(Originally posted on October 2, 2006)
You've seen them on the street - "punks" and "rebels" and their faces that make you wish there were an important metal detector nearby to buzz incessantly at their facial accessories. The lobes, the cartilage, the eyebrow, the lip, the nostril, the bridge, the septum, the labret - and these are just SOME of the piercings available for the FACE. Let's not even get into the piercings unseen, okay? So for the "punk" who's simply run out of ROOM on the face, or for the "rebel" without the constitution for bloody hole-punching on their own body, there's a new fad hitting the streets. The actual STREETS...
Piercings for your CAR.
At this point, it seems like that should just be the end of this article.
Piercings. For your car. 'Nuff said. End of discussion.
Cue the "IDIOTIC PRODUCT" catchphrase. Roll credits.
But instead, let's try and evaluate this a little further and try and speculate WHY someone would possibly DO this to their car. Also, should these things be considered detriments to your car and other cars just by existing?
If you take a look at the pictures, you'll see that these "piercings" are large rings affixed primarily to the front bumper area of the car (the "face" of it, if you will) - they stick out, but not dangerously far or anything. They stand out, but not so well that they'd help you locate it at the Disneyland parking lot. So what purpose can they serve, other than being "extreme"? I mean, most things we do to our cars we do to either improve our lives, make things easier, or possibly to simply draw attention to the car. I'm reminded of ugly fins, tails, and flame appliques.
So is this what we've come to? That our personal cries for help by punching needles in our skin and filling the new void with metallic hoops and bars just isn't enough? We must expand these pleas for attention to every driver on the road with a large metal hoop affixed to your front bumper with an interesting logo? It's a little scary - if you think about it...
"I'm in my car so you probably can't see MY piercings, but I want you to know that I'm totally into piercings, so I PIERCED MY CAR so you can SEE!"
So now that we've rationalized WHY you'd affix one of these car piercings - let's discuss the repercussions of the deed. Does punching a hole or welding a ring onto the bumper area qualify as an act that affects insurance? If you get into an accident and they see this extra piece of car shrapnel that you voluntarily tacked on managed to do some EXTRA damage, say to a radiator, would insurance still pay for it? Does the bluebook value of a car go down significantly after you've added a West Coast Chopper ring to its face? And on top of this entire loss of value and risk of higher payments - you have to pay for this car piercing.
I've seen prices that average at about $100.
And on that note, I feel that car piercings are officially an IDIOTIC PRODUCT.
What's next? "Car cutting", where you key your own car to relieve the pressures of driving and handle road rage?
Read more!
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2008
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Snowy Selfishness
This post comes from my "evil thoughts I have at random" file, thanks to a week or two of annoying snowy weather (which means in snows for two days and then panic and mayhem set in for another week at least before any of the snow can have a chance to melt away and let us calm the hell down.
Walking in the snow is a bitch.
I'm sure that driving in the snow is a bitch as well. Well, most of me figures that driving after it snows is NOT a bitch because you're inside with the heater on and warm dry feet - but the factor of putting up with the snow and how it affects your car BEFORE you're driving effortlessly through it later makes up in the bitch rating.
I understand - your car is covered in snow. The road is covered in snow. There's a whole lot of snow and ice around and it drives you mad having to deal with it the first time. You sit there and dust your entire car off. Then you have to de-ice things. Then I'm betting you have to dig a bit to allow space for your car to have access driving-wise to the road itself. And once you've pulled it out, you decide to shovel off the rest of the area so your car can theoretically pull back in without requiring post-worktime shoveling.
Here's where you lose me, car-drivers: putting your own property in the space you shoveled as though to claim it for yourself.
I've got news for you, Lewis and/or Clark: you're not a pioneer out claiming untamed wilderness for your own. You've done a nice thing by clearing out a parcel of land where a car could park, but you don't get to stick a flag in it and claim that country in the name of the Griswold family. You've dug up a fresh spot of public land, which is the opposite of private land, and it's open to the public.
