Your Freedom to Travel is Under Attack

Article re-printed from The National Motorists Association newsletter last month. Please consider supporting them by joining at the links provided. These issues will affect all of us soon and they need our help to fight back. By Jay Beeber, Director of Policy & Research, National Motorists Association

From April 2,2023:  If there was any doubt before, now we have a clear indication that the WAR ON CARS is real –and it’s being waged at the highest levels of society by authoritarian culture warriors. These tyrannical elitists seek to eliminate our freedom to travel where we want, when we want, and how we want by impairing our ability to use our personal vehicles. While often promoted as “safety” measures, this campaign to “get people out of their cars” is, in actuality, a crusade against a middle-class lifestyle represented by single-family homes and automobiles.

Prompted by their cataclysmic view of climate change requiring a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, cars are activists’ favored target to reduce greenhouse gasses. Their “solutions” would mostly lead to a diminution of our standard of living and curtailment of our personal liberties. And those hurt the most will be the poorest among us, those disproportionately affected by traffic fines and often forced to travel longer distances to jobs and educational opportunities.

The “Paradise” of these collectivists’ dreams is the “15 Minute City”, a dense urban prison where everyone travels by bicycle or government-run transportation systems –and never ventures more than a few miles from home.

The War on Cars takes many different forms:

Vision Zero: Both an ideology and an organization based on the belief that we can make roadways so safe that no one ever dies in an automobile accident. Numerous U.S. cities have adopted Vision Zero as an official policy. Yet it has failed almost everywhere it has been tried. The original target date for zero deaths was 2018, then 2020, then 2025. It has now been pushed to 2040 – far enough in the future that the lack of progress and failure in policy is impossible to demonstrate. Of course, the logical conclusion to this ideology is that society must eliminate or severely curtail all motorized travel, starting with personal automobiles.

20 is Plenty: A policy that cars shouldn’t be allowed to go faster than 20 mph in urban areas –because at higher speeds, fatalities will occur if a vehicle hits a “vulnerable road user” like a pedestrian or bicyclist. In other words, 20 mph is plenty fast enough for you to drive. The 20 is Plenty policy has been implemented in many European cities and is now starting to roll out in the U.S.

Arbitrarily Lowering Speed Limits: It is well-documented that the number on the speed limit sign has little effect on travel speeds. Rather, it’s the design of the roadway that determines at what speed people feel comfortable driving. Traditionally, speed limits have been set at or near the speed 85% of reasonable drivers don’t exceed. This practice ensures that we don’t criminalize the behavior of the majority of otherwise safe drivers. But now, a movement is sweeping the country to eliminate this standard and set speed limits at whatever speed “feels right” for those vulnerable road users.

The USDOT’s “National Roadway Safety Strategy” sets a target date of 2024 to “Revise FHWA guidance and regulations to … [encourage] the setting of context-appropriate speed limits…” That means speed limits no longer must be rational. Instead, more arbitrary and politically motivated methods will be used. The $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed into law in 2021 provides funding to local jurisdictions to enforce those unrealistic speed limits with automated ticketing cameras.

The consequence will be that the majority of otherwise law-abiding drivers will unintentionally become violators. For the anti-car fanatics, this is a deliberate feature of these policies. They’re eager to criminalize the act of driving, and arbitrarily lower speed limits enforced by automated ticketing cameras is their back-door way of achieving this goal.

Expanded Use of Automated Ticketing Cameras: Anti-car extremists love these ticketing machines because they can penalize drivers for the most insignificant violations, such as driving a few miles per hour faster than an arbitrarily lowered speed limit or making a slow rolling-right-turn at 2 am when no one is around. Activists tout automated enforcement as a way to increase equity since cameras supposedly can’t racially profile. Yet, studies have shown that poor and marginalized communities are the ones often targeted by ticketing cameras. And their residents are the ones least able to afford the billions of dollars in fines that follow from these policies.

Complete Streets (aka Road Diets): Although over 90% of workers commute by auto, anti-car activists believe we dedicate too much roadway to automobiles. In their view, “equity” dictates that we reserve an equal amount of roadway space for other users, especially bicyclists. Many cities are removing half the number of car lanes on high-volume roadways and dedicating that space to bicycle lanes –notwithstanding that bicyclists are as rare as unicorns in many locations. These policies have created massive traffic jams and lost travel time. But again, for the fanatics, this is a feature, not a bug. For them, using the personal automobile is too fast and convenient, so we must impair their use to equalize travel times compared to bikes and mass transit. Think of it as roadway socialism.

Eliminating Parking: If you eliminate parking, people will give up their cars in favor of bikes and buses, and the world will be a better place. Many university urban planning courses teach this dogma as part of the “New Urbanism” of densification and elimination of suburban sprawl. The curriculum even fosters the foolish notion that cities should remove parking at transit stations so commuters can’t drive their cars to access trains and buses. Abolishing parking is a significant feature of the 15 Minute City.

