Tickets are no longer being mailed based on evidence created by freeway speed cameras in the state of Arizona. After a year-long campaign against the devices, activists from the group CameraFraud.com succeeded in convincing Governor Jan Brewer (R) to end the photo enforcement contract that her predecessor, Janet Napolitano (D) signed. As a result, the cameras were remotely shut down at 12:00am today.
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Hmm… quite the contretemps yesterday with regards to Web-surfing while driving. Honestly, if I’m endangering any of you by looking at my phone while driving on a freeway so empty that I can’t see a single set of headlights behind me or taillamps ahead, I apologize. And I don’t even own a Martin Backpacker. In a perfect world we’d all be driving in completely silent cars, alone, well-rested and emotionally stable. In my real world, I cover 40,000-plus miles a year on the road and track. Most of those miles are affected by some sort of distraction, whether it’s a phone conversation, personal stress, or trying to sing Douala phonetically along with Richard Bona records. I try to be honest with TTAC readers about what I do behind the wheel. Most of the people in this business are writing whatever they think will ingratiate themselves with the readers or — more commonly — the advertisers.
As it so happens, the one above-parking-speed automobile accident I’ve had since 1988 was directly related to distracted driving. My brother and I were rolling my VW Fox down Cranston Drive in Dublin, Ohio, about eighteen years ago. I was doing about 30 mph. There was a pizza guy in front of me, driving a Tercel. He made a left out of my way. Right then I saw the finest-looking teenaged girl to ever put on a pair of tiny shorts and jog down Cranston Drive. While I watched the shorts, the pizza guy changed his mind and literally backed up into the road. I saw it out of the corner of my eye but was still carrying about 10mph when I hit him. The cop cited us both; me for assured clear distance, him for reckless op. Worst of all, the girl kept running and I never had a chance to share my personal testimony with her.
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When I was a young copywriter, I wrote about a catalytic converter that was just newly introduced to Volkswagen. I proudly wrote that it “removes all harmful substances.” The copy came back. I was told to say that it “largely reduces the amount of “ a list of strangely named substances. I said I would never subject the poor Volkswagen customers to such nonsense. I then was called to Wolfsburg and had a meeting with a gruff engineer. He said: “Look, that thing lowers the amount of some bad stuff. But it lets stuff through, it may even create stuff that is much worse. It’s just that nobody is looking for it!” Read More >
Remember GM’s Heated Windshield Washer Fire Fiasco? The one where the “Hotshot” unit got so hot that cars went up in flames? GM recalled them. Our friend Carquestions reveals that this doesn’t keep you from buying one. Why is it still for sale, ask you? Carquestions has the answer: NHTSA was asleep at the wheel again. Says Carquestions: “NHTSA failed to list it. NHTSA is supposed to issue an equipment recall.” Instead, they just called GM. The part is widely available at a parts counter near you. Nobody is saying this has anything to do with the fact that it is a GM part. That would simply be irresponsible conspiracy-mongering.
Welcome to amateur hour. As reported yesterday, The Wall Street Journal claimed in a story that Toyota’s “data recorders can lose their information if disconnected from the car’s battery or if the battery dies—as could happen after a crash.” Their source was “a person familiar with the situation.” Commentator Carquestions concluded that the source doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. After we wrote about it, Carquestions fingered the not so knowledgeable source as “a secretary within Media Relations at the DOT.”
Instead of talking to a secretary, the WSJ could have done what we did: Call Toyota headquarters in Tokyo. Read More >
Carquestions noticed a troubling issue with the latest Wall Street Journal report on the investigation of Toyota’s black-box data: the report cites its anonymous source as saying that “black box” event data recorders (EDRs) can lose their data if disconnected from the battery. Carquestions points out that this is not the case, cites the appropriate regulations and concludes that it sounds like this source doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. Meanwhile, Jalopnik is running with the story that Toyota planted the story… but then, why would Toyota imply that its own black boxes don’t meet regulatory standards? Especially when Toyota’s official comment is that it has yet to draw any conclusions from the investigation. For a story with such a logical conclusion (yes, most people are bad drivers) this is all getting a bit complicated.
If you want to spend fifty days a year on-track, or even twenty, every dollar must be watched. A decent hotel can run eighty bucks or so, including tax, near most East Coast venues. Two hotel nights an event, ten events a year, will run you sixteen hundred bucks minimum. A few years ago I came up with a way to save at least eight hundred of those dollars: drive to the East Coast the night before. Playing a bit of “pickup ball”, to be coarse, can save the other eight hundred. It’s also possible to sleep in bathtubs for free if you have generous friends at the event, so pack a pillow and thick blanket along with your torque wrench and HANS device.
