The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?

On Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 11:46:15 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote:
> On 8/22/2015 7:32 AM, Mayayana wrote:
>
> > While we're at it, I'm curious how many accidents are
> > caused by ridiculous flashing light overkill on emergency
> > vehicles. Police and firefighters just can't seem to resist
> > the childish thrill of adding yet another light. Police cars
> > used to have a blue "bubble gum machine" on top. It
> > worked fine. Now they have dozens of flashing lights in
> > every color. The problem: It's impossible to tell where an
> > emergency vehicle is going. Even if they use turn signals,
> > there's no time to figure out which lights on this high-speed,
> > psychedelic Christmas tree are signalling.
>
> I've always been taught to pull over and get out of the way.
> So, I really don't *care* which way the vehicle is headed
> until he's long past my location! :>
>
> Apparently, the lights are necessary because so many drivers
> "zone out" (ear buds, chatting on phone, etc.) and cars are
> much quieter (here, the windows tend to be *up* all year
> round for air conditioning).
>
> Also, I think emergency vehicles are less prone to using
> *audible* alarms than they were in the past. Often, the
> only way I have of knowing that an emergency vehicle is
> "nearby" is to watch the strobe light atop each traffic
> light (intersection): if it's flashing, then it "sees"
> an emergency vehicle on one of the connecting streets.
> At that point, I start examining my mirrors, looking down
> side streets, etc.: "When will I have to get out of the way?"

You should see how they doll up those trucks with lights and all kinds of stuff in Japan. Youtube has some videos about that.

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 07:37:38 -0500, Stormin Mormon >
wrote:

> On 8/22/2015 7:19 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>> It's been less than a week and we're almost up to 500 messages. Should
>> I start a "left foot braking thread"???
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 06:10:23 +0000 (UTC), ceg
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?
>>>
>>> The Fermi Paradox is essentially a situation where we "assume"
>>> something
>>> that "seems obvious"; but, if that assumption is true, then something
>>> else
>>> "should" be happening. But it's not.
>>>
>>> Hence, the paradox.
>>>
>>>
>>> Such is the cellphone paradox.
>
> Does braking with the left foot increase the
> risk of accidents?
>
Three on the tree? Four on the floor? One down, four up?


--
Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On 08/23/2015 12:40 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 07:37:38 -0500, Stormin Mormon
> > wrote:
>
>> On 8/22/2015 7:19 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>>> It's been less than a week and we're almost up to 500 messages.
>>> Should I start a "left foot braking thread"???
>>>
>>> On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 06:10:23 +0000 (UTC), ceg
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?
>>>>
>>>> The Fermi Paradox is essentially a situation where we "assume"
>>>> something that "seems obvious"; but, if that assumption is
>>>> true, then something else "should" be happening. But it's not.
>>>>
>>>> Hence, the paradox.
>>>>
>>>> Such is the cellphone paradox.
>>
>> Does braking with the left foot increase the risk of accidents?
>>
> Three on the tree? Four on the floor? One down, four up?

European or Japanese?


--
Cheers, Bev
"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child,
miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied,
demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.
Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
PJ O'Rourke

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 14:53:16 -0500, The Real Bev >
wrote:

> On 08/23/2015 12:40 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 07:37:38 -0500, Stormin Mormon
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> On 8/22/2015 7:19 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>>>> It's been less than a week and we're almost up to 500 messages.
>>>> Should I start a "left foot braking thread"???
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 06:10:23 +0000 (UTC), ceg
>>>> > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?
>>>>>
>>>>> The Fermi Paradox is essentially a situation where we "assume"
>>>>> something that "seems obvious"; but, if that assumption is
>>>>> true, then something else "should" be happening. But it's not.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hence, the paradox.
>>>>>
>>>>> Such is the cellphone paradox.
>>>
>>> Does braking with the left foot increase the risk of accidents?
>>>
>> Three on the tree? Four on the floor? One down, four up?
>
> European or Japanese?
>
>
I got to ride a Norton once, long ago. I think there was some
odd critter with an actual hand gear shift.