Eliminating Right Turn on Red: The Washington D.C. City Council recently voted unanimously to impose a citywide ban on right-turn-on-red. Officials in Austin, TX, Berkeley, CA, and Cambridge, MA, are also exploring a prohibition on right turns at red signals. And the movement is growing throughout the U.S. If this crusade isn’t stopped now, in just a few short years, we could all be forced to idle needlessly at red lights, adding precious extra minutes to each trip’s travel time.

These two articles sum up the anti-car ideology perfectly:

Cars are killing us. Within 10 years, we must phase them out

Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That.

What used to be a fringe ideology has taken root in our mainstream institutions, from the Federal Highway Authority and NTSB down to local government. It has infected the organizations that make and recommend public policy, such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and university research facilities. The World Economic Forum heavily promotes this ideology. Whether you know it or not, it is coming to your city and neighborhood.

The invention of the personal automobile has been a primary factor in the human flourishing and massive increase in our standard of living, which has occurred over the last century. It has allowed humans to thrive in ways never before imagined in the history of the world. It has freed up our time to pursue economic and leisure activity, spurred amazing innovation, and allowed us to experience life in new and unique ways.

But we could easily lose all these benefits if we’re not vigilant.

With a renewed sense of purpose and vigor, the National Motorists Association is formulating a strategy to fight back against these anti-human policies and protect our freedom to travel. In the months ahead, we’ll share these plans and may ask for your assistance. In the meantime, if you still need to renew your membership, now is the time. And if your membership is current, consider gifting a membership to a like-minded friend or relative. If we are going to win this war, AND WE MUST WIN, we need an army – and that army is formed one driver at a time.

Join Supporting – National Motorists Association

Vision Zero is a NO for me

I received an email this morning from a Susan Caro at Meritmile.com asking if I wanted  to speak to an "expert" in support of Vision Zero issues. I assume she was expecting me to use this blog to promote the "plan". For the record, I do not agree with the "plan" and fully support the National Motorists Organization's stance on the issue, of which I attached an article by written by a NMA board member below:

The Orwellian Era of Transportation Planning

By Christopher M. DiPrima, NMA Board Member 1/31/2021

George Orwell’s seminal 1984 has defined political discourse for over 70 years. Among the book’s most prescient concepts is doublethink, the practice of using contradictory terminology to obscure the government’s actions. In 1984, the Ministry of Peace propagates war; the Ministry of Plenty rations goods; the Ministry of Love incarcerates and tortures; and the Ministry of Truth distributes the state’s official lies.

Americans across the political spectrum recognize that we live in an era of doublethink, certainly when referring to our governments’ brazen lies to its people on any number of topics. While the country’s political left, right, and center can come up with their own lists of examples, here I point to only one among many: the Vision Zero movement.

In attempting to reach the noble goal of eliminating all preventable traffic deaths, the Vision Zero movement has propagated one of the most pernicious and effective forms of doublethink in use today: “traffic calming.” People who have been subjected to traffic calming know well that the actual mechanisms of “calming” should more accurately be called by their opposite name: traffic aggravating. In classic Orwellian style, the term “traffic calming” almost always refers to roadway design changes which worsen, rather than alleviate traffic, and causing aggravation, not calming, for motorists and other users of the public right-of-way.

A hallmark of doublethink is that it forces the user to accept odd contradictions as gospel, like the famous “WAR IS PEACE” slogan of 1984’s Oceania. Here again, Vision Zero excels in doublethink:

Vision Zero teaches that moving more people requires fewer traffic lanes—a half-truth at best which obscures assumptions about coercion and mode choice elasticity. “MORE IS LESS.”

It asks that we increase the price of driving, but then claim that this is meant to increase economic and social equity. It decries subsidies for motorists, but ignores that all mass transit is, and always has been, heavily subsidized. “CHEAP IS EXPENSIVE.”

It advocates “complete streets,” then attempts to remove motorists—often the largest user group—from those streets. “INCOMPLETE IS COMPLETE.”

It advocates accessibility, but then removes parking and encourages dangerous bicycling behaviors which present elderly and disabled people from accessing parts of their cities. “LESS ACCESS IS MORE ACCESSIBLE.”

It claims that faster speeds always lead to more fatalities, ignoring the mediating factor of crash rate and thus disregards the fact that the fastest roads, freeways, are also the safest. “SPEED KILLS.”

Most recently, Vision Zero extremists have added the term “traffic violence” to the lexicon, painting any traffic collision as a deliberate attack on innocent people. We live in a world with real traffic violence, from car bombs to the horrifying use of automobiles as weapons against protestors and other mass gatherings, and yet Vision Zero advocates insult the memory of those victims of actual violence by equating all traffic collisions to these acts of terrorism—and by extension, all motorists as murderers-in-wait.

The broader anti-automobility interests use doublethink in an attempt to dupe voters into supporting their programs. For decades, these advocates have pitched mass transit improvements to motorists as a way of reducing traffic congestion. The sales pitch is that improved access to transit will take people off the roads, thus reducing congestion for those who choose to remain. But then, they make sure to take away general purpose travel lanes, cut back traffic signal timings, and prioritize slow and inefficient street-running buses rather than grade-separated transit. They fight against any measure which would improve traffic congestion because they believe that if traffic is less congested, then transit would become less appealing. So, congestion mitigation through transit improvements isn’t allowed to mitigate congestion.

