. So even if they forget, they can manage to get to work and back the next day.

Less than 10% of these accidents are due to mechanical failure

This research indicates mechanical problems are about 2% of accidents.

Statistics about pedeistian-automobile crashes are collected. Here's some from the NHTSA.

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.g...

73% occur in urban areas. 27% in rural areas.

69% occur at non-intersections. 20% are at intersections. The remainder occurs in locations like parking lanes, bicycle lanes, shoulders, etc.

72% occur in the dark, 25% at in daylight, 2% each for dusk/dawn.

26% of accidents occur from 6pm to 8:59pm. 23% occur from 9pm to 11:59pm.

49% of accidents that have fatalities involved alcohol on part of the driver or the pedestrian. 34% of fatal pedestrian accidents had a pedestrian with a BAC greater than .08. 15% of fatal pedestrian accidents had a driver with a BAC greater than .08.

Pedestrian fatalities are overwhelmingly (84.6%) caused by impacts with the front of the vehicle.

The big takeaways are the 70% occurring on the road at non-intersections, the 34% where pedestrians had a BAC greater than .08, and the 72% in the dark. People won't want to hear this but most pedestrian fatalities are caused by the pedestrian doing something stupid that the driver doesn't have sufficient time to react.

Hi, what? Sales-weighted average MPG for passenger cars is >36 MPG as of 2014. The average went down 31% in 2 years? Do you have a reference? Here's mine: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s...

Wire harnesses are a critical component to vehicle safety. Wires that can degrade during the normal service life of a vehicle can be deadly. Think about a wire harness with insulation that's been eaten that controls the ABS, fuel injection or an airflow sensor, and you hit a bump in the road and it shorts. Now you lose power or braking. Are we willing to have someone's vehicle fail and the people seriously hurt or dead because of a fundamental design flaw?

I've worked on my own cars for years and seen some really stupid compromises and designs that make regular service difficult or results in failures just outside the warranty period. This, however, takes the cake, and we need to stand up to this by declaring the insulation issue a fundamental safety issue. I'm now thinking about mitigation strategies beyond my standard maintenance that neither I nor anyone else shouldn't have to think about, like underhood blinking lights, sprays, capsaicin tapes, etc..

I would encourage anyone with one of these vehicles to file a NHTSA complaint stating that soy wire harnesses should be banned and recalls instituted to remedy the problem by either (a) replacing the harnesses with standard synthetic non-edible polymers as appropriate to the specific application, or (b) providing coatings that provably prevent rodents from consuming the insulation over the lifespan of the vehicle. We should also inform our congresscritters about this issue.

NHTSA complaint form: https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/... Congresscritters: https://www.house.gov/represen... and https://www.senate.gov/senator...

Or maybe your usage scenario is atypical. The average commute distance in the United States is about 15 miles one-way https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s.... So yes, while we can all come up with dozens of scenarios where an EV won't work, at least not with currently available battery technology, the fact is that EVs would likely work for most people.

For GM's effort to be successful, their lobbyists will also submit model legislation progressively requiring the abandonment of personal vehicles and hold harmless laws / limited liability for the manufactures and operators of autonomous vehicle systems. Brings to mind history:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies for monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that this was part of a deliberate plot to purchase and dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation."

The driver is the auto industries attempt to create an artificial market. Historically, the fundamental basis of personal vehicles was the suburban lifestyle and commuting. Now, most major urban areas have Growth Management plans in place to concentrate residential growth into concentrations ('urban villages') with access to mass transit, urban cores are gentrifying, and worst for them, vehicles themselves are lasting longer and have reached asymptotic performance improvement, and ludicrous price points.

See "Average age of household vehicles for several years" ( https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s... ). A car in 1969 had an average lifetime of 5.1 years, in 1990 it was 7.6 years, 2009 it was 9.5 years, and now in 2016 it is 11.6 years. Who is buying is also a problem for them ( http://www.autonews.com/articl... ):

The average new car buyer is now 51.7 years old and earns about $80,000 per year, while the average age of the population is 36.8 years old and the median income is roughly $50,000, Szakaly said. ... “It takes four millennials to replace one boomer” in terms of economic impact, Szakaly said. “There’s going to be this gap between baby boomers and millennials.”

Also, look at the auto industries track record handling any sort of technical problem ( https://www.cheatsheet.com/aut... ). And we can't even get automated trains, an essentially 1 dimensional problem, correct. Two years, right - it takes a commercial aircraft nearly a decade to get a type certification, with 'only' hundreds of lives at stake.

