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No, I'm saying that mixing cars and bikes on the same road is dangerous.

But when I point out that the same happens with pedestrians and crosswalks, you claim that's not the same. I honestly don't see a massive difference between sidewalks and crosswalks to the idea of bike lanes.

Ahhhh now we've reduced the scope to just the people in the cars!

I've continually done that. You go back to "danger" (an undefined danger, to who and from what is never defined, as you claim the bikes are unsafe lawbreakers, but never actually acknowledge that the cars have nothing to fear from the bikes). Why are you, as a car driver, so opposed to bikes on the road? They don't reduce your safety. So why is it an issue to you if it is dangerous? You want to protect people from themselves against their will?

It really is hard to take your comments too seriously when you expressly live in denial of 'shit happens'.

"Shit happens" is what the inattentive driver says after they hit a tree that jumped out in front of them. Everything has a cause. Implying that there exists causeless actions gives in to helplessness that promotes unsafe behaviors, after all, if accidents are unavoidable, why try? You can' never succeed, so it's a waste of time. And yes, that defeatist attitude is real, and does reduce safety, that's why the NHTSA removed the word "accident" from the Fatal Accident Reporting System. http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/airbags/Archive-04/PresBelt/crash_accident.html (not a press release on FARS renaming, but an official article declaring "Crashes Aren't Accidents."

Actually, that wiki article states that lane splitting is illegal in "many states", but it gives no reference, and the only states they specifically mention are Colorado and Nebraska.

Misread this. So, disregard my previous comments about it.

Regardless, California is the "exceptional" state that everyone uses as an example for "sometimes lane-splitting is tolerated". However, the MSF and any lawyer will tell you that outside of California, you risk being ticketed for lane-splitting, since it is incredibly unlikely that any other state tolerates lane-splitting. (New Mexico, was specifically mentioned in the WP article as a state where lane-splitting is not explicitly illegal, but that other laws prevent lane splitting.)

Specifically, in all training provided here in the US, the directions are "lane-splitting is illegal, except in California". But since it isn't explicitly illegal in every other state, that's why I keep using "apparently" and other weasel words. It's not because I'm trying to weasel out of answering the question, but because the question is fundamentally indeterminable. It's possible that you might get a court to agree that your lane splitting were legal, just like it's possible that the Iowa Supreme Court might rule that their state constitution provides for same-sex marriage. That doesn't mean that any such ruling is likely, and as such the best advice anyone can give is: "don't do it, you might get a ticket, because it might be illegal".

Interestingly, the NHTSA thinks lane-splitting could be a safer alternative, and that it recommends more studies to verify this.

Impossible thanks to regulations:

1. emission standards (euro V or whatever) 2. safety standards (abs, esp, airbags, etc). you can't even put a car the market without those.

Try to comply with all on this list http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/import/fmvss/index.html and it will cost you a fortune.

I think you meant to write "there are DOT-compliant halogen kits for most cars which have been modified by a reseller to accept HID bulbs and which are of universally questionable merit and no longer resemble their previously-compliant self."

Or, perhaps you meant "there are replacement bulbs that just snap into existing halogen housings, which are not at all designed to deal with the different light output of HID effectively, and never have been legal to use on a public road."

But don't take my word for it, because I'm not the smartest guy in the room.

They use the sales-weighted harmonic mean rather than the arithmetic mean-- so the CAFE average for the two hypothetical cars is 2 / (1/20 + 1/100), or 33.3mpg, not 60mpg. This is so that the average represents an equal number of miles driven per car, rather than an equal number of gallons burned per car. And since it's sales-weighted, it quite definitely *does* matter how many of each type of car is sold.

See the section titled "How is a manufacturer’s CAFE determined for a given model year?" and take note of how the formula is essentially a harmonic mean weighted by number of cars sold.

I will agree that the light truck exemption is stupid, but let's at least get the facts right before we start complaining about it.

If the automaker sells one vehicle that gets 20mpg for $25,000 and one vehicle that gets 100mpg for $60,000, they have a fleet average of 60mpg. It doesn't matter that they sell 10,000 of the 20mpg units and only 500 of the 100mpg units.

Wrong. From http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm : "Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) is the sales weighted average fuel economy [snip] " Scroll down to "How is a manufacturer’s CAFE determined for a given model year?" for more details.

You shouldn't operate machinery under effects of alcohol, either.

Alcohol is detectable when there is enough to impair you. Marijuana on the other hand "hangs around in your system for as long as 24 hours after smoking. The lingering effects mean you're impaired for several hours after the high wears off." http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/marijuana-use-and-its-effects. There is a demonstrable difference in the duration and severity of each of these substances. Marijuana has the longest duration of the three, and the abilities that are compromised are mostly cognitive http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/cannabis.htm.