While owning a home means ownership of that parcel of land, allowing old-timers the right to yell at kids to stay off their lawns, the street is up for grabs. Any city-dweller knows this, having undoubtedly spent ten minutes on various occasions to find one damned parking spot and it's three blocks away. Because the street parking is open to the public and you're not allower to tell people to move their goobermobiles just because that stretch of curb is the closest to your building and that space three blocks away is Goobermobile Parking Accessible.
Here's the insane part: putting private property on public property, expecting that it turns the public into private rather than turning the private into public!
You know where else you can find private property in public places? The alley behind buildings where furniture doesn't fit into garbage cans. And guess what? Open to the public! Hobos can root around for cans all they want, but that discarded kitchen set could go perfectly in a little crap shack like mine!
So why aren't there more people out there fighting the power?
You pull up to your block, and come caring individual has shoveled out a clearance spot that your car could fit perfectly into. I mean, if it weren't for those two lawn chairs in the middle of the space. What's stopping you from picking up that trash left in the street and tossing it elsewhere, making that parking spot PERFECTLY clear? And maybe those are some nice lawn chairs that would look great in your son's basement collection of crappy furniture on which he and his pot-smoking friends can waste their days lounging? Up for grabs, I say!
Oh, those were YOUR lawn chairs?
I'm afraid I'm going to have to cite precedence in the case of Finders v. Keepers.
Every post-snowday, I have this fantasy of riding in the back of a large pick-up truck and just grabbing all the furniture we can haul. It doesn't belong in the street, and it shouldn't be used as a flag to claim public land as your own private garage. That's why people built garages - to have a private property area to park their cars. I give it a ten-block radius and twenty minutes of driving and I could come home with thirty lawn chairs, fifteen orange cones, and a couple of bucks worth of scrap metal or fodder to start a post-modern art gallery and sell demolished parking-space holders for thousands of dollars.
And then I wake up from my daydream because the bus is here and I have to get to work.
Do you all have these same visions of chair-snatching grandeur? Or are you a car-parking menace trying to pass as an emissary who needs to claim this land in the name of your family? Read more!
Walking in the snow is a bitch.
I'm sure that driving in the snow is a bitch as well. Well, most of me figures that driving after it snows is NOT a bitch because you're inside with the heater on and warm dry feet - but the factor of putting up with the snow and how it affects your car BEFORE you're driving effortlessly through it later makes up in the bitch rating.
I understand - your car is covered in snow. The road is covered in snow. There's a whole lot of snow and ice around and it drives you mad having to deal with it the first time. You sit there and dust your entire car off. Then you have to de-ice things. Then I'm betting you have to dig a bit to allow space for your car to have access driving-wise to the road itself. And once you've pulled it out, you decide to shovel off the rest of the area so your car can theoretically pull back in without requiring post-worktime shoveling.
Here's where you lose me, car-drivers: putting your own property in the space you shoveled as though to claim it for yourself.
I've got news for you, Lewis and/or Clark: you're not a pioneer out claiming untamed wilderness for your own. You've done a nice thing by clearing out a parcel of land where a car could park, but you don't get to stick a flag in it and claim that country in the name of the Griswold family. You've dug up a fresh spot of public land, which is the opposite of private land, and it's open to the public.
While owning a home means ownership of that parcel of land, allowing old-timers the right to yell at kids to stay off their lawns, the street is up for grabs. Any city-dweller knows this, having undoubtedly spent ten minutes on various occasions to find one damned parking spot and it's three blocks away. Because the street parking is open to the public and you're not allower to tell people to move their goobermobiles just because that stretch of curb is the closest to your building and that space three blocks away is Goobermobile Parking Accessible.
Here's the insane part: putting private property on public property, expecting that it turns the public into private rather than turning the private into public!
You know where else you can find private property in public places? The alley behind buildings where furniture doesn't fit into garbage cans. And guess what? Open to the public! Hobos can root around for cans all they want, but that discarded kitchen set could go perfectly in a little crap shack like mine!
So why aren't there more people out there fighting the power?