Motorists who have been subjected to Vision Zero doublespeak know better than anyone that the tenets of “traffic calming,” “road diets” (a euphemism for lane reduction), shortened signal timings, arbitrary turning restrictions, and unnecessary and unsupportable speed limit reductions—all serve to aggravate rather than calm traffic, and all road users suffer. Motorists in cities which have implemented “traffic calming” know that the driving mindset has changed from a relatively polite and orderly world to a Hobbesian war of all against all—where every second of delay cascades into gridlock, and where courtesy becomes the enemy of efficiency.

I posit that this is the primary reason why Vision Zero has been such a spectacular failure in our cities, failing to reduce traffic deaths while also failing to deliver on meaningful transit improvements or congestion mitigation. All that Vision Zero has offered American cities is a state of perpetual warfare between modes. Is it any surprise traffic aggravation techniques have failed to produce calmer, safer streets?

Far from being a fringe set of ideas, Vision Zero is now embedded into the transportation philosophies of many major cities. We now live fully in the Orwellian era of city transportation planning. This is doublethink’s most complete victory: cities’ Ministries of Transportation now attempt to prevent us from transporting ourselves.

It was all right, everything was all right—the struggle was finished.

They love Vision Zero.

Please support the National Motorists Association, you can join at this link:

https://www.motorists.org/

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The Mantua, Utah Speed Trap (Updated 3/2021)

Tickets funding this small town's revenue

(Original post from 2015:) Our drivers have to pass through here on a daily basis. Using speed traps for the primary purpose of revenue generation is just wrong! He's basically writing tickets to pay his salary. All the local and regional people are well aware of this situation, so all the town cop does is trap motorists who are not familiar with the area. The southbound side of the highway is a down slope and a driver unfamiliar with the area can easily be unaware that his car/truck is speeding up if not watching the speedometer. Help support the fight for motorist's rights by joining The National Motorists Association. You can join for free at this Link.

Article and video thanks to KUTV.com and Chris Jones. Links provided:

April 28, 2015  (KUTV) If you’ve ever driven Sardine Canyon, between Brigham City and Logan, you might be familiar with the little town of Mantua.

But, with a population of 741, the town is less known for its hospitality than its vast ticket writing. 

“The cop down there is like a sniper,” said Sheri Leishman, whose husband has been ticketed multiple times on the stretch of road. “Everyone knows he comes right out of nowhere and slides right in.”  

In Mantua, police wrote 2,185 tickets in fiscal year 2014. That helped the town bring in more than $221,000 in speeding fines, which makes up more than a third of the town’s $649,000 revenue.  

So how does this compare to other similarly situated Utah towns?  

Take neighboring Williard, also in Box Elder County. Its population is three times that of Mantua — with three times the number of highway to patrol. But in fiscal year 2014, Willard wrote only 706 tickets. 

“The main thing with speed is the excessiveness on it,” says Mantua Police Chief Mike Johnson, who is also the town’s mayor. (He is paid $42,000 a year to be chief, but is unpaid as mayor.)  

In 2012, the Utah Department of Transportation had to write a strongly worded letter to the town warning them that the location where they camp out was being torn up by the town’s patrol cars.  UDOT told the city their actions were “creating an immediate safety issue,” and the town did eventually fix the problem.

Johnson says their speed enforcement is critical. Not only does it reduce speeds on the highway, it helps support a police department that is a constant presence in the small town, he said.  

But, in 2014, the town’s police made only a few dozen arrests unrelated to speeding. Among the most recent citations: fishing without a license.

With the meager crime rate it begs the question:  Does the town of Mantua have an addiction to speed?  

The fees collected by the town help support Mantua’s two part-time officers, the full-time chief, a court judge and a court clerk. The highway, and the tickets that come from it, stand as a major revenue source funding a large chunk of the town government. 

“We could [still] have both of those,” Johnson said, “but it would just be a lot more limited. There is no doubt that we benefit somewhat by the highway.”

The chief is quick to point out if you are not impressed with the work he and his two part-time officers do in the town, then look at dangerous Sardine Canyon, where speed is a killer. 

“Everything we do basically comes back to safety of motoring public,” he said, noting UDOT began making an effort to make Sardine  Canyon more safe about 15 years ago by reducing speed limits, adding rumble strips and barriers.  

Fatalities have been reduced by 93 percent since the improvements to the roads have been made, according to UDOT statistics.

Update: 3/30/2021

by KSL.com

MANTUA, Box Elder County — The police chief of the small northern Utah town of Mantua has been let go after eight months on the job and other officers there resigned on Monday.

Box Elder County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Dale Ward confirmed the dismissal of Chief Michael F. Castro, who became the city's police chief in July, according to a Facebook post.

City officials have not said why Castro was dismissed.

Ward wasn't sure if all the officers had resigned Monday, but did say that the Box Elder Sheriff's Office will be helping out in Mantua in their absence.