Basically, eventually they hope to follow the same defacto monopoly model of the cable companies - regional and local monopolies with non-existent competition.

Actually, gas taxes cover the costs of road subsidies and actually subsidize most other forms of transit. It's just that States tend to take the gas taxes and spend them on non-transit related things, then claim poverty about the crumbling roads. With a ~$0.77 per gallon tax, and assuming 12,000 miles average, and 14.5 million registered vehicles in the State of California, fuel taxes alone bring the State about $5.4 billion a year in taxes. Caltrans spends about $10 billion annually with 60% of that going to non-road-infrastructure maintenance. 30% of road taxes are currently going to fund a high speed rail line between Merced and Bakersfield, with no route identified from Bakersfield to LA. There is plenty of gas tax funding to cover roads, it's just that States love to spend that money on other things then plead poverty when it comes to roads.

If you want to put the taxes where they need to be, then tax weight. Weight damages roads, with the damage going as going as the 4th power. The average US vehicle weighs in at 4,000 pounds, and the average Tesla S clocks in around 5,000 pounds. Meaning the Tesla will do approximately 2.4 times more road damage than the average vehicle, but pays essentially zero for its infrastructure costs. The Tesla 3 is also heavier than the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and BMW i3, and in fact is close to the weight of an average vehicle.

With the above calculations, and assuming the $10 billion Caltrans budget was covered by excise taxes, there should be a flat $0.06 per mile charge for all vehicles. If we were smart, we'd scale that tax based upon weight ratio to the average. A BMW i3, weighing in at 2800 pounds, would pay about $0.015 per mile for its excise tax. The Tesla model 3, and the average car - both being around 4000 pounds - would pay the $0.06 per mile. And a Tesla S, being a bit portly at 5000 pounds, would pay around $0.15 per mile. That would cover costs of infrastructure as well as scale it to where it belongs - weight, primarily, then mileage.

one we promise will go away Real Soon Now.

News flash to Americans: there exists a world outside America.

Meanwhile, let's compare the Tesla Model 3, without any subsidies, to the similarly sized BMW 3-series. First off, which models to compare?

Model 3 SR: 0-60=5,5s; BMW 330i: 0-60=5,4s
Model 3 LR: 0-60=4,8s (Motor Trend)-5,1s(official); BMW 340i: 0-60 various measured at 4,8 and 5,1s.

So now we have our comparison points; let's do the comparisons. Note for the below that the 3-series all have a 15,8gal tank, and the Model 3 LR has an EPA-calculated range of 347/334/318mi in city/combined/highway driving, respectively. SR's battery is the same as LR's except 31 cells per brick rather than 46, so its range figures should be 31/46 times as much, plus a bonus for the reduced weight (estimated at 4%/3,2%/2,5% in city/combined/highway, respectively).

Base price (before options):
SR/330i: $35k vs. $40,3k
LR/340i: $44k vs $49k

Curb weight:
SR/330i: 3549 lbs vs. 3501lbs (manual) - 3541lbs (auto)
LR/340i: 3814 lbs vs 3675lbs (manual) - 3704lbs (auto)

Energy consumption, City/Combined/Highway (Wh/mi or mpg):
SR/330i: 248/260/274 vs 21/25/32(manual), 23/27/34(auto)
LR/340i: 258/267/281 vs 19/23/29(manual), 21/25/32(auto)

Annual energy cost, based on US average gasoline $2,561/gal, US average residential electricity $0,1319/kWh, and an average US driving distance of 13476/yr. The difference between the gas and electricity prices is roughly doubled in the EU averages.
SR/330i: $441/$461/$487 vs $1648/$1384/$1081 (manual), $1505/$1282/$1018 (auto)
LR/340i: $459/$476/$499 vs $1821/$1505/$1193 (manual), $1648/$1384/$1081 (auto)

Model 3 annual energy cost savings ("combined" is representative of most drivers); again, differences are roughly doubled in the EU:
SR/330i: $1207/$923/$594 (manual), $1064/$820/$531 (auto)
LR/340i: $1363/$908/$582 (manual), $1189/$908/$582 (auto)

Vehicle range (mi):
SR/330i: 243/232/220 vs 332/395/506 (manual), 363/427/537 (auto)
LR/340i: 347/334/318 vs 300/363/458 (manual), 332/395/506 (auto)