You pull up to your block, and come caring individual has shoveled out a clearance spot that your car could fit perfectly into. I mean, if it weren't for those two lawn chairs in the middle of the space. What's stopping you from picking up that trash left in the street and tossing it elsewhere, making that parking spot PERFECTLY clear? And maybe those are some nice lawn chairs that would look great in your son's basement collection of crappy furniture on which he and his pot-smoking friends can waste their days lounging? Up for grabs, I say!
Oh, those were YOUR lawn chairs?
I'm afraid I'm going to have to cite precedence in the case of Finders v. Keepers.
Every post-snowday, I have this fantasy of riding in the back of a large pick-up truck and just grabbing all the furniture we can haul. It doesn't belong in the street, and it shouldn't be used as a flag to claim public land as your own private garage. That's why people built garages - to have a private property area to park their cars. I give it a ten-block radius and twenty minutes of driving and I could come home with thirty lawn chairs, fifteen orange cones, and a couple of bucks worth of scrap metal or fodder to start a post-modern art gallery and sell demolished parking-space holders for thousands of dollars.
And then I wake up from my daydream because the bus is here and I have to get to work.
Do you all have these same visions of chair-snatching grandeur? Or are you a car-parking menace trying to pass as an emissary who needs to claim this land in the name of your family? Read more!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
ParkMagic or ParkNonsense?
There are 33,000 parking meters on the streets in the city of Chicago. I remember a simpler time, when you pulled up to a meter, whucked in a few quarters to throw time on the clock as needed, and went about your business. You didn't want to come back rushing to feed the meter, so you erred on the side of caution and maybe put in a little extra to make sure you have the time. You finish your business, come back to your car, and while for a second you lament the cents wasted with 12 minutes left on the meter, you consider those pennies better than the amount of a parking ticket, and consider it a charitable gift to whomever pulls their car in during the next 12 minutes.
If you think this "simpler time" is present day, you're sorely mistaken. Welcome to the ParkMagic era.
ParkMagic is an Ireland-based company with a U.S. site in Michigan. Basically the program entails a beeper-looking device that you buy and initially load with $15 or more. As you pull up to a parking meter, you then call this number, punch in your beeper information and the zone of your meter (yes, there are ZONES now, more on that in a minute), and it downloads to your beeper with a countdown instead of the meter. Now, instead of running to the meter to feed it more, you dash to your cellphone to call back up and dial in more money. Supposedly in the future, if this becomes mainstream, you'll be able to receive e-mails of traffic and availability as well as RECEIVE calls from your meter when it's close to expiring.
Some people may see this as a vast improvement, mostly because they don't need quarters anymore. I see it as nothing but a nuisance and digital nonsense.
For starters, the ZONES. I already am loathed at the idea that the city can just decree that just for arriving in the city and wanting to do business and stimulate the economy, you must pay for the privilege of leaving your car. We really are just a few steps away from tolls just to enter the precious city space. Sorry, city, but you're just slabs of pavement and asphalt and hobo urine - so GET OVER YOURSELF and just let me park the damned car. There used to be a STANDARD rate of coinage in a meter in relation to time allowed to park there. Now there are ZONES, from 1 to 6, which dictate how much time a quarter (oh, I'm sorry - 25 electronic cents) will get you. Zone 1 allows five whole minutes, Zone 2 is ten, Zone 3 is fifteen, Zone 4 is twenty, Zone 5 is thirty and Zone 6 allows for an hour.
If technology of today is any indicator, parking at a Zone 1 meter will mean that within 60 seconds, you'll need to be dialing in the number again to go through the menus and wait time due to call volume in order to ensure that your next 5-minute payment goes through before your meter runs out.
Of course, I'm sure that you can pay for more than 5 minutes at a time, but my point stands. Ten seconds to whuck in change, versus four minutes of phone menus to hope that everything works right and your beeper registers your payment.
Here's where a big truckload of nonsense comes into play: everyone is treating this like the city of Chicago is LOSING money somehow on these meters and that the new system will fix everything.