While all three of these substances are comparable in terms of causal use, marijuana very clearly stands out from the other two in terms of effects and duration. I don't think it's a strong comparison.

You mean, it's kind of like buying the world's fastest production car, and then only being able to drive it 2500 miles a year.

They sure are.

With few exceptions, anytime a news article or politicians mentions drunk driving and throws out a really high number like 20,000 per year, they're actually referring to "alcohol related" deaths.

The NHTSA defines "alcohol related" to mean any crash where a driver or nonoccupant had a positive BAC. It's true that all drunk driving crashes are also alcohol related crashes, but all alcohol related crashes are not drunk driving.

For example, all of the below are alcohol related, but only a fool would call them drunk driving:
-.00 driver runs a red light and hits a .01 pedestrian
-.01 driver hits a .00 jaywalking pedestrian
-.00 driver is screwing around in his car at 2:00am on a Saturday night and runs off the road. (certain types of crashes are assumed to be alcohol related without any kind of measurement done.)
-.00 driver runs red light and plows into car full of teens with driver who is .01 (those teens will now be part of the quoted "under 21 killed in an alcohol related crash" statistic.

The group RIDL made some interesting reports from the raw FARS data. Quite a few crashes labeled alcohol related when the driver was tested and was .00 or only the passenger had alcohol in their blood, etc.

There's a core concept in decision making, called cost/benefit analysis, that our modern day society has completely forgotten.

It's not forgotten at all. According to this page the analysis has been done. Never mind that the analysis showed that this new requirement is not worth the cost. Relevant line from the article:

NHTSA uses a statistical figure of $6.1 million as the value of a human life and says under a best case-scenario, the proposal will cost between $11.8 million and $19.7 million per life saved.

The NHTSA is accepting comments on this new rule. I suggest everyone go here and tell them that they should listen to their own studies and stop creating senseless regulations. Its things like this that make me understand how people end up hating the government and become tea partiers. It's crazy.

Why? Do rear-view window breaklights alert the drivers behind you better, or somehow enable them to slow more quickly?

The former. Especially at night in bad weather, it was sometimes hard to distinguish regular taillights from brakelights, which are in basically the same position only brighter. It's easier to pick up on a new configuration rather than a mere difference in intensity. They do seem to be cost-effective (according to this study).

I'm passing on my mod points, because I actually have done research in drowsy driver warnings. You are correct that this warning is too late and drivers need the warning sooner. Also, people are downright terrible at accurately judging how tired they are.

Back in the late 1990's the US DOT started funding a series of projects on this topic for commercial truck drivers. DOT wanted a method for measuring drowsiness before things got to the point where drivers were closing their eyes for seconds at a time. A measure called PERCLOS was developed and subsequently implemented in a dashboard mounted sensor (gee, that sounds like the abstract).

The difference is that the system used a single camera and was actually tested on drowsy drivers in a simulator and validated in a very large road study. The system developed under DOT research issued a warning as drivers were moving up the drowsiness curve, not when they went over the cliff. Truck drivers need to know at least 10-20 minutes before an exit that they need to get off and take a nap since safe parking areas are spaced too far.

Furthermore, the system was designed specifically with driver acceptance in mind. It was designed to be similar to a speedometer, rather than an alarm clock. It provided objective information on how tired you were and only issued an alarm when you crossed a dangerous threshold. Some cars allow you set similar threshold warnings for speed.
In terms of coffee, it does help, but not when used the way most of us think it does nor is the impact very large. Also, it doesn't help at all when you're over the drowsiness cliff and are closing your eyes long enough to trigger the system in this article. By then, you're in the cornfield (if you're lucky) or wrapped around a tree (if not).

Stupid links... California nhtsa US Law.

Approved? How, why, and by whom? I know people that have installed aftermarket cruise control systems themselves. Are you asserting that cruise control DIY is illegal?

Please read my posts elsewhere in the thread where I point out this difference and don't put words in my mouth ,,.

"The comparison to cruise control is apt - cars that are equipped with cruise control meet federally-mandated safety standards - google's devices do not." The "cars" still meet all NHTSA safety requirements. You are asserting a positive. There is some federal safety law which Google failed to meet. Yet, I've seen no mention of that law. Furthermore, you've asserted that sitting in the driver's seat, paying attention to the vehicle, but not actually manipulating the controls at that time is illegal on the state level. Again, an direct statement by you that there is some law being broken by Google. And I've seen no evidence of that.

You are making a number of wholly unsubstantiated claims about federal and state laws. You are asserting that Google broke multiple laws under multiple jurisdictions. Yet you can't point to any law that was broken, other than your feelings that it should be illegal.

