A November study by the University of Adelaide recommended that a commission be established to review the placement and use of speed cameras in South Australia. Last month, the state parliament rejected any suggestion that policies relating to automated ticketing could be questioned.
As part of a parliamentary internship program, a research report reviewed existing research and applied the findings to the road safety situation in South Australia. The results were provided to Ivan Venning, a Liberal Party member of House of Assembly, who attempted on May 19 to win approval for a select committee to examine the use and effectiveness of photo enforcement. During debate, Venning pointed out several other states were currently conducting reviews of their own.
Renault SA Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn agreed to make development of upscale cars for French factories a “priority” as the government steps up its influence in the wake of a botched spy investigation.
Renault, based in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, named Carlos Tavares as Ghosn’s deputy late yesterday. The French state, the carmaker’s biggest shareholder with a 15 percent stake, made support for the appointment conditional on strategy changes, including taking a stronger lead in its alliance with Nissan Motor Co., people familiar with the situation said.
“If it’s this hard just to get your man in place, it suggests we’ll see more, rather than less, government influence going forward,” London-based Credit Suisse analyst Erich Hauser said. France is a “relatively small shareholder with a disproportionate say over strategy, which has to be a concern for other investors.”
…Ghosn said he intends to be “more present in France from now on,” in an interview published today in French daily Le Parisien and confirmed by Renault.
In the face of such (continued) humiliation at the hands of a minority government partner, one has to admit that America’s auto bailout has been an relatively hands-off affair. Context is important after all (although to be perfectly fair, Renault did embarrass the French government with that “spy scandal”). Besides, it sounds like the brave French pols are simply out to avenge the sad death of the Vel Satis, so hey, at least the French might get the epically weird luxury sedan to end all epically weird luxury sedans out of the deal.
Police officers in New Mexico can take guns away from drivers who pose no threat. The state supreme court ruled on May 20 that “officer safety” is more important than any constitutional rights a gun-owning motorist might have. The ruling was handed down in deciding the fate of Gregory Ketelson who was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over on November 13, 2008.
During the stop, Hobbs Police Officer Miroslava Bleau saw a 9mm handgun on the back seat floorboard. Ketelson and the driver of the car were ordered out and away from the car while Officer Shane Blevins grabbed the gun. The officers later learned that Ketelson, as a convicted felon, could not legally possess a firearm. The court, however, only considered whether the officers acted properly in taking the gun before they had any reason to suspect Ketelson, who was entirely cooperative during the encounter, of committing a crime.
A lawsuit will be filed tomorrow in Longview, Washington seeking to force city officials to abide by the statutory filing requirement for an initiative that would give residents a say in whether or not red light cameras and speed cameras can be used in the community. On May 23, initiative co-sponsors Josh Sutinen and Mike Wallin handed 3628 signatures on a petition for a ballot measure to the city clerk — exceeding the legally required amount. The city council chose to make up its own procedure.
Fisker’s powertrain partner Quantum Fuel System Technologies has partnered with the US Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) to produce a diesel-electric, series hybrid Clandestine Extended Range Vehicle (CERV). GreenCarCongress reports
the prototype CERV is equipped with a 1.4-liter diesel to drive the genset, and is designed for quick-paced mobility operations such as reconnaissance, surveillance and target designation. CERV pairs Quantum’s advanced all-wheel-drive diesel hybrid-electric powertrain with a light-weight chassis to produce a torque rating that exceeds 5,000 lb-ft (6,780 N·m) [Ed: after gear reduction].
The unit can maintain speeds of 80 mph (129 km/h) and climb 60 percent grades while reducing fuel consumption by up to 25% compared with conventional vehicles of comparable size.
As Ronnie Schreiber’s piece on the Arsenal of Democracy shows, military developments can have a profound affect on the private transportation market. As the military pursues efficiency for strategic and tactical purposes, let’s hope more advanced drivetrains trickle down into the civilian realm.
This is the Memorial Day weekend, when we commemorate our fallen heroes and raise our cancer risk by burning chopped beef. Listening to the media, it looks and sounds like the fallen heroes of the year are not the ones who gave and give their lives in ceaseless wars, but the auto industry. It didn’t quite die. It was medevaced in a TARP and helped by the PTFOA to get over its PTSD.
Instead of thanking the nation’s heroes (he did so in an afterthought, asking for “single acts of kindness”) VP Biden thanked himself: Read More >
When private, for-profit firms ask for public money, taxpayers tend to take a more personal interest in their goings-on. After all, they are, in a very real sense, still the partial owners of these companies, and they put up the cash to provide a second chance to companies that offer no similar reciprocation when consumers default on their own car loans. And though US taxpayers have earned the right to feel a sense of ownership towards GM and Chrysler, there are several groups of Americans who have shouldered a disproportionate amount of the burden of the bailout. First, the GM and Chrysler employees who were laid off despite the bailout must doubtless wonder why they had to both fund the bailout and lose their jobs (remember, cutting jobs was the most “positive” aspect of the bailout, according to the industry). Similarly, GM and Chrysler’s bondholders paid twice to “save” their failed investments, once with their tax money and again by taking a hefty cramdown. And finally, a third group paid far more than anyone else, not only funding the bailout with with their taxes, but also sacrificing compensation for injuries caused by GM and Chrysler vehicles. The WSJ [sub] reports
Among the creditors who suffered most, car-accident victims represent a distinct mold. Unlike banks and bondholders, this group didn’t choose to extend credit to the auto makers. As consumers, they became creditors only after suffering injuries in vehicles they purchased.