First off, the city starts LOSING money because now a share of the parking meter revenue gets split with ParkMagic. Doesn't anyone know business anymore? The more people you bring in on a deal, the more partners you have to share the profits with. Try watching ONE heist film and then tell me it's a smart idea to bring in some new jackass who wants a cut of the money. He'll probably shoot you and take YOUR cut, too. *shakes fist at ParkMagic* I'm not falling for that one again!!!
Secondly, too much emphasis is being put on cents and minutes and LIES. Take this quote from the ParkMagic CEO: "People pay for one hour. If they come back in an hour and fifteen minutes and get a ticket, they feel bad about it. If they don't get a ticket, the city has just lost 25 percent of an hour [worth of revenue]." Okay, assuming that you're willing to nitpick over the fact that the city loses that fifteen minutes in revenue (eight cents), that needs to be compared to the FREE money that the city gets from overpaying at a meter and leaving before time expires. You can't simply argue that it doesn't count, because someone else will pull into that spot and NOT pay money because time's still on the meter; we're using the same logic of "if that thing happens in this way" like the failure to issue a ticket, and the city hasn't even LOST money because the meter is fed and that's money for the city no matter whose car is parked there.
It's also a foolish idea to base this on the failure to issue tickets, which we ALL know is NOT the case. Even at a rate of two tickets per hour, I have a feeling that this revenue for the city not only pays for the meter agent's wages for the hour, but also counteracts all of those missed-eight-cents meters. I'm also pretty sure that more than two tickets are written per hour by each agent.
Thirdly, doesn't this go against everything that our politicians have been talking about? I may not have the best memory in the world, but wasn't it not too long ago that my favorite nemesis alderman was trying to ban radar detectors because they could be used to warn drivers of speed cameras? Didn't that alderman admit, point blank, that all of those tickets weren't just something that brought in revenue for the city - they were downright PART OF THE BUDGET?
So how is it that the aldermen are fine with this ParkMagic program? They lose money from the meters because the new partner gets a cut, and they're admittedly welcoming in a system that would potentially reduce the number of meter-related parking tickets by a drastic amount. Something just really doesn't seem right here. I mean, it seems completely right if you're a driver in the city of Chicago - which is what's baffling me. Maybe I'm just not used to programs potentially helping actual citizens (I mean, until the lack of ticket money creates a deficit that needs to be made up for by inevitably creating higher taxes).
I can't shake the feeling that this will bite us all in the ass.
Of course, I could be wrong. I don't even drive or own a car...
(The article about ParkMagic)
Read more!
If you think this "simpler time" is present day, you're sorely mistaken. Welcome to the ParkMagic era.
ParkMagic is an Ireland-based company with a U.S. site in Michigan. Basically the program entails a beeper-looking device that you buy and initially load with $15 or more. As you pull up to a parking meter, you then call this number, punch in your beeper information and the zone of your meter (yes, there are ZONES now, more on that in a minute), and it downloads to your beeper with a countdown instead of the meter. Now, instead of running to the meter to feed it more, you dash to your cellphone to call back up and dial in more money. Supposedly in the future, if this becomes mainstream, you'll be able to receive e-mails of traffic and availability as well as RECEIVE calls from your meter when it's close to expiring.
Some people may see this as a vast improvement, mostly because they don't need quarters anymore. I see it as nothing but a nuisance and digital nonsense.
For starters, the ZONES. I already am loathed at the idea that the city can just decree that just for arriving in the city and wanting to do business and stimulate the economy, you must pay for the privilege of leaving your car. We really are just a few steps away from tolls just to enter the precious city space. Sorry, city, but you're just slabs of pavement and asphalt and hobo urine - so GET OVER YOURSELF and just let me park the damned car. There used to be a STANDARD rate of coinage in a meter in relation to time allowed to park there. Now there are ZONES, from 1 to 6, which dictate how much time a quarter (oh, I'm sorry - 25 electronic cents) will get you. Zone 1 allows five whole minutes, Zone 2 is ten, Zone 3 is fifteen, Zone 4 is twenty, Zone 5 is thirty and Zone 6 allows for an hour.
