• Speeding = Actually Dangerous
• No Respect for Speed Limits
• Speeding is a dangerous way to waste money
• Think SPEEDING Isn’t dangerous?

First let’s get some perspective. If we all drove between 10 – 15 mph everywhere, we’d all be a lot safer. So why aren’t the highways set at 15 mph, and local roads at 10 mph? I think it’s because we’ve decided that being able to drive 65 mph to places regularly outweighs the chances of fatal accidents. I don’t see a big push from these self-righteous people to reduce speed limits everywhere, or to enforce speed minimums even though going 10 mph below the speed limit results in 6 times the chance of getting into an accident.

The people who claim speeding is dangerous like to point to government statistics. The statistics show high rates of fatality for what they call speed-related accidents. The statistics are misleading at best, implying causality where there may be none.

For example, if we say that nearly 100% of all traffic-related deaths are caused by driving a vehicle, it may seem true because 100% of driving accidents involve someone driving a vehicle. But it’s a bogus claim because the mere act of driving a vehicle does not directly cause the accident. To make things worse, in the case of speeding statistics really mean that “one of the drivers involved in the accident was ‘assumed’ to be exceeding the posted limit. It does not mean that speeding caused the accident.” That’s statistics.

However when we actually study the causes of accidents, we find that speeding is only a minor factor.  Don’t believe me?

• “US Department of Transportation study finds only five percent of crashes caused by excessive speed.”
• “federal and state studies have consistently shown that the drivers most likely to get into accidents in traffic are those traveling significantly below the average speed”
• “the majority of drivers will not go faster than what they feel is comfortable and safe regardless of the speed limit”
• “if a speed limit is raised to actually reflect real travel speeds, the new higher limit will make the roads safer”
• “inappropriately established speed limits cause drivers to take all traffic signals less seriously”
• “crash rates were lowest for travel speeds near the mean speed of traffic, and increased with greater deviations above and below the mean”
• “Most “speed-related” crashes involve speed too fast for conditions such as limited visibility or reduced road traction, rather than speed in excess of the posted speed limit.”

With the new speed camera technology being everywhere, we are also now seeing what everyone knew before:  the majority of people drive over the posted speed limit.

That doesn’t mean that speeding has no effect on the danger of what happens to you when you drive–it just means it’s the wrong place to focus your energy. Does anyone really think that going 46 mph in a 45 results in any risk change?  Sure, going 120 mph on the highway, weaving in and out of cars isn’t safe. But that is a far cry from going even just 70 mph on the highway when everyone else is going 65 mph. (More likely everyone else is breaking the speed limit too, making driving 70 actually safer!)  Worrying about the technicality of whether or not someone went over the posted speed limit is a total waste of energy and money.

Furthermore, I believe this kind of mentality makes people worse drivers. When people are trained to focus on who is legally “right” or has the “right-of-way,” they tend to make decisions based on the letter of the law rather than the real situation at hand. It’s obvious to anyone who drives well that safe driving is about paying attention and sometimes giving up your “right-of-way” when it’s safer.

For example, in the US many people have the tendency to “claim their lane” since in the US merging traffic does not have the right-of-way. This leads to an attitude that as long as we stay in our lane, we can do whatever we want and do not have to let people merge, regardless of the circumstances. And in cases where someone merges in by force (either through aggression or necessity), a common reaction is to feel slighted which can lead to road rage. If instead, we encourage and attitude that driving is about cooperation instead of who has the “right-of-way” then we’d all be a lot safer.

Furthermore, the posted speed limit does not take into consideration other factors such as the type of vehicle being driven. Older and less maintained cars can be much more dangerous at higher speeds. Newer and well maintained cars can be driven safely at higher speeds. That means the posted speed limit reflects society’s lowest common denominator. They are based on what the worst of drivers might do, not the average. I’m not against posting speed limits this way in principle, but then to turn around and act like anyone who goes over the speed limit is acting dangerously is just disingenuous.  I think that every speeding situation should be judged subjectively by law enforcement, and especially not by a camera.

So while I’m not saying that speed has absolutely no effect on the danger in accidents, I am saying that it is an area that gets way too much attention because it generates revenue.

Danger on the road is caused by accidents, but accidents are not caused by speeding.  Accidents are avoided by individuals paying attention to their surroundings and making judgments about what is safe.