“This was not a normal case. The government was deciding who was going to be taken care of and who was not,” said David Skeel, a University of Pennsylvania law school professor and bankruptcy expert who has testified before Congress on the auto bailouts. Even if the auto makers had legal rights to leave behind product-liability claims, “there is a deep unfairness,” he said. “It would have been easy enough to set something aside for them.”
Given the celebratory, even triumphalist, rhetoric that’s being applied to the auto bailout after the fact, it’s important to remember that many suffered in order to give GM and Chrysler a second chance. Even those who are proud of the bailout’s accomplishment should acknowledge that the jobs saved carried a price that goes beyond any final accounting of anonymous billions lost from the federal budget. The pro-bailout crowd should take more care to recognize and heal the deep wounds that fester beneath their “Mission Accomplished” rhetoric… if only to prevent a repeat of these tragic decisions in the event of future industry rescues.
China supposedly plans to limit the number of cars allocated to central government officials to one vehicle for every 20 people working there. That news comes in a roundabout way. Bloomberg has it from China’s not always reliable 21st Century Business Herald, which in turn cites a State Council statement.
According to Automotive News Europe, this could undermine “sales prospects for the Volkswagen AG Audi brand, which dominates the official fleet.” Read More >
A government labor relations board in Australia yesterday upheld the firing of an employee busted for driving a speed camera van at more than double the speed limit. Stuart Rollo appealed to Fair Work Australia after he was terminated by Serco Traffic Camera Services in Victoria on December 10 for driving 102km/h (63 MPH) 50km/h (31 MPH) zone. On Thursday Commissioner G.R. Smith determined the firing was warranted by the circumstances.
If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars; they would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes,
These were the words of Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) at a breakfast put on by the Christian Acienec Monitor. But, as TheHill‘s Michael O’Brien reports, Ms Wasserman Shultz owns a 2010 Infiniti FX35 that is built by Nissan in Tochigi, Japan. And, adds O’Brien, “The car appears to be hers, since its license plate includes her initials” (it is, see picture above). The congresswoman’s response (through a spokesperson):
They can try to distract from the issue if they want. But if Republican opposition researchers are snooping around garages, they should know that if Republicans — who said that we should let the U.S. auto industry go bankrupt — had their way, they wouldn’t find a single American made car anywhere.
In the 1970s the Carter administration prohibited speedometers from indicating speeds over 85 miles per hour. The idea was around before Carter, but his people implemented it.
Regulations require some justification. The justification was, people might not drive fast if they didn’t know how fast they were going. After some hand-waving and pulling numbers out of orifices it’s possible to fabricate a number of accidents and deaths per year prevented and call that the benefit of the regulation.
As part of Reagan’s regulatory reform the speedometer rule was scrapped. Rescinding a regulation requires some justification. The justification was that there was no real evidence that limiting indicated speed would reduce or had reduced driving speed.
An ineffective regulation is harmful because it imposes costs with no benefits.
The US Department of Justice is deploying all of its legal muscle to avoid paying the price after an FBI agent destroyed an exotic car during a joy ride. After nearly two years of trying to recover the money owed by the government, Motors Insurance Company filed a lawsuit against the government seeking the full $750,000 value of the wrecked 1995 Ferrari F50.
The release of A Road Forward: The Report of the Toyota North American Quality Advisory Panel [PDF], probably raised a few eyebrows around the industry this week, particularly at the headquarters of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in Washington D.C… but not for any obvious reason. The report’s findings about Toyota’s internal reforms in the wake of last year’s recall scandal aren’t particularly mind-bending, and are well summarized in an introductory passage
First, the Panel believes Toyota needs to continue to adjust its balance between global and local control giving weight to local control in order to improve its communication and speed in responding to quality and safety issues. Second, the Panel believes that Toyota needs to ensure that it listens and responds as positively to negative external feedback as it does to negative internal feedback. Third, the Panel believes that Toyota must persist in more clearly distinguishing safety from quality and continue its efforts to enhance its safety practices and procedures.
In addition to identifying specific areas for improvement, the report places a heavy emphasis on “the leadership of Toyota’s top executives as they navigate the road forward, as well as the company’s leadership in the industry” as a way to avoid the traps it fell into prior to the recall scandal. And this emphasis on leadership could have some interesting effects…
Justices of the Washington State Supreme Court on Tuesday openly questioned whether it was proper for a city and a photo enforcement contractor to thwart the initiative process on the issue of traffic cameras. The question has become increasingly relevant as activists in the cities of Longview and Monroe on Monday turned in signatures they believe will be sufficient to call for a vote on banning red light cameras and speed cameras. Less than a week ago, a Chelan County Superior Court judge ruled that activists in the city of Wenatchee were forbidden from attempting to bring the question of cameras to the voters (view ruling).
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