If technology of today is any indicator, parking at a Zone 1 meter will mean that within 60 seconds, you'll need to be dialing in the number again to go through the menus and wait time due to call volume in order to ensure that your next 5-minute payment goes through before your meter runs out.
Of course, I'm sure that you can pay for more than 5 minutes at a time, but my point stands. Ten seconds to whuck in change, versus four minutes of phone menus to hope that everything works right and your beeper registers your payment.
Here's where a big truckload of nonsense comes into play: everyone is treating this like the city of Chicago is LOSING money somehow on these meters and that the new system will fix everything.
First off, the city starts LOSING money because now a share of the parking meter revenue gets split with ParkMagic. Doesn't anyone know business anymore? The more people you bring in on a deal, the more partners you have to share the profits with. Try watching ONE heist film and then tell me it's a smart idea to bring in some new jackass who wants a cut of the money. He'll probably shoot you and take YOUR cut, too. *shakes fist at ParkMagic* I'm not falling for that one again!!!
Secondly, too much emphasis is being put on cents and minutes and LIES. Take this quote from the ParkMagic CEO: "People pay for one hour. If they come back in an hour and fifteen minutes and get a ticket, they feel bad about it. If they don't get a ticket, the city has just lost 25 percent of an hour [worth of revenue]." Okay, assuming that you're willing to nitpick over the fact that the city loses that fifteen minutes in revenue (eight cents), that needs to be compared to the FREE money that the city gets from overpaying at a meter and leaving before time expires. You can't simply argue that it doesn't count, because someone else will pull into that spot and NOT pay money because time's still on the meter; we're using the same logic of "if that thing happens in this way" like the failure to issue a ticket, and the city hasn't even LOST money because the meter is fed and that's money for the city no matter whose car is parked there.
It's also a foolish idea to base this on the failure to issue tickets, which we ALL know is NOT the case. Even at a rate of two tickets per hour, I have a feeling that this revenue for the city not only pays for the meter agent's wages for the hour, but also counteracts all of those missed-eight-cents meters. I'm also pretty sure that more than two tickets are written per hour by each agent.
Thirdly, doesn't this go against everything that our politicians have been talking about? I may not have the best memory in the world, but wasn't it not too long ago that my favorite nemesis alderman was trying to ban radar detectors because they could be used to warn drivers of speed cameras? Didn't that alderman admit, point blank, that all of those tickets weren't just something that brought in revenue for the city - they were downright PART OF THE BUDGET?
So how is it that the aldermen are fine with this ParkMagic program? They lose money from the meters because the new partner gets a cut, and they're admittedly welcoming in a system that would potentially reduce the number of meter-related parking tickets by a drastic amount. Something just really doesn't seem right here. I mean, it seems completely right if you're a driver in the city of Chicago - which is what's baffling me. Maybe I'm just not used to programs potentially helping actual citizens (I mean, until the lack of ticket money creates a deficit that needs to be made up for by inevitably creating higher taxes).
I can't shake the feeling that this will bite us all in the ass.
Of course, I could be wrong. I don't even drive or own a car...
(The article about ParkMagic)
Read more!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Chicago Traffic: 2nd-Worst in the Nation
I am not a driver.
I just had to get that out of the way, so you know that the rest of this post is going to be only pure facts from the article I read, or pure opinion that should be taken with a grain of salt. Last time I was behind the wheel of a car was 2001, and that was just getting some practice hours in before thinking about going for my driver's license, which I obviously never bothered to get. Of course, that's because I moved here to Chicago, under the impression that I would never need a car here - thanks to the public transportation system.
In retrospect, maybe it wasn't all that horrible of a decision. For all the guff my friends give me about not owning a car or being able to drive, and how crappy the CTA runs here in the city - I can at least rub their noses back in the fact that in comparison, I think the vehicular congestion and waste of resources is a much crappier system to be a part of. Plus, I moved here to Chicago from the city of Los Angeles - so I technically upgraded. While Chicago is #2 or #3 worst in a lot of these categories of horrible driving conditions, at least L.A. stays put at #1, though not by a huge margin.