The small city has had several police chiefs in recent years, including current Mayor Michael Johnson and more recently, Shane Jacob Zilles, who was arrested and subsequently fired for impaired driving in February 2019.

Zilles, who was pulled by a Utah Highway Patrol trooper for driving in the highway median, was later charged with five counts of falsifying, altering or forging prescription drugs, a class A misdemeanor.

Castro made headlines in December after rescuing an ice fisherman who had fallen through the ice in Mantua Resevoir, telling the Deseret News: "It just wasn't an option to see him drown right in front of us."

http://www.kutv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/The-Mantua-speed-trap-tickets-funding-this-small-town-39-s-revenue-123998.shtml#.VUab2vlVikp

How I Got Rid of My Radar Detector and Stopped Getting Tickets . . . Mostly

Valentine One

Article thanks to Jack Baruth and roadandtrack.com. Links provided:

Dec, 2015  In a darkened parking lot, long past sundown, somewhere in downtown Columbus around December of 1989, I handed fifty dollars to a fellow I knew only as "G" and waited. "G" counted through my two twenties and single ten impassively. He was an unsavory and possibly dangerous fellow, well above six feet tall, broad-shouldered and ill-tempered, but he was my only source for this stuff. Having satisfied himself as to the money, "G" stared me down for what felt like twenty minutes before producing a flat-ish, rounded-off metal box slightly smaller than my outstretched hand.

"You don't know who I am," he reminded me. Then he disappeared into the night, leaving me with the cold metal box. The back of it was marked "CINCINNATI MICROWAVE." The front had a knob, an amber warning light, and an analog gauge. It was the real deal: an Escort radar detector. True, it was obsolete by 1989—the Passport mini-detector had been out for years—but it still worked just fine. And its age, along with what I suspected was a light-hearted, or at least a light-fingered, approach to personal property on the part of "G," made it possible for me to buy it on the $3.25/hour I earned bagging groceries.

The Escort sat on the dash of my Mercury Marquis, affixed by Velcro, so I (and all my friends) could see it but I could also remove it for overnight parking. It seemed to work pretty well, faithfully providing me with warnings regarding the location of every sliding door, garage opener, and off-brand radar detector in town. Periodically, it would also inform me of police radar. It mostly did this by immediately jumping to the red side of the gauge and buzzing like hell whenever a cop hit me with his "instant-on" speed gun. In theory, it was supposed to tell me when the motorists ahead got hit, but in reality it mostly served as confirmation that I'd been hit and that I needed to decide whether to pull or over or run for it.

Shortly afterwards, I sold my Escort and got one with a newer circuit board that was supposed to be better. A few years later, I got a used Passport, then a new Passport. I don't think that any of my Escorts or Passports ever stopped me from getting a ticket, except in a very roundabout way. Sometimes they would beep for no reason, which would make me cautious, and then I'd see a cop five miles later on a different road, but I'd still be feeling cautious so I'd still be around the legal limit when the Passport BEEPed to tell me I'd been shot.

Still, ownership of a Cincinnati Microwave detector was kind of mandatory for car guys in the Nineties, the same way it was mandatory to have blackwall tires or those little stick-on g-meters that used a ball bearing in fluid to tell you just how hard you were rocking around your local on-ramp. When Mike Valentine left Cincinnati Microwave and formed his own company, our loyalty followed the man, not the Escort brand. So around the time I started buying BMWs and Porsches, at the turn of the millennium, I acquired a proper Valentine One. With the arrows and everything.

Finally I had some genuine warning of radar ahead. Except the cops had all switched to laser by then. At least in Ohio. Whenever I discuss speed enforcement in Ohio, I like to compare it to the novel The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert. It's a science-fiction tale of how an entire planet was designed to be the most miserable, dangerous high-stress place possible, for the purposes of breeding brilliant, manipulative military officers and politicians. Ohio is kind of like that. Speed enforcement is everywhere and it is obsessive and it is utterly unforgiving. The only way a committed speeder can keep his license is to load up with all the tech, develop a sort of animal cunning or sixth sense about potential police presence, and be ready to disappear down an off-ramp or side road before the lights behind you come on.

If you can speed in Ohio, you can speed anywhere. To keep the odds ever in my favor, I loaded up my Porsches and Phaetons with laser jammers front and rear, special wired-in power supplies for multiple Valentine One detectors, and I shared known speedtrap locations with friends as often as possible in exchange for similar intelligence about other places.

The laser jammers, I have to admit, saved my bacon a few times. But then the cops got better laser guns and the expensive, fragile jammers just served to let me know my goose had just been cooked. Basically, I'd spent thousands of dollars over the course of fifteen years to have the same level of "protection" I'd gotten from my fifty-dollar used Escort in 1989. Meanwhile, I'd gotten maybe a dozen tickets over the course of ten years, always accompanied by a dilatory BEEP or BOOP from some equipment buried somewhere in my car. Something had to change.

I started to think differently about avoiding speeding tickets. Instead of relying on technology, or what the CIA calls SIGINT or ELINT, I would rely on my own intuition or knowledge, also known as HUMINT. I threw away all my detectors and jammers, because I didn't want to rely on the machines. Then, I decided to develop my human capabilities.