Time stopped for filling on a 100% highway-driving trip (anything less than 100% highway = more EV friendly comparison). Assumed EV driving down to 10% capacity, charging to 60% (unless a small amount more will mean one less stop), with average 7,5mi/min for LR and 6mi/min for SR. 4 min overhead assumed per stop (based on my timing of vehicle stop lengths), minimum 30mi remaining at arrival, gas vehicles filled to full at each stop, 1 minute tank fill time. Assumed half tank starting point for gasoline. Format: "trip length (drive time@70mph): SR LR / 330i-manual

You can drive on the road non-stop for 10-12 hours in most places in north america, that's 100% legal. You're not even required to take 30 minutes off half-way through your shift if you want, you can just keep driving.

This seems contradicted by the FMCSA regulations here. I quote: May drive only if 8 hours or less have passed since end of driver's last off-duty or sleeper berth period of at least 30 minutes. Are you saying those regulations don't apply?

That was surprising so I did some research and it is true.

For women. Deaf women have similar accident and ticket rates when checked.

But not for men.

https://cms.fmcsa.dot.gov/site...

D. Summary
" The well-designed study of deaf automobile drivers by Coppin and Peck in California
found that deaf men had 70% more road crashes than non-deaf men."

Not sure why there is a gender difference and the area needs more formal study.

But in 35 years of driving- I have seen accidents avoided due to sound queues many, many times. There is a reason there is a horn on vehicles.

But i agree- it looks like the current data shows female deaf drivers have similar driving records to the general female population.

A human driver will naturally learn to deal with this variability and adapt.

Not well. There's around 80,000 pedestrians injured in vehicle crashes each year. We as a society "adapt" with things like placing low speed limits, well defined crosswalks and a multitude of signals and signage in places with high pedestrian traffic. But our main method to adapt is to simply ignore how poorly we adapt and instead adopt an illusion of our own superiority.

Software doesn't do that unless its programmers make it.

Every piece of self driving car software I've ever seen demoed already has many, many systems in place to monitor and attempt to avoid pedestrians and are much, much more sophisticated than human adaptability is. A human driver can't usually track the position of dozens of pedestrians up and down and on both sides of a street to see if one of them suddenly veers off the sidewalk and into the street from between two parked cars, nor will they usually be talking to every driver on the street to share information about things they may not yet be able to see from their location but that could be hazardous in the near future.

Is that meant to be a lot? In the US, the average driver drives that in a year and a half. The average car on US roads is nearly a decade old, meaning an average lifespan of nearly two decades.

As stated previously, 2015 trucks were 11% of all fatal accidents. According to this they are roughly 5% of the total vehicles, and drive a little over twice as many miles. They are responsible for less than 3% of the total passenger miles, however, so no matter how you slice it, these supposed professional drivers are involved in more fatal accidents than the regular passenger vehicle driver.

Disclaimer, all percentages were rough approximations taken at a glance.

That's not good enough. We want it to be better than what a human driver would be able to work with. 40% of fatal accidents are at stop signs -- mostly side impact. That is, tens of thousands of people are killed in side impact collisions every year. Reference: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/in...

Anythng to eliminate that would be good. If a collision is imminent the early warning may help the car decide to speed up or brake such that the passenger compartment is safe. Having a camera in the B pillar may help ensure that the Tesla wasn't at fault but what good is that to the dead occupant?

This says otherwise. If you have more up-to-date statistics, I'd be interested. Much of the money brought in from gas taxes is spent not on roads but on mass transit, planes, bike lanes, etc.

Along the lines of "get rid of overtime exceptions" there could also be "hours of service" rules implemented in more professions, such as healthcare. I don't understand how it is illegal for train crews to work overly long shifts for safety reasons (when oftentimes the thing they are hauling is freight), yet nurses and other trained hospital staff are allowed to have 24 hour shifts where a fatigue induced error could be fatal for one or more humans.

Just because you either don't own a car or live in a city where everything is next door, your "You're Not Supposed To Drive For 8 Hours Straight" is rather provincial. Members of my family drive for a living and many of us cover *way* more than 500 miles and 8 hours at a time. We're careful drivers with places to go (and either need a specific vehicle or can't fly there), and your assumption we put people at risk is your projection.