According to the study results that were done on traffic conditions and congestion and delays and whatnot - every year, the average Chicago motorist loses 46 hours of time stuck in traffic during peak hours. Back in 1995, they only lost 33 hours per year, so you can see that the incline keeps going. Every year, more than an entire average WORKWEEK is lost just because of peak-hour traffic, per driver. The amount of fuel that adds up to, per driver, is 32 gallons. The total cost is $906, just due to traffic alone. When you account for the fact that there are millions of drivers out there, it's a total of over 203 million hours lost and costs over $4 billion annually.
The 203 million hours lost puts Chicago smack dab in 3rd place, with New York losing 384 million hours a year and Los Angeles taking the cake with 491 million hours lost. But the real shame brought to Chicago is that it is #2 in the category of Time Indexes. A Time Index is how to calculate how much time you should prepare in advance to make a trip due to delays. Chicago has a Time Index of 1.47, which means that for every 20-minute drive you take, it's going to really take 29.4 minutes. Only Los Angeles has a higher Time Index, and it's only higher by .03 - meaning it'll take a full 30 minutes for that 20-minute trip in the City of Angels.
Of course, I don't put much stock in the Time Index system, after taking a look at it. I mean, it's a great idea in theory, but it's that base-time calculation that befuddles me. Were these trips timed at 20 minutes based simply on drives taken during non-peak hours? Is that 9pm? Midnight? 3am on a Sunday? There's no way to get a "lab test" or any real scientific control done on a commute, so it's very difficult to predict what your base time for any drive would be, meaning that any calculation using a Time Index is going to be rather fruitless.
Here's something that I thought interesting: judging by the numbers, the study shows that the city of Chicago has over 4.4 million drivers on the road. That's the number they used to multiply the 46 hours and $906 lost annually per driver to get those astronomical numbers for the city itself. So what about the third number that they calculated? If every driver is wasting 32 gallons of gasoline per year, then that means that every year over 142 million gallons of gas are being wasted.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill only lost about 11 million gallons of crude oil. Every year, Chicago is wasting more gasoline than almost 13 Exxon Valdez spills.
And people still give me grief about taking city transportation? I'd rather deal with "slow zones" than this mess. Losing $906 a year, on top of whatever it costs to run and maintain a car and keep it filled with gas, let alone parking in the city? No thanks. $906 could buy more than twelve 30-day CTA passes, so I could pay for a year's worth of transportation with the EXTRA WASTED money that a Chicago driver loses in that year.
Every now and then, with all of the muck and mire that the CTA gets dragged through, there are still things that make me appreciate it just enough to keep following and using it. Aside from the colorful cast of characters you meet on buses and trains, there are a few nice things about using public transportation - even if it means relying on the frequently-unreliable. And there's the financial benefit. Something tells me that buses aren't going to fare anywhere near cars when you consider the traffic and time-loss implications (they're in the same traffic, plus making stops along the way) - but the trains make up for it all, even when you take into consideration all of the "slow zones" that commuters seem bogged down with.
Maybe it really is faster than driving. It's certainly cheaper, for now. But then again, I guess you get what you pay for.
(A version of the article printed in the RedEye)
(A pretty graph of some of these numbers)
Read more!
I just had to get that out of the way, so you know that the rest of this post is going to be only pure facts from the article I read, or pure opinion that should be taken with a grain of salt. Last time I was behind the wheel of a car was 2001, and that was just getting some practice hours in before thinking about going for my driver's license, which I obviously never bothered to get. Of course, that's because I moved here to Chicago, under the impression that I would never need a car here - thanks to the public transportation system.