I cast my vision as far forward it would go and started watching for brake lights. Most people don't hit the brakes until they're about fifty feet from the cop in question, so I made sure I was looking at the most distant guinea pigs ahead. I familiarized myself with the kinds of places cops like to sit, looking at the on-ramps as I went by and never zipping through a blind hill or corner in the left lane. I positioned my car so it wouldn't be easily visible for radar or laser, making sure there were trucks next to or behind me whenever I thought I was at risk of being zapped.

Finally, I decided to just slow down most of the time. No, I don't drive the speed limit, but I no longer drive 20-30mph above it at all times. I drive just slightly faster than the flow of traffic so I can disappear back into that flow when I have to. It helps that speed limits have risen significantly since I started driving in Ohio; the 80mph that would have sent me to jail in 1989 is now insufficient to attract the attention of the Highway Patrol until around the end of the month.

As a consequence of these actions, I haven't been convicted of speeding since 2006. Note that I say "convicted of," not "charged with," because I've added the final, and most important, weapon to my arsenal. When I get pulled over nowadays, I call a local attorney the next day and get it handled. Ninety-nine percent of the municipalities and police agencies out there don't care about the ticket; they care about the money. So I call an attorney and have him offer to pay the same amount without the points on my license. Like Billy Dee Williams says, it works every time.

With that said, there's speeding and then there's SPEEDING. So when I was busted somewhere west of Laramie last year, doing wayyyy into the triple digits, I did the smart thing. I called around until I found a local law firm. The attorney told me she could phone in my plea and get me dropped to a lesser offense. I told her I would pay her whatever it took for her to visit the country courthouse in person.

"Nine hundred bucks for a half day, minimum," she said.

"You got it," was my response. I paid her up front. When she got there, out in that two-horse town, the judge was so struck by her beauty that he moved my case to the front of the line. Then he asked her some questions—about herself, not about me. Then he dismissed all charges, except for thirty-one dollars in court costs. Then he asked if he could call her in the future if he needed an attorney.

Which reminds me of a lesson from another Frank Herbert book, in this case Dune: Never use a machine to do a man's job. Or in this case, a woman's.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a27505/how-i-got-rid-of-my-radar-detector-and-stopped-getting-tickets/?fbclid=IwAR0r-yLTyInCl9eGr2fRevLuc9wDOlMbDNzmzZ5fa81Ruul-E-Hlrxz4ej4

Rental Companies Should Be Worried About What’s Gaining in Their Rear-view

desertsun.com

Article thanks to Steph Willems and thetruthaboutcars.com. Links provided:

July 31, 2018  For a product or service to dominate a body of customers, another must fade to the background. Think of direct and alternating current, or perhaps digital cameras and 35mm film.

It gets a little fuzzier when the topic of personal transportation arises. Some modes of transport are so much more more useful than what they replaced (cars and horses, jetliners and ocean liners) that the preceding mode is relegated to a niche category. In others comparisons, the usefulness of a certain mode remains strong only in certain areas. Think trains.

But in a car-based world, consumers now have more options than ever in how they get around when their personal vehicle is left sitting at home. A recent survey shows just how pleasant regular car renters find app-based ride-hailing services, and traditional rental companies would be foolish to not take note.

The survey, conducted by consulting firm AlixPartners, asked 2,000 Americans who rented a car in the past year about their experience — and opinion — of ride-hailing services. As you might expect, consumers are learning the appeal of getting a lift from the street corner or address of their of their choice just by opening up the Uber or Lyft app on their phone. With cheaper rates than a taxi service and no need for a pricey add-ons, ride-hailing can offer a viable alternative to renting a car at the airport.

Thanks to services like GM’s Maven or Turo, longer trips out of (or around) town can also be had without visiting the Enterprise, Avis, or Budget counter. The future holds more potential choice. Autonomous driving technology is at the core of Waymo’s ride-hailing plan, and others, like Uber and Lyft, want a piece of that action. According to AlixPartners (via The Detroit Bureau), rental companies need to change their business model in a hurry if they hope to survive the coming decades.

“Results from our survey suggest that the $30-billion U.S. car-rental industry is already undergoing a tectonic shift, with boundaries not just blurring but being obliterated between car-rental and ride-hailing and other forms of new mobility,” said Arun Kumar, a director in AlixPartners’ Automotive and Industrial Practice.

“The companies that survive this shift will be those that act now to transform themselves to be relevant in a world which seems to much prefer simply clicking on an app than standing in line at the rental counter.”

So, what did the survey reveal? Some 35 percent of respondents say they’ve replaced a rental with ride-hailing services in the past year. Of those who were aware of the existence of ride-hailing services (but have never used it), 48 percent say they’d switch if the cost falls 20 percent below that of renting.

Perhaps even more worrisome — to rental agencies, anyway — is that those who have used ride-hailing as a rental alternative seem to prefer the service. Of the rental respondents, 83 percent rate their ride-hailing experience as “very positive” or “somewhat positive.” Rental services garner a positive rating of only 72 percent.