It goes deeper. A 3-digit Interstate that begins with an even number is a bypass or beltway. If it begins with an odd number it takes you in and out of a city: e.g., 495 is the Capital Beltway. 395 takes you into DC. There's more info here

I carry cash when I need to spend it, not simply to have something in my pocket, and not once has anyone, anywhere, ever tried to rob me.

Those whiners who think carrying cash is dangerous are the same ones who will whine about how dangerous flying in planes is when there's a crash. That completely ignores the 10,000 other takeoffs and landings which took place that same day without an issue.

What is dangerous is carrying a cell phone. Between running into objects or distracted driving because you're engrossed with whatever text message you're trying read/send, having a cell phone is orders of magnitude more dangerous than carrying cash. This doesn't even include people robbing you of your cell phone which then gives them access to your accounts because you've conveniently put all that information on your phone.

The question becomes, which is worse: losing the few dollars you had in your pocket, or giving someone access to all your bank accounts?

the use of traffic and other fines as revenue generation [is] an unevenly applied "tax" that cares nothing about your ability to pay

That's a good argument for making the fines proportional to income.

The fact that in cases like the shortened yellow lights, it's actively harming (rather than helping) safety

That's correct, if you're the bumper on a car. If you are any other part of the car, or a human inside the car, the reduced T-bone collisions at camera-enforced intersections make you safer:

Even though the positive effects on angle crashes of RLC systems is partially offset by negative effects related to increases in rear end crashes, there is still a modest to moderate economic benefit of between $39,000 and $50,000 per treated site year, depending on consideration of only injury crashes or including PDO crashes, and whether the statistically non-significant shift to slightly more severe angle crashes remaining after treatment is, in fact, real.

Speed limits are arbitrary and are in place to make money.
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/sp...
"Despite the general acceptance and wide-spread use of speed limits throughout the world, there has been no consensus among practitioners concerning the methods and techniques that should be used to select the most appropriate speed limit for a particular facility. At the current time, it appears unlikely that any consensus will be achieved in the near future. This leaves practitioners without definitive guidance on this important issue, and in search of information to assist them. This report provides the information necessary for practitioners to make informed decisions in selecting a method for setting speed limits in their jurisdiction."

One hundred and twenty years ago an automobile was a pretty unique sight, and I'm sure every fellow with a horse and carriage snorted "You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy. Who would want that when you've got a perfectly good horse?"

In 1900, there 8,000 cars in the US. By 1910 there were over 458,000.
Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/...

And that's why we joke about buggy whip manufacturers.

The U.S. “hybrid-electric car fleet” was not obtained without any government interference. There were tax credits and other incentives. For example, California encouraged buyers by granting access to carpool lanes to hybrid as well as electric vehicles. Gasoline taxation (by federal and state governments) also plays a significant role in fostering consumer desire for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Higher fuel economy standards, mandated by governments, have also played a role by preventing vehicle manufacturers from flooding the market with cheap gas guzzlers against which comparatively more expensive hybrid vehicles could not easily compete. If there had been no government involvement, if only the market had been speaking, we’d all be driving large yet inexpensive cars. And if foreign competition had been thwarted through protectionist policies, those cars would likely be sporting 1960’s technology (and fuel-efficiency) to boot, but that’s another story.

In regard to greenhouse gas emissions reduction, that hybrid-electric fleet is unfortunately still a drop in the bucket, for several reasons.

Transportation only contributes about 27% of airborne pollution contributing to climate change. The remaining 73% come from electric power generation, industrial production, commercial and residential activities and agriculture. (source: EPA) This is for U.S. emissions, by the way; globally, transportation only contributes about 14% of emissions. (source: IPCC, cited by EPA). Even within the U.S., figures vary significantly between states.

Further, light-duty vehicles contribute about 60% of transportation-related emissions. (source: EPA), therefore about 17% of total emissions (in the U.S.). The remainder of transportation-related emissions comes from medium- and heavy-duty road vehicles, as well as aircraft, trains, ships and boats, pipelines, etc. Those can be particularly noxious. For example, “aircraft not only emit 12 percent of CO2 emissions from U.S. transportation sources — they also emit nitrogen oxides other than nitrous oxide, causing warming when emitted at high elevation. And ships, besides releasing almost 3 percent of the world’s CO2 (about as much as all of Canada emits), are also a main source of nitrous oxide and black carbon (soot).” (source: Center for biological diversity).