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Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 08:54:02 -0400, "Mayayana"
> wrote:

>| Interesting points. My driving experience is that things are no
>| different on the road now then they ever were in the past as far as
>| the general competency and driving behavior of other drivers.
>
> I wonder if my mostly urban/suburban driving might
>be a factor. I see *a lot* of people on the phone,
>and it's not kids. Occasionally I might see a teenager
>texting at 60 mph, but mostly I see adults, of all kinds,
>yapping away.
>
> The man who sideswiped me veering into
>my lane was probably 35-40 y.o. He was talking to his
>friend, who in turn was dropping off her car at a repair
>shop. He was engrossed in trying to follow her instructions
>on which street to turn at when he hit me. A few years
>earlier he would have figured out the directions before
>he'd left the house. But this was about 2004 and he was
>a "yuppie" on the go, with a phone glued to his ear.
>
> When he pulled over after the accident he wouldn't
>even talk to me. He called the police, then his insurance
>company. I never saw him off the phone until the police
>arrived. He was so much out to lunch that he'd called
>the police, convinced that I'd hit him! In my experience
>that's typical. As a taxpaying consumer he doesn't
>feel he has to relate to the world around him, thus that
>world has no business "relating" to him.
>
> A very big change is that people don't signal anymore.
>Maybe 30-50% of the time. It's crazy. They're just not
>paying attention. In MA it's illegal not to signal, and it's
>irritating to be behind someone and get no notice of
>why they suddenly stepped on the brakes. That used to
>be unheard of. Now it's almost the norm. Again, it has
>nothing to do with young drivers. But it does have a lot to
>do with phoners only having one freee hand.
>
> A couple of weeks ago I was pulling out of a supermarket
>and was going straight across the street, up a sidestreet.
>Traffic was stopping in both directions in front of me. The
>near side traffic had left a gap. A man driving on the far side,
>heading toward my left, slowed down and seemed to be leaving
>a gap. I started to pull out. He then turned into the supermarket
>and almost hit me. I beeped. We both put down our windows.
>He looked at me with a condescending smile and said, "I'm
>turning in here", as though I must be an idiot. I said, "how
>about a signal?!" His face dropped. It had never occurred to
>him to signal. To his credit, though, he apologized.
>
> I see the phones and the anti-social behavior as
>related. For instance, where I live it's always been
>customary, on a narrow road with a parked car, to
>wait for an oncoming car if the parked car is on your
>side. The oncoming driver then waves a thankyou. Now
>it's usually a game of chicken. That's a very clear
>difference in driver behavior. It's not related to phones,
>but phones seem to be related to the general social
>disconnection. People are no longer experiencing
>themselves as being where they are.
>
> The same is true of people walking across streets,
>on cellphones or not. People used to *always* look
>before crossing. Now it's common to see people cross
>without breaking step, trusting that the universe is
>looking out for them. Maybe many of them are the
>children of "helicopter moms". At first I thought it was a
>kind of passive-aggressive entitlement, but the more
>it's happened, the more I'm thinking that these people
>are actually entitled to the core. They're not trying to
>show me who's boss. They don't even know I'm there.
>It hasn't occurred to them that they could actually
>suffer the indignity of being run over by a car! Maybe
>that's because they've spent their lives getting trophies
>for showing up? I'm not sure. It's actually a very intriguing
>pattern to me.
>
> (A friend who tutors gradeschool children recently told
>me that helicopter moms have been replaced by "snowplow
>moms". The kids are pushed through endless achievements,
>with no breaks to just sit, reflect, get bored, discover a
>bug, or even think about what they might *want* to do.)
>
> Do you really not see any changes? When I was growing
>up, kids behaved and anyone nearby was a parent. Today,
>when I see kids running and shrieking in a store I don't
>dare say anything. The parents are likely to be outraged.
>And often as not, they're standing there proudly as their
>kids act out. In a nutshell, being considerate has become
>a sucker's pastime, while "self-empowerment" is considered
>an important goal.
>
> I think my own generation, the baby boomers, actually
>started with being entitled. Not all of us, but many. In
>the 50s life was about kids. Baby boomers then grew up
>feeling they needed to be special. They had kids. Their
>kids were very special accomplishments, so many of those
>kids are now hyper-spoiled and entitled. That's a unique
>situation. (It's not so long ago that child labor was
>considered OK and that people had kids to save money.
>The kids could work the farm. They weren't cherished
>possessions. They were low paid workers.)
>
> It's certainly true that young people are more selfish
>and old people are less tolerant. That's timeless. But I'm
>surprised that anyone, say, over 50 doesn't see some
>dramatic changes in American culture during the past
>decades, which have nothing to do with young vs old.
>But those changes may be less pronounced in small towns
>and rural areas.
>