What don’t renters like about the rental experience? Top of mind is the “laborious” rental process for 35 percent of respondents, followed closely by pricey add-on charges (34 percent). Twenty percent cited limited vehicle choice as their top gripe.

If this wasn’t enough to go on, rental companies might want to take note of this finding: Of the respondents who used a ride-hailing service, 49 percent said the greatest appeal came from its ease of use. Just a tap of the phone away.

Also, rental reputation does not necessarily translate into a more pleasant experience. From the survey:

The AlixPartners survey also finds that—despite attempts at brand-positioning by various companies in the rental-car industry over the years—consumers’ rating of their experience with what the industry generally considers “premium” and “mid-tier” brands aren’t much higher than with “value” brands—and in some cases are lower. In fact, according to the survey, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “very negative” and 5 being “very positive,” only 0.5 points separated the highest-ranked brand of the 17 largest rental-car companies and the lowest-ranked. And that highest-ranked brand wasn’t even a “premium” one.

If there’s a silver lining for rental companies, it’s that “only 18% of those surveyed currently say they’re willing to purchase a ride-hailing subscription for a set number of rides—thought by many to be that industry’s preferred business model.”

https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/07/rental-companies-should-be-worried-about-whats-gaining-in-their-rear-view/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TheTruthAboutCars.com_new-content-unsold&utm_source=TheTruthAboutCars.com20180731

The Zipper Merge—Coming to a Construction Zone near You

Article thanks to the National Motorists Association and NMA member Bob Morrow. You can join the NMA for free at the links provided:

Aug, 5, 2018  From Montana Member Bob Morrow

The most controversial, or more accurately the least understood, highway driving maneuver sanctioned by transportation experts is the zipper merge. It is a method of combining two streams of traffic into one when there is a lane restriction ahead, such as in a construction zone. Invariably some drivers think that others are trying to take advantage of them by zipper merging, causing tempers to sometimes flare.

You know what happens in construction zones, where people see signs saying “Left Lane Closed Ahead 1 Mile” and everyone moves to the right lane, so that there’s one mile of traffic in the right lane and not much in the left? That’s what the zipper merge is designed to deal with. It allows for greater number of vehicles in a shorter overall distance and gives a sense of fairness in that all lanes are moving at about the same speed. And, since speeds are similar, crashes (or their severity) may be reduced.

Yes, it means you do not merge until the very last minute and then do so alternately with vehicles already in the merged lane. That’s why it’s called a zipper merge.

Here in Montana the state is doing a construction project on US 12 between Helena and East Helena. It’s a 5-lane road with a center turn lane and a 55-mph speed limit. They’re putting islands in the center turn lane so that means the left lanes of east- and westbound traffic will be closed for a few weeks. The zipper merge is being tried here for the first time in the state. I think it is also important that the Montana Department of Transportation’s main office is less than 5 miles away, so they can easily monitor this. Helena (population 30,000) is the capitol of Montana.

Another possible reason for this is that the west end of the construction zone is about a half mile from an interchange between Interstate 15 and US 12. US 12 goes through Helena itself and is a major cross-town route. The congestion caused by the construction zone would cause problems at the interchange and west of it into Helena.

What’s different?

For one, there are no signs saying the left lane is closed 1 mile ahead. Instead, about one-half mile out is an electronic message board saying “Zipper Merge Ahead/Use Both Lanes”. Closer to the merge, there are orange signs asking drivers to stay in their current lane and to use both lanes. About 30 yards from the merge point, there is sign that says “Left Lane Closed Ahead.” Finally, about 10 yards before the merge is an orange sign stating “Take Turns Merge Here”. At the merge point is an electronic arrow board pointing traffic to the right lane.

I think this is a great way to manage a construction zone merge. Time will tell if it actually promotes the merging of traffic at the end.  

One problem that might skew the results: since this is not an interstate, it carries mostly local traffic and drivers might just stay in the right lane before they get close to the construction zone.  I also think the arrow board should be turned off in the day, but it is probably needed at night.

For more details, the Montana Department of Transportation has a web page on the zipper merge: https://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/ehelenaviaduct/zippermerge.shtml

https://www.motorists.org/alerts/the-zipper-merge-coming-to-a-construction-zone-near-you-nma-e-newsletter-499/

The Best Guardian of Your Rights? You..

Article thanks to The National Motorists Association. You can join for free at the links provided: 

June 10, 2018  This caution comes from a New Jersey member: We should warn NMA members that their auto insurance company lawyers work to protect the interests of the insurer. The insured is wise to considering contracting an attorney for protection from . . . his own insurer.

Most of us aren’t naïve enough to believe that our insurers put our interests over theirs. But this member backs up his warning with an experience that drives the point home. In his words:
 
Many years ago a damaged vehicle─one that didn’t look safe to be on the road─passed me on the right so close that our side mirrors contacted. The other driver’s mirror broke. Mine was unscratched. She demanded we wait and have a state trooper make an accident report. While waiting, several times she offered to settle on the spot not for a few hundred dollars as nuisance value but for thousands.