In retrospect, maybe it wasn't all that horrible of a decision. For all the guff my friends give me about not owning a car or being able to drive, and how crappy the CTA runs here in the city - I can at least rub their noses back in the fact that in comparison, I think the vehicular congestion and waste of resources is a much crappier system to be a part of. Plus, I moved here to Chicago from the city of Los Angeles - so I technically upgraded. While Chicago is #2 or #3 worst in a lot of these categories of horrible driving conditions, at least L.A. stays put at #1, though not by a huge margin.
According to the study results that were done on traffic conditions and congestion and delays and whatnot - every year, the average Chicago motorist loses 46 hours of time stuck in traffic during peak hours. Back in 1995, they only lost 33 hours per year, so you can see that the incline keeps going. Every year, more than an entire average WORKWEEK is lost just because of peak-hour traffic, per driver. The amount of fuel that adds up to, per driver, is 32 gallons. The total cost is $906, just due to traffic alone. When you account for the fact that there are millions of drivers out there, it's a total of over 203 million hours lost and costs over $4 billion annually.
The 203 million hours lost puts Chicago smack dab in 3rd place, with New York losing 384 million hours a year and Los Angeles taking the cake with 491 million hours lost. But the real shame brought to Chicago is that it is #2 in the category of Time Indexes. A Time Index is how to calculate how much time you should prepare in advance to make a trip due to delays. Chicago has a Time Index of 1.47, which means that for every 20-minute drive you take, it's going to really take 29.4 minutes. Only Los Angeles has a higher Time Index, and it's only higher by .03 - meaning it'll take a full 30 minutes for that 20-minute trip in the City of Angels.
Of course, I don't put much stock in the Time Index system, after taking a look at it. I mean, it's a great idea in theory, but it's that base-time calculation that befuddles me. Were these trips timed at 20 minutes based simply on drives taken during non-peak hours? Is that 9pm? Midnight? 3am on a Sunday? There's no way to get a "lab test" or any real scientific control done on a commute, so it's very difficult to predict what your base time for any drive would be, meaning that any calculation using a Time Index is going to be rather fruitless.
Here's something that I thought interesting: judging by the numbers, the study shows that the city of Chicago has over 4.4 million drivers on the road. That's the number they used to multiply the 46 hours and $906 lost annually per driver to get those astronomical numbers for the city itself. So what about the third number that they calculated? If every driver is wasting 32 gallons of gasoline per year, then that means that every year over 142 million gallons of gas are being wasted.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill only lost about 11 million gallons of crude oil. Every year, Chicago is wasting more gasoline than almost 13 Exxon Valdez spills.
And people still give me grief about taking city transportation? I'd rather deal with "slow zones" than this mess. Losing $906 a year, on top of whatever it costs to run and maintain a car and keep it filled with gas, let alone parking in the city? No thanks. $906 could buy more than twelve 30-day CTA passes, so I could pay for a year's worth of transportation with the EXTRA WASTED money that a Chicago driver loses in that year.
Every now and then, with all of the muck and mire that the CTA gets dragged through, there are still things that make me appreciate it just enough to keep following and using it. Aside from the colorful cast of characters you meet on buses and trains, there are a few nice things about using public transportation - even if it means relying on the frequently-unreliable. And there's the financial benefit. Something tells me that buses aren't going to fare anywhere near cars when you consider the traffic and time-loss implications (they're in the same traffic, plus making stops along the way) - but the trains make up for it all, even when you take into consideration all of the "slow zones" that commuters seem bogged down with.
Maybe it really is faster than driving. It's certainly cheaper, for now. But then again, I guess you get what you pay for.
(A version of the article printed in the RedEye)
(A pretty graph of some of these numbers)
Read more!
Monday, August 27, 2007
Why Isn't This Mandated??
I was just idly reading my RedEye this morning (okay, not "idly" as much as "looking for something to rant about") and a tiny blurb caught my eye. Buried deep in the Chicago news section was one paragraph that reads the following:
"Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Friday signed a new Illinois law requiring first-time drunk driving offenders to install breath test devices in their vehicles and pass the test every time they try to start their engines. If the driver's breath exceeds the alcohol limit, the alcohol ignition interlock device - which costs about $150 to install, plus monthly fees - ensures the car won't start."