Sunday night passes into Monday morning and I am on the road at 12:30AM to cover the 371 miles to Summit Point’s Main Course. There’s less traffic at night anyway, making it easier to read Wikipedia whenever I have 3G signal. I’ll pick a topic and wander through. From 2AM to 5AM or so I’m reading about the late Michael Bloomfield and the story of the “Super Session” record with Al Kooper and Stephen Stills. A few reviews, a variety of technical diatribes about the ’58-’60 Gibson Les Paul. The maple top is glued to the mahogany body, which stresses the maple under most conditions of heat and humidity, causing the guitar to resonate a bit more. Fascinating stuff. Yes, I read and drive. You’re not allowed to do it in press cars, but I hold the title for the Boxster and therefore if I want to spend the whole trip playing a Martin Backpacker on my lap I’ll damn well do it. If you want me to devote my full attention to the road, raise the speed limit to 195 and give me a plastic trophy for arriving at my destination before everyone else.
Reuters reports that Honda has canceled plans to build a new minicar and diesel engine plant north of Tokyo, as the company focuses its product offerings ahead of worldwide emissions standards ramp-ups. Honda’s move away from diesel has been slowly building for years, and the strategy was all but confirmed by the cancellation of a US-market Acura TSX diesel, which was replaced by the V6 TSX. Instead of developing new oil-burners, Honda is focusing on a new hybrid drivetrain capable of powering its larger vehicles. Thus far Honda has kept a conservative approach to hybrids, refining its “mild hybrid” IMA system over several generations. As Honda seeks to improve its fleetwide emissions, this new system (which could be Honda’s first “full hybrid”) has taken on new importance. Honda will officially announce its medium-range plans next Tuesday… and don’t be surprised if it involves a new full hybrid system capable of going toe-to-toe with Toyota’s Synergy Drive.
Once upon a time, luxury cars were defined by giant drop-top land barges like Cadillac’s V-16 or the Bugatti Royale. Somewhere along the way, the luxury sedan-turned-convertible has fallen out of favor with the glaring exception of one of the world’s most expensive cars: the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead. But now, having pioneered the four-door coupe and (coming soon) the five-door coupe, Mercedes-Benz’s endless search for “new” segments has it looking backwards to the good old days of massive top-down touring luxury.
So far, it had only been the usual people “familiar with the findings” that whispered to the WSJ that the NHTSA has found bupkis in their search for the ghosts in Toyota’s machines, and that there is growing suspicion of the NHTSA that it could have been the wrong foot on the wrong pedal again.
Now, the Financial Times writes for the first time that “US government officials have acknowledged that they have so far found no fault with the carmaker’s electronic throttle controls. They have suggested that many complaints of unintended acceleration that have dogged Toyota stem from driver error rather than defective equipment.” Read More >
The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously decided yesterday to clarify the circumstances under which a judge can suspend a driver’s license over a traffic violation. The high court previously had offered no guidance on the subject, leaving lower courts with the discretion to take away the right to drive from motorists for any reason. This happened to Laura Moran who received a 45-day suspension for a reckless driving incident that took place August 3, 2007 at 3am in Aberdeen Township.
If you want to play the commodities, forget pork bellies, soybeans or gold. Get into lithium. Not to treat the bipolar disorder exposure to the commodities market could trigger. Lithium to power cars. The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry figures that global lithium demand will more than triple from about 92,000 tons in 2010 to 310,000 tons in 2020. Who’s gobbling up the stuff? The automobile industry is expected to use 60 percent of the global lithium supply in 2020, up from less than 5 percent this year. No wonder there is a run on the material. Read More >
The ACEA has released their European new car statistics for the month of June. One look at the picture tells you what is happening: With the cash for clunkers effects slowly working their way out of the system, Europe is settling into a new normal. In June, the market was down 6.9 percent, but for the first six months, with 7,285,487 new cars registered, the market in the EU27 is pretty much what it was in the same period last year. Compared with the first six months of 2008, the market decreased by 10.3 percent, but those were the good old pre-carmageddon days. Read More >
Auto Express reports that Fiat is mating their ultra-efficient TwinAir, two-cylinder 900cc engine with a hybrid powertrain. Destination: A Fiat 500 that could get 100+mpg and an emission rate of 70g/km. The plan is to put a small 5kW (8bhp) electric motor into the gearbox casing. The TwinAir engine is so small, there will be space under the hood for the battery. Read More >
On the back of the news from the NHTSA that they can’t find evidence of Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) electronic gremlins, you’d think that Toyota would be feeling smug about themselves. You’d want to shout this from the rooftops, wouldn’t you? “It’s the drivers, stupid!” If I were Akio Toyoda, I’d show this to Bob Lutz, a bloke who took great delight in knocking Toyota throughout this affair. But what was Toyota’s European division’s reaction to all of this? Humility. Read More >
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