More reading:

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101701575.html
• http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2008/us-crashcause.pdf
• http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/effects-raising-and-lowering-the-speed-limit/
• http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/new-york-dot-study/
• http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/a-recommended-speed-zoning-practice/
• http://photoradarscam.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/how-dangerous-is-exceeding-the-posted-limit/
• http://blog.motorists.org/traffic-tickets-are-big-business/
• http://blog.motorists.org/7-ways-to-shut-down-a-speed-trap/

Reading against photo camera enforcement:

• http://dccamerafraud.wordpress.com/maryland/
• http://www.motorists.org/photoenforce/
• http://blog.motorists.org/10-reasons-to-oppose-red-light-cameras/
• http://blog.motorists.org/red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-5-studies-that-prove-it/
• http://www.stopbigbrothermd.org/2008/03/speed-cameras-oh-where-to-begin.html

(Note: I may not agree wholly with the above articles and their causes. They are provided only for further reading.)

You see, I’ve been making web pages since 1995, and had a personal home page (remember those?) since 1996.  My first page was rather minimalist, and in a sense, a rebellion against what I’m doing here–writing a dialog with you in typical “blog post” fashion.  Back then I felt that no one really went online to know more about a complete stranger.  I still think I was right about that at the time (although things have changed).  At least I sure never cared about what most people put on their home pages at that time.  My page was utilitarian:  find resources related to gaming, programming, music, or whatever else I happened to be interested in.  More accurately, it was useful to me, a place I could store and show off a few things, including a rather cool photo album for the times.

So I had web pages.  I knew HTML.  The web got more complicated.  Sites like fortunecity or geocities offered free web space, and had “web page builder” software.  The web got even more complicated.  Not only did the web page builders fall short of meeting expectations, but writing a web page by hand got more and more tedious as the HTML and CSS spec started to demand higher quality pages.  And then came blogs, or web logs.  I thought they were retarded.  It was a throwback to the old personal home page days (and actually I was kind of right about that too), where people would narcissistically post things about what they did in their everyday lives as if we were interested in reading their personal diary.  I really didn’t like the word “blog” either.

But eventually I started looking for ways to not have to write all that HTML, CSS, and PHP code anymore.  (Honestly, I guess with PHP included headers and footers, I probably spent less time creating websites back then than I do with upgrading WordPress and installing plugins now.)  WordPress was pretty nice, but I didn’t have any use for an online “diary.”  My first “blog” was just a simple web log that I kept as notes on Linux configuration that I had done to the server I was running.  So all the entries looked roughly like this:

New IMAP Certificate

Generated new IMAP certificate:

openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem -keyout /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem -days 365

Yeah, that’s it sparky.  But at least I had found some use for blog software.  And the great thing about it was, I could quickly post new content without having to fuss with making a web page.  And that is the secret about blogs. They reduce the complexity of making web pages that even the page builders couldn’t do because the page builders tried to let you do too much.  In other words:

Blog software provides the structure for your content, making it consistent and easy to both post and navigate.

Forget about diaries.  Your “blog” is just a web page, if you want it to be.  This is true especially with WordPress.

My next blog was “Angelo’s Notepad” and I appropriately selected the Rubrick Theme which had been pretty popular at that time and fit the blog title pretty well.  Angelo’s Notepad was really just a place for me to throw up things I didn’t have time to format and put up more “formally” on my websites.  But then, WordPress did the best thing it could have done for people like me:  it created wonderful support for “pages” as well as “posts” and allowed you to set a page to be the front page.  This is all you need to create a website.

So I use WordPress to build websites.  Does that make me a blogger?

“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
Henry David Thoreau

A philosophy that not only should you do what you believe is right, but more deeply that you cannot be anything else but who you are. If you try to be someone or something else, if you try to live by a code in which you don’t really believe, you will have internal conflict until you accept your Way.

Some years ago, when I heard this I thought about all those rebates I’ve done. I’ve done quite a few, and my experience has been mixed. I’m not exactly sure how the decide which people they’re going to attempt to deny (even with legitimate rebates). I’m fairly certain that they are not simply careless because the rate at which I’ve been denied at least the first time has been about 50%. That’s way too high to be coincidental considering that it’s never happened even once through all the other mailings I’ve done like paying bills where I’m actually sending them money.

So yes, I would say that they are following the first Rule of Acquisition:

Once you have their money, never give it back.