The trooper arrived, took our statements, noted no injuries or significant vehicle contact, wrote something up and told us we both could leave. I left and described the incident in a report to my insurance company and highlighted that this might be an instance of insurance fraud.

Unbeknownst to me, the other driver stayed behind and called local police, an ambulance and a tow truck. My insurance company found no record of the trooper or his accident report. The only information available was that I hit her car and left her injured at the scene, backed by some eyewitness statements about seeing her being carried to an ambulance.

I was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident. “My” insurance company lawyer agreed to pay damages to the other driver rather than to pursue a claim of fraud. My insurance coverage was dropped and a hard and lasting lesson learned.

There are certain steps to take after being involved in an accident if you are physically able, particularly if you believe it may have been a staged accident with you as the targeted victim. Among them: 

·       If you have a camera --- a smartphone will usually serve the purpose --- take photos of the cars and people involved to document the damage and physical condition of the others involved. Also capture the images of bystanders.

·       Get names, contact information, driver’s license numbers, and auto insurance details from all parties.

·       Call the police yourself, be satisfied that you are dealing with legitimate law enforcement, and be certain to get a copy of the police report before leaving the scene.

·       Stay until the (real) police release you.

·       Don’t trust people who pop up on the scene almost immediately after the accident to recommend help from specific towing companies, doctors, attorneys, or car repair shops.

·       Do not sign a blank claims form.

·       Advise your insurance company immediately after the accident of the details and of any suspicions of a scam.

·       Never admit fault at the accident scene. Assume that if you are in public view, anything you say will be heard and repeated.

The immediate aftermath of an accident is a trying time. Consider keeping a checklist like the one above in the vehicle with you and use it. It may help you from being victimized a second time by your own insurance company.

https://www.motorists.org/alerts/the-best-guardian-of-your-rights-you-nma-weekly-e-newsletter-491/

Indiana state trooper’s tweet about ‘slowpoke law’ goes viral

bgr.com

Article thanks to whnt.com and the Tribune Media Wire. Links provided:

June 18, 2018  A simple tweet from an Indiana State Trooper got an overwhelming response after reminding people about the state’s so-called “slowpoke law.”

Sgt. Stephen Wheeles with the Versailles District in southeast Indiana tweeted a photo after pulling over a driver for going too slow in the left lane on I-65.

“I stopped this vehicle today for a left lane violation on I-65. The driver had approximately 20 cars slowed behind her because she would not move back to the right lane,” Wheeles tweeted Saturday.

“Again…if there are vehicles behind you, you must move to the right lane to allow them to pass.”

Wheeles’ tweet has nearly 15,000 retweets and more than 49,000 likes.

The state’s “slowpoke” or “move over” law went into effect in 2015. It says that drivers traveling in the left lane must move over if the car behind them is going faster. Police have said a driver going too slow in the fast lane can be just as dangerous for traffic as a speeding vehicle.

Wheeles was overwhelmed with responses to his post, with many applauding him for enforcing the law and expressing their frustration with drivers who go too slow.

In one response to a Twitter user, Wheeles acknowledged that the law can apply even if you’re going the speed limit—it all depends on how fast the traffic behind you is going.

“The spirit of the law is that since many people drive well above the speed limit, it creates an ‘accordion effect’ as traffic starts backing up behind the slower vehicle,” Wheeles wrote. “This is where many of our crashes occur on the interstates. It’s all in the name of safety.”

But he also said that the law isn’t intended to encourage anyone to break the speed limit.

“This is in no way encouraging people to speed. Those speeders are definitely in violation also. Vehicles all travel at different speeds. It was put in place to keep left lane drivers (or the family ten cars back) from getting run over by faster traffic while in the left lane.”

Ford’s new cup holder design was recently
published by the U.S. Patent Office.

Story thanks to Tom Quimby and hardworkingtrucks.com. Links provided:

Sept, 2017  Cup holders have come a long way.

Some of you, like me, might be old enough to remember when vehicles didn’t come with cup holders. My 1965 Mercury Comet? No cup holders, but the chrome on the dash more than made up for it.

For a while, there were those glove box lids that dropped down and offered two shallow, circular indentations where, if you were brave enough, you could put a soda can. Of course, any big pothole or sudden stop meant disaster for anyone sitting in the passenger seat.

And that’s the other thing. Assuming you had no passenger playing the role of drink handler, you’d have to stretch across the vehicle to reach for your drink.

Personally, I can only recall one person ever using a glove box lid as a drink holder. My son, who was around 7 at the time, thought he had discovered the coolest thing until I explained how unstable it was. I didn’t like raining on his parade, but I didn’t like the idea of his pants and the carpet getting soaked.

There were those window-mounted cup holders. They weren’t too bad assuming you didn’t have to roll the window up and down too often.

An interesting trend in the 80s that didn’t even involve a cup holder were those narrow-necked, anti-spill coffee cups. Thanks to its thick, rubber non-slip bottom, you could just park it on the dash and watch that hot coffee fog up the windshield. Most of us still have one of those relics in the cupboard somewhere.