I can't prove it is legal. Why not? Because laws don't make things legal. It's not "legal" to breathe in that I can't find any law that states "the intake of air into your lungs is allowed by this law." They don't work that way. The laws say "this is illegal." The closest you get to the proof of legality is when the law says "this is illegal, unless ..." And I'm sure the lawmakers didn't make a law on self-driven cars yet, so such exceptions would be impossible to find.

So, you've asserted that state laws are broken. Which CA laws (since that's where the vast majority, if not all of the miles were driven) and which federal laws were broken in the operation of this vehicle? From my knowledge of traffic laws, there are none. You aren't presenting any yourself. I could drag up TX code (as that's where I took my classes in law and dabbled in traffic engineering) and show you right where it would be if it were there, but that won't prove anything. I can try if you like, but the "proof" is to pull up a law that was broken. Not suggest some "I think it should be illegal, so I'll assert my incorrect opinion as law" arguments. So go ahead.

And if there's anything in there where I put words in your mouth, please let me know what. Perhaps I worded things hypothetically to get you to answer one way or another on it, but you dodged and went off on a tangent. The simple facts are clear. You've asserted that it breaks CA law and US law and haven't cited any possible law it's in violation of. You've asserted that the software is the driver (or possibly the writer of the software) and apparently asserted (via a little logic, so correct me if I'm wrong) that if the software programmer is belted in, regardless of location, that since they have "care and control" that they would be legal, but if the programmer doesn't have his seatbelt on, that the car is illegal. However, again that's irrelevant at best and insane at worst. The car can't be "illegal." You don't give the car the ticket. The driver gets the ticket. And you are asserting that the cop would let the driver of the Google car go without a ticket, but would track down a programmer to give them a ticket. It's never going to happen. Cars aren't given tickets, people are. And when you can't cite a law that's been broken or describe a practical interaction if the car was pulled over that would result in a ticket or other charge, then I have to believe you are offended on principle, and there's actually nothing illegal.

Prove me wrong. Cite a law. It's easy. Here are some links that may help.

I suppose it depends on your source (pdf)

Oh, and the fifth link down from your query is this: Literture Review on Vehicle Travel Speeds and Pedestrian Injuries. I'll paste from the abstract of the first document cited:

16. Abstract

The relationship between vehicle travel speeds and resulting pedestrian injury was reviewed in the literature and in existing data sets. Results indicated that higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with both a greater likelihood of pedestrian crash occurrence and more serious resulting pedestrian injury. It was estimated that only 5 percent of pedestrians would die when struck by a vehicle traveling at 20 miles per hour or less. This compares with fatality rates of 40, 80, and nearly 100 percent for striking speeds of 30, 40, and 50 miles per hour or more respectively.

There are other documents in the report that go on to discuss photo enforcement efforts in Arizona, but they're not quite as relevant.

I wouldn't mind jumping through extra hoops to make sure the other people on the road are better trained.

Until you actually had to.

I actually do a lot to make sure I'm a well trained driver. The number of lives we lose to traffic accidents makes Iraq look like a picnic and makes Vietnam look like a blip (since that war ended and we continue to drive). Last year it was about 34k and the year before that, 38k (source).

Food for thought: would we have saved more American lives by trying to solve this problem than even bothering to fight the war on terror (costing in the trillions)? Would it have been possible to save 10% of those lives or more each year (3-4k), which would require the terrorists to execute a 9/11-sized attack once a year to offset?

I'm not an anti-war hippie, but it should make people stop and think.

Isn't that exactly what (properly qualified) consultants are for?

Government worker unions despise contractors. Better the NHTSA be incapable of actual engineering than that they misdirect money into non-union contract engineers.

Worse than that, this is really a problem of bureaucracy. The SEC missed Madoff [*] completely because it is populated by lawyers that really have no interest in rocking the boats of the wealthy and powerful. Lawyers have a great deal at stake whenever they interact with powerful people; their careers depend on their reputation among the connected. Bernie didn't work any miracles; his fraud was at least suspected if not obvious to hedge fund managers, quants, clients and media people. The lawyers at the SEC just didn't WANT to find anything dramatic because they're lawyers; they put on their blinders, do the audit and clock out happy they aren't on the front page of the NYT throwing a grenade into some rich guys setup.

What do you suppose the predominant form of life is at NHTSA? Well, right now they are looking for a Trial Attorney and a "Supervisory Equal Employment Opportunity Specialist" which is, according to the job description, a law clerk to handle civil rights complaints.

Bunch of lawyers hiring more lawyers. No surprise they can't analyze code. What happens to these lawyers after they've made their regulatory bones at the NHTSA? Same thing that happens to the SEC lawyers; they get hired by the wealthy and powerful to handle the government.

The previous NHTSA administrator was Nicole Nason, a Case Western lawyer. The new guy is David L. Strickland, a lawyer from Harvard. These people wouldn't tolerate sharing the same building with an actual engineer.