What I really don’t understand is how this can exist in the US:  isn’t capitalism and competition supposed to fix this kind of thing?  I mean I literally live up the street from an auto repair shop and I still have to have my friend drive me to work when I need my car fixed because they only work from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday.  Really?  You only work during the times that other people are using the thing you’re trying to fix for them?  Retards.

The only reason I can think of for this is that there really isn’t free market competition.  In the case of UPS deliveries, there is probably too great a barrier to entry into the market these days, and the little guys probably all got bought up.  In the case of the cable company, the physical lines are a community shared resource which they have control over.  (Hopefully improved wireless technology will provide the kind of competition we need so we’re not still paying $50+ per month in the US for high speed Internet, while some eastern block countries ironically enjoy about a $20 per month price.)  I still haven’t figured out how the car repair places do it without having a competitor just work on the weekends and off hours to get all the business.

And there’s something else implied in the article that I can attest to:  the service in Japan is excellent.  I stayed a night in Tokyo on my recent trip to Indonesia in October.  I flew on Japan Airlines, and while I didn’t notice the difference in service and culture when I was experiencing it, I definitely noticed after I came back and had to deal with people here.  People here have horrible attitudes in the service industry–almost as if they all hate their jobs and they’re going to take it out on you.  It’s not every industry and it’s not every region, but there is a marked difference between here and Japan.

First of all, people in Japan act polite and happy to serve you.  They don’t passive aggressively project all their personal frustrations on you.  And they take pride in their job and their work.  I never felt uncomfortable or out of place while I was in Japan.  And even my friend Taka, who I visited while there, was willing to talk to and help other strangers who had just arrived at the airport.

When I got back to the US, the first thing I noticed was how unaccommodating the airline stewardesses were.  In particular I remember one of the legs of the trip I had been up for nearly 48 hours, and asked for help to find a place to put my bag on the plane.  (I only had a very small bag, but of course the plane luggage was nearly full because the airlines here –in this case American Airlines–don’t feel the need to enforce any fair treatment of their passengers, and the bins were filled up quickly.)  The stewardess acted like it wasn’t her job to help me find some space, and that if I don’t see anything I’ll just have to put it under the seat so I can have even less foot room.  I guess that’s their way of rewarding passengers who travel light and don’t impose on other passengers.  I explained to her that I had been up for 48 hours, and she just responded with some kind of defensive remark to the effect that there was no way she could help me.  I didn’t expect her to find a spot, just help me look.

Sadly, all of this boils down to the quality of life being better in Japan.  In general I think the US needs to fix a few things:  the society as a whole is much more concerned with the bottom line than it is with quality of life.

One of the rules for not being considered a spammer is to let people unsubscribe from your mailing list. I have tried to unsubscribe from Priceline’s list(s) three times now (a generous allowance only because I actually signed up with them). From now on, every unsolicited email I get from them is going to be marked as spam.

And guess what? That’s all that really should matter to them. In fact, spam isn’t a science and it isn’t a legal definition. I’m not sure that they’re doing anything illegal, or simply just playing loopholes (or maybe they’re just plain too stupid). They could have 100 mailing lists, and I could be on every one of them, and it may be perfectly legal for them to expect me to opt out of each one.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is the receiver’s opinion of what they’re sending. If people start marking their mail as spam, then the spam filters will start blocking it. Not really a good policy for a company to have.

This won’t work well for popular books because it will get bought fast. This will only work well if you can find books which are being sold by inexperienced amazon sellers that just want to sell their stuff, and won’t buy yours from under you.

Ok, maybe it’s a lame idea.

The first one is A Force More Powerful which is a strategy game in which you use diplomacy in order to avoid conflicts. Unfortunately, I bet this kind of thing doesn’t sell very well and it does come at about $20. Maybe after a while you’ll find it in the discount bin at your local tech store.

AFMP is a single-player, turn-based game in which the player takes on the role of chief strategist in a nonviolent movement against the opponent in one of ten pre-packaged scenarios. As the player takes charge of the movement’s materials and human resources, recruits new members and builds alliances, the player also learns the value of strategic planning, and the careful formulation of goals and tactics.

The second one is Food Force which reminds me of Team America World Police. This one sends you on a mission to aid starving people in India. And best of all it’s free.

A major crisis has developed in the Indian Ocean, on the island of Sheylan. We’re sending in a new team to step up the World Food Programme’s presence there and help feed millions of hungry people.