Which is what every older generation says. If this continual
degradation of the 'young' were true we'd be back in the stone age.
Don't take my next comment personally, it could apply to me too, but
have you considered that all that bad stuff you see that causes you
problems is because when you were younger it simply didn't bother you
and/or your defensive driving skills and ability to "see ahead" and
avoid those situations was better. So what you think of as everyone
else getting worse is at least partly due to you getting worse at
avoiding those positions?

Like you, I see bad drivers all around but I"m not convinced that on
average it's any worse particularly when the accident rates keep going
down.

On 8/23/15 8:37 AM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
> On 8/22/2015 7:19 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>> It's been less than a week and we're almost up to 500 messages. Should
>> I start a "left foot braking thread"???
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 06:10:23 +0000 (UTC), ceg
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?
>>>
>>> The Fermi Paradox is essentially a situation where we "assume" something
>>> that "seems obvious"; but, if that assumption is true, then something
>>> else
>>> "should" be happening. But it's not.
>>>
>>> Hence, the paradox.
>>>
>>>
>>> Such is the cellphone paradox.
>
> Does braking with the left foot increase the
> risk of accidents?
>
It greatly reduces the risk of brake failure. I can't use that method
with my car because they're no hole in the floor.

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 09:27:22 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)" >
wrote:

>Per Mayayana:
>>People used to *always* look
>>before crossing. Now it's common to see people cross
>>without breaking step,
>
>Does anybody remember being taught "The curb step" as a child?

I have one single memory from when I was perhaps 18 months old and
it's having to climb up a tall curb step in Albany NY in the winter.
It seemed VERY tall and someone holding my hand helped me levitate up
to the top.

J Burns wrote:
>
> It greatly reduces the risk of brake failure. I can't use that method
> with my car because they're no hole in the floor.


None that you know of, anyway. ;-)

On Sat, 22 Aug 2015 20:49:11 -0700, The Real Bev
> wrote:

>On 08/22/2015 07:32 AM, Mayayana wrote:
>
>> While we're at it, I'm curious how many accidents are
>> caused by ridiculous flashing light overkill on emergency
>> vehicles. Police and firefighters just can't seem to resist
>> the childish thrill of adding yet another light. Police cars
>> used to have a blue "bubble gum machine" on top. It
>> worked fine. Now they have dozens of flashing lights in
>> every color. The problem: It's impossible to tell where an
>> emergency vehicle is going. Even if they use turn signals,
>> there's no time to figure out which lights on this high-speed,
>> psychedelic Christmas tree are signalling.
>
>Glad I'm not the only one. The stupid things aren't on long enough for
>our eyes to focus on them, and the next one is in a different place.
>And what about that stupid chartreuse color that some cities are
>painting their fire engines? So it's NOT a natural color, that doesn't
>make it stand out any better. FIRE ENGINES ARE RED. PERIOD.
>

The fire engine color is based on the same faulty logic of DRL's.
Studies have shown that you can see a Chartreuse colored fire engine
from farther away then a red painted one. Therefore, as the logic
goes, Chartreuse must be a better color to paint a fire engine. That
fallacy of that, as well as of DRL's, is that there is no need to see
a fire engine that is so far away that if it were red you would not
notice it. When it's that far away it's just not of any significance
to you. The same is true of DRL's. It's true that a DRL car can be
seen farther away. But no one needs to see a car that's a mile away,
they only need to see the ones within perhaps a quarter mile of them
and the worst drive is more then able to see a car without any DRL's
at that distance. That's why the studies of DRL's show that there is
no net safety benefit. Some types of accidents go down and other
types of accidents go up because while people look at the DRL's they
fail to see other cars coming crossways toward them, cars that they
would have normally noticed if those bright lights up ahead of them
hadn't distracted them from the actual danger that was just off to
their right or left.