Of course now, cup holder design has been taken to a whole new level. For instance, engineers at Nissan not only gave the Titan XD pickup 16 cup holders, they also made sure that some of those beverage holsters could accept popular 32 oz. drink bottles. You have to appreciate thinking like that.

Now Ford is reaching for new heights with its motion sensitive drink holder. Published recently by the U.S. Patent Office, this cup holder features a gimbal set that compensates for vehicle movement to minimize spills. Sounds great for people like me who would rather go without the top on their thermos cup. While there’s no guarantee that it will make it to market, I’d love to test one. Makes me want to do doughnuts just thinking about it.

http://www.hardworkingtrucks.com/cup-holders-from-nothing-to

SiriusXM is Doomed

seriusxm.com

The following, thanks to Eric Peters and National Motorists Association blog. Links provided:

Nov, 2016  When Howard Stern finally retires, so will SiriusXM. It will go the way of the CD — and the tape deck — before it.

Because if you take Howard out of the programming equation, what are you left with?

Howard’s is the only channel that’s not either superfluous or so lousy with commercials you pine for terrestrial radio — which at least had the upside of being free.

SiriusXM has become — as far as content — terrestrial radio you have to pay to listen to.

Including the ads.

Which are relentless — and endless.

Try listening to any of the talk channels (Howard excepted) and you’ll hear more about get-rich quick real estate flim-flam “opportunities,” snore-suppressors, bankruptcy/credit card debt relief and other such than you will whatever the show you were trying to listen to was supposed to be about.

Call 1-800…now!

If you are like me and despise ads — especially today’s ads, which are voiced-over either by a hyper-enthusiastic overly chirpy bimbo or a just as too-enthusiastic metrosexual male whose pushy/exuberant hawkings are equally as annoying — you will in short order feel a strong urge to put your fist through the LCD display.

Or at least, change the channel to another — hopefully without a squawking pitch going on.

Which is no easy feat.

It is not possible to listen to pretty much any talk channel except Howard for more than about 10 minutes without enduring the commercial juggernaut.

Say what you will about him, Howard — uniquely — doesn’t “break” for “messages” every handful of minutes (for several minutes at a time). He will continue without interruption for 30 minutes, 45 minutes — an hour or more.

He is the only talk host who does not constantly interrupt the talk with jabber.
I think he has a special rider in his contract — which it’s rumored he insisted on as part of the deal.

The rest should have followed his example.

Instead, they follow the terrestrial radio example.

Which begs the question… why bother?

If SiriusXM were free — like terrestrial radio — then the ubiquity of the commercials would be acceptable. It’s how they pay for the stuff you’re getting to listen to for free. But the thing with SiriusXM is you have to pay to listen to it. You are paying to listen to commercials.

Lots of commercials.

This will not endure. The business model makes no sense.

Excepting Howard — who is worth listening to, worth paying to listen to (his interviews in particular are exceptional) everything else is either not worth paying to listen to, or is available elsewhere.

On terrestrial radio, for one.

For free.

This goes for the talk channels, primarily. The right wing and left wing blowhards are available on FM/AM as well as via podcasts (the latter Howard has made fun of as a venue for no-talents without an audience, but I suspect he is a victim of his age — just as I am — and doesn’t see the semi bearing down on the industry).

The music channels make even less sense. There is after all, Pandora. And other forms of music streaming, which pipe music into your car (or wherever) via Bluetooth over your phone or iPod.

No subscription necessary.

And Pandora tailors the music to suit your tastes — not the tastes of a programmer at SiriusXM.

Your iPod (or phone play list) meanwhile, does not cut out for minutes’ long blocks of dead air — as SiriusXM maddeningly does, if you live in a mountainous or heavily treed area (like I do).

This usually happens right in the middle of something you were actually interested in listening to and when the signal returns, it’s just in time for Buy Gold Now!

There is a cool fix for this — which the latest SiriusXM receivers in new cars have: It’s a record/playback feature. Basically, the head unit has a hard drive and downloads the programming as you drive, storing the most recent 20-30 minutes or so — kind of like an airplane’s black box recorder. If you hit a dead spot, you can hit rewind/playback and not miss what you were listening to.

Still, the commercials, the duplicative (and redundant) channel offerings combined with the fact that they expect you to pay for it all…

And that’s literally what they demand.

Like cable TeeVee, which demands you buy a “package” of crap you don’t want in order to get the one or two things you do want. I have no interest in subsidizing all the right and left wing jabberfests or Dr. Laura or music channels I don’t listen to because I have Pandora. I’d like to subscribe to Howard, maybe Raw Dog comedy… and that’s it.

A la carte.

They — SiriusXM — won’t allow it.

It’s not hard to divine the future.

And satellite radio — like CDs and tape decks — is already the past.

Once Howard’s gone — along with his millions of fans — expect SiriusXM to go, too.

And so the wheel turns.

Baba-booey to y’all.

- See more at: https://www.motorists.org/blog/siriusxm-is-doomed/#sthash.PTqjoAWz.dpuf
and http://ericpetersautos.com/