Finally, the pool of hybrid-electric cars has been growing but it is still much too small (around 2% of passenger cars) to make a significant difference. (Actually, lower gasoline prices in 2014-2015 led to decreased sales of hybrid-electric cars; source: DOT/BTS). Not to mention that, in the end, it only improves fuel efficiency, but it is still largely relying on an internal combustion engine.

My point is this: with all the goodwill displayed by a small minority of pollution-conscious consumers, even if you discounted the governmental initiatives that actually convinced those consumers to adopt a hybrid-electric vehicle, the impact on greenhouse gas emissions is minimal. And it will remain so because the largest share of those emissions is caused by factors that are well outside the reach of consumers (commercial and industrial), factors that are controlled by cost considerations, and can only be durably and significantly modified by government regulations or incentives issued on a massive scale.

Actually, the poor like tolls more than those who would actually pay them: The survey found that support for tolls was higher among low-income individuals (58 percent support for tolls) than among high-income individuals (42 percent support for tolls).

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people without much money like the idea of tolls being paid by people with more money. I suspect that if this sort of thing was implemented on the 405, traffic on Sepulveda Blvd. would get a lot uglier that it already is.

Actually, the poor like tolls more than those who would actually pay them: The survey found that support for tolls was higher among low-income individuals (58 percent support for tolls) than among high-income individuals (42 percent support for tolls).

Installing fiber isn't that expensive. I live in a semi-rural area several miles outside of the nearest small town, and 25 miles from the nearest big town, ~50 miles from a city, and ~100 miles from a major metro area. And I have three fiber pedestals near my house, from two different cable companies.

Nice anecdote. By the way, have you ever trenched fiber for a local telecom? It's not cheap. Two minutes of Google searching gave me this neat data. A couple installs in Florida ran about $10,000 per mile back in 2013. Let's use that as a base cost. Wikipedia then tells me that Google needed 4,000 miles of fiber to setup in San Antonio. So, $40 million dollars, just for one city. And if there already was one or two other providers there offering services, able to price-cut their services to maintain their subscriber base, that would give me even less reason to start breaking ground.

I've spoken with two different telecoms about their fiber install over the last five years. Both of them say that there's a substantial initial investment, just to develop a core community of subscribers, which then provides the profits necessary to branch out into neighboring territories, especially in rural areas. (Both teleco's said that rural areas don't turn a profit. The urban areas subsidize the costs.)

No, it is expensive.

Plus, and I'm going to be called nasty things for saying this, but traffic accidents do not appear to be "way up", like they would be if smart phones were causing a ton of new accidents.

I'm not going to call you "nasty things," because you're basically right that stats don't appear to be "way up." BUT it also depends on what stats you use. You're right that "distracted driving" stats are always hard to estimate.

What we do know: overall number of crashes (including fatalities, non-fatal injuries, and property-damage-only crashes) basically had been in steady decline since the mid-1990s, when we had nearly 7 million crashes/year in the U.S. This trend lasted until ~2010, when it got down to ~5.5 million/year.

For some reason total crashes have been steadily rising again, from a low of 5.3 million in 2011 up to 6.3 million in 2015.

Granted, total number of injuries and fatalities have thankfully not been rising at the same rate (though they are rising again too), but for some reason total CRASHES have been going up quickly. (That is, particularly crashes with no significant injuries.)

The official reports say that cell phone distractions have been steadily rising, though they only claim to account for around 2% of distraction-caused accidents in 2005 rising up to 8% of distraction-caused accidents in 2015. That is obviously a significant rise in that category, but I don't know how those numbers are estimated -- and still only accounts for (according to the report) 69,000 crashes in 2015, which is only about 1% of total crashes.

But I think we need to ask -- if total crashes have risen by ~20% in the past 5 years, after >15 years of steady declines (despite increased total miles driven), why? Drunk driving numbers have generally been continuing to decline. Are drivers really just that much more reckless in general than they were a few years ago? Are the reports estimating things that poorly? Are people suddenly reporting more accidents for some reason? Or could there be some more specific reasons why we're now seeing ~1 million more crashes per year than 5 years ago?

If only that were true. The dollar amount is more than sufficient were it not for the massive amounts of waste also involved.

A) Federal fuel taxes raised $35.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2014

B) Actual FY 2014 Budget: 62,451,151,000

It appears that B > A to me...and a quick scan shows that the vast majority of that budget goes to support and build transportation projects.

Here are the actual statistics. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s...