>And have any Los Angeles residents noticed how few lights there are on
>the overhead freeway signs no? I suspect that it just costs too much to
>replace them. I can read the signs at a reasonable distance if I have
>my lights on high, but that seems really rude -- in spite of the fact
>that perhaps 1/4 of the drivers don't understand that their high beams
>are to be used only OCCASIONALLY.
>

The gvt doesn't want to pay for the electric to turn them on nor to
maintain them, it's strictly to save costs. There are better sign
materials that would make it so you don't need to use your high beams
as much but that stuff costs more so the gvt will either simply not
use it cuz they don't want to pay for it, or they will use it but not
before the old stuff is completely worn out. Since the sign sheeting
is expected to last around 10 to 20 years don't expect to see it
replaced any time soon.

>And what about those banks of bright lights they use when working on the
>freeways at night? They ALWAYS point them directly into oncoming
>traffic. It's like they WANT to cause crashes.


Most of those workers have no idea about safety to the public, they
just stick em wherever it's convenient for themselves and a light that
shines ALL AROUND works a lot better, and you need less of them, then
a light that is directional and shines mostly downward so it won't
blind people. As you should know by now, gvt isn't there to serve
you, you are there to serve it. Pay your taxes and shut up.

On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 10:15:16 -0700, The Real Bev
> wrote:

>On 08/23/2015 02:43 AM, Don Y wrote:
>
>> Oh, the city has no problem violating its own restrictions on light
>> emissions, here! We host an annual "youth soccer" tournament (national)
>> and all the soccer fields in town will be in use into the wee hours
>> of the night. Big "stadium" style lights that light up the sky in
>> a brutish manner!
>>
>> [If it brings in tourism dollars, I guess they reason that it's OK!]
>
>Any source of money is welcome.
>
>We're being afflicted with more and more 'traffic calming' devices,
>which means making it more and more difficult to drive anywhere -- lane
>elimination, useless roundabouts WITH 4-way stops, hard-wired bicycle
>lanes with cement separators, 'roundouts' and planter boxes to eliminate
>on-street parking, more stop signals, speed bumps/humps...
>
>The intent is to force drivers into public transportation, which is a
>useless undertaking because for the most part it doesn't go anywhere
>people want to go. They're just finishing a new section of the Metro
>(the terminal is 1/4 mile away, so pretty convenient for me) which will
>end near a Walmart 5 miles away. OH GOODY, I thought, finally a way to
>get Walmart's prices (much better than local chain drugstores like
>Rite-Aid and CVS) for a 50-cent round trip. BUT NO! The terminal is
>roughly a mile away from Walmart and further than that from the main
>shopping area. It is, however, quite close to a cemetery which is
>mostly filled.
>
>I can drive to my daughter's house in half an hour. It would take 5
>hours and 3 transfers to do it via public transport.
>
>There is now only one good east-west cross-town street -- 2 lanes plus a
>parking lane which includes a painted 'bicycle lane' which has no force
>of law whatsoever. No problem, not many bicyclists here. The City is
>going to take away one of the lanes to make a 'buffered bicycle lane'
>which means (probably) the parking lane, a 4-foot (guess) wide
>crosshatched separator non-lane (to keep stupid bikers from being
>doored) and then the bicycle lane. There is state and federal money
>involved for improving bike-friendliness, even when absolutely useless.
>
>Few bikers, much auto traffic -- especially at rush hour. If bikers
>feel unsafe they can -- illegally, of course -- ride on the sidewalk
>during rush hour, there are also few pedestrians.
>
>I'm outraged that money is spent on useless projects to the detriment of
>the taxpayers and that there's really nothing we can do about it. The
>'Vote the *******s out' system just doesn't work because new *******s
>will just get in and continue the status quo.
>
><RANT/>

The communists and liberals have infested gvt everywhere. They have
just scrwed up the street near me. It worked perfectly fine for
years. Now it's missing a lane of traffic so they can have a buffered
bike lane for the occasional bike. And ride the bike on the sidewalk,
oh dear, that's simply not allowed because of, well I don't know,
there are very few pedestrians. But apparently the same bicyclists
who can manage to not run into cars when out on the street can't mange
to not run into pedestrians if on the sidewalk.