* I've read through about half of the 500+ SEC Madoff investigation transcripts; so far the only non-attorney I have encountered is a guest finance professor on loan from some Washington area university.

I might depend on the region too. For example a kid living in a relatively quiet suburban area with very low traffic might not necessarily have a great need to learn the dangers of crossing a street, yet a kid living in an urban area or a relatively high-traffic neighborhood (like the ones people cut through to avoid stop lights) would obviously have that need.

Just for information:
According the NHSTA's 2007 Pedestrians Traffic Safety Fact Sheet (PDF), 4654 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in 2007, and 70 000 (hmm, what a nice round number) pedestrians were injured.

Golly, I'm sure you're welcome.
Bonus!: Since the statewide driving ban was also killed, you have the freedom to pollute and cause involuntary health problems for others!

As for CAFE... They don't tend to worry about their big trucks very much, so long as they can put out smaller fuel efficient trucks. Remember that light trucks are a separate CAFE category, and the average fuel economy need only be just over 20mpg for the fleet. Of course, that's easy to accomplish, even if your fleet is full of vehicles that only manage 13-18mpg. All you do is put in a small or compact SUV underpowered by a 4c motor.

Take a look at this. It's the 2003 Annual Update for the Fuel Economy program. Notice how the import light trucks economy has slipped to be in-line with the domestic trucks? That's not because the importers have gotten sloppy with their engines, or that the domestics have improved their's so greatly. No, it's because the importers started with smaller (more import friendly) vehicles and slowly started importing larger and less fuel efficient vehicles. Meanwhile, the gas mileage on your average full size pickup isn't that much greater than in '78. Nope, it's just being offset by manufacturers offering more compact, small, and mid sized trucks with 6c and 4c engines.

My critique of the show is that they only tested one model of pickup. Even their scale models that were tested in the water with oatmeal were only one type of truck, the same type as in their practical test. This may be a minor problem, except they were using a crew cab with a short bed. The myth that you get better mileage with the tailgate down is surely older than the advent and/or popularization of the crew cab pickup. If they were to test with a full bed, full size pickup then they may see different results.

There is indeed a general law against driving recklessly, but it also makes sense to mitigate against conditions that contribute to recklessness.

I'm weird when it comes to driving. I'm a Thomas Paine kinda guy and I value my rights dearly, but when I'm on the road, I'm surrounded by people who simply don't take driving remotely as seriously as they should. The automobile is the single deadliest thing most Americans own, and we drive 'em so frequently that we become downright blasé about the risks involved. Driving is not something we should take as lightly as we do. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for between the ages of 3 and 35, and they're the leading cause of accidental death in all age groups.[1] I love my rights, but there is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that it is so deadly to go from point A to point B in our society. Until we come up with something better than automobiles and roads, I'm willing to sacrifice some pretty trivial personal rights to improve the quality of life across our society.

I know we can't outlaw everything. I don't think we should. I do, however, strongly believe that we simply do not approach the act of driving with the gravity and care it deserves, and that strong and vigilant regluation is the best way to make our roads safer and our lives better.

[1] source

There is one serious reason to prefer newer cars to older ones - crash ratings. Older cars were often heavier, but they weren't designed with good crumple zones. You're shred yourself to bits on the interior in an impact.

But check the National Traffic and Highway Safety Administration and The National Insurance Institute and you'll see many newer cars and SUVs are substantially safer in an impact than any older model, even a Volvo.

Many people don't pay any attention to crash ratings, and maybe you're one of them - but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.

That new Accord brakes better, shields the occupants more safely in a crash, has less emissions, faster performance, and better fuel economy than the Volvo. (Volvo made the world's safest cars in the decades past. If you check crash ratings at the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration here or at the National Insurance Institute here, in modern times many other automakers have models that are just as safe.)

You want a modern car with modern amenities that lasts a million miles with almost no work? It's cheaper to make a Ferrari.

PS GM's reliability has improved tremendously recently. Currently, according to Consumer Reports research your average 2004 Chevy will last longer than your average 2004 Volvo - although neither will last as long as an '04 Toyota.

If you'd like some actual statistics on teenage driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (), teenage drivers make up 6.7% of all drivers on the road, and were drivers in 17% of all police reported accidents. Which is not to say that they were at fault, just that they were there. Many of the letters Katz summarized or quoted from were from people aged 16 or 17. If these children, as you say, have no idea as to what is good or bad for them by now, they have a lot of catching up to do. One or two years from now, they will emerge from the magic chrysalis of enlightenment, and will have gone from "children making stupid children decisions" to "adults making mature mistakes." Also, you noted that children are the responsibility of their parents. But the theaters here have usurped that responsibility. I recall one message Katz related said the person in question actually had a permission slip from his parents to see whatever movie it was, but was walked out.