Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Been Scootin'

 


Finally took the time to get an accurate mileage test (fill to the brim, run until nearly empty, refill to the brim, divide miles traveled by gallons of gas it takes to refill). A little over 80 miles per gallon. In theory I should be getting more like 100mpg, but I mostly take short trips, and starting an engine uses more gas than running it.

Wordle 1004 Hint

Hint: The Dude does this.



Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ads below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.



First Letter: A

Monday, March 18, 2024

Dog Bites Man: It's the Government's Fault, as Usual

Per Julian Roberts-Grmela at The Daily Beast:

The press release was an endorsement of adaptive driving beams (ADB), a headlight technology that has been available in Europe and Canada for years but which was just legalized for installation in the U.S. in 2022. ... NBC News reported that there are no vehicles with ADB headlights available for sale in the U.S. Brumbelow said that it’s still “a few years away” before ADB headlights will be available to U.S. consumers. The reason that consumers can’t buy cars with ADB lights, despite the law enabling them to since 2022, is due to NHTSA regulations that came along with their legalization of the technology, according to [Mathew Brumbelow, a senior research engineer at the vehicle research center at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)].

The usual arc of automotive improvements (whether they're about safety or anything else) is:

  1. Something's invented that makes things better; but
  2. The US government prevents it from being adopted; until
  3. The US government makes it adoptable, but only under idiotic conditions;
  4. The US government finally allows it to be adopted; then
  5. The US government requires it to be adopted whether the car companies are ready to adopt it or not and whether customers want to buy it or not.
This thing is at stage 3.

I'd rather it never reached stage 5, but I think that at stage 4 it would at least get WIDELY adopted, and would thus HELP WITH several problems, including pedestrian deaths at night and high-beam glare blinding people (something I have a problem with, especially when my eyeglass prescription needs updating).

And such things should go from stage 1 to stage 4 with no intervening steps, in about 30 seconds.