Why isn't this mandated already? Why isn't this a standard??
Forgive me from taking a turn away from my usual "keep the guv'ment out of mah business" type of rants, but this is about safety and about being realistic. We're already stuck in a crappy society with a government that actually tickets people for not wearing a seatbelt and can arrest you for driving without insurance.
Got that? Make you pay money for not protecting YOURSELF and arrest you for not being FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE and CAUTIOUS.
So why are they letting people drive around without protecting OTHER PEOPLE and stopping drunk drivers before they even begin the driving part of the equation?? Now I don't own a car, and I've never bought a car, but if they threw in a mandatory $150 extra when you bought your car, new or used (if the used car didn't have it already) to install this breathalyzer device - would it really be that noticable? I mean you're already paying thousands of dollars, and likely the car dealer's going to be screwing you out of a lot more with "add-ons" anyway, right? Call it a "car tax" if you will, since the government should be making it mandatory for cars to have it and undoubtedly it's the buyer who foots the bill.
And as for the "plus monthly fees"? Again, not a car owner, but I reckon most car owners wind up paying a pretty penny on upkeep for their vehicle every month anyway, if not every other month or so. Between the already-stupid mandatory insurance, vehicle repairs, and that ever-rising price of gasoline - is an extra monthly fee really that noticable? Besides, if you tacked it onto your insurance plan, it'd benefit in the long run. Fees could go down for good drivers, get raised for those who still manage to mess things up. Just like your normal insurance plan screws you over, you know?
Think about the end results, though! No more drunk drivers! (Okay, well, a severe decrease in drunk drivers!!)
It's true - you'll never get rid of drunk drivers. After all, who's to say what goes down after the car's been started? Wouldn't be the first time someone was drinking while AT the wheel - won't be the last. I'm sure plenty of sober idiots would be blowing into their friends' breathalyzers as payment for a ride home or something. And luckily, DNA evidence would prove who was driving wasn't the person who blew into the device last, and more people could be arrested for "enabling" the drunken driving dilemma.
I won't say it's the best idea I've had - or the most practical to put into effect - but at least it's an idea. It's an idea that has some potential. Maybe in the hands of some other sane and rational people (not government officials, I need some RATIONAL thinkers here) it could become a feasible idea, and a practical one. Maybe then it could be passed to the legislators to hem and haw over until someone shows them Red Asphalt and they all cry, "Yes! Make this a law so there's no more Red Asphalt!!"
After all, that's how it worked with the whole "foie gras debacle". Let's get to brainstorming and make this happen. Then maybe we can get to work on abolishing the pointless seatbelt laws...
Read more!
"Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Friday signed a new Illinois law requiring first-time drunk driving offenders to install breath test devices in their vehicles and pass the test every time they try to start their engines. If the driver's breath exceeds the alcohol limit, the alcohol ignition interlock device - which costs about $150 to install, plus monthly fees - ensures the car won't start."
Why isn't this mandated already? Why isn't this a standard??
Forgive me from taking a turn away from my usual "keep the guv'ment out of mah business" type of rants, but this is about safety and about being realistic. We're already stuck in a crappy society with a government that actually tickets people for not wearing a seatbelt and can arrest you for driving without insurance.
Got that? Make you pay money for not protecting YOURSELF and arrest you for not being FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE and CAUTIOUS.
So why are they letting people drive around without protecting OTHER PEOPLE and stopping drunk drivers before they even begin the driving part of the equation?? Now I don't own a car, and I've never bought a car, but if they threw in a mandatory $150 extra when you bought your car, new or used (if the used car didn't have it already) to install this breathalyzer device - would it really be that noticable? I mean you're already paying thousands of dollars, and likely the car dealer's going to be screwing you out of a lot more with "add-ons" anyway, right? Call it a "car tax" if you will, since the government should be making it mandatory for cars to have it and undoubtedly it's the buyer who foots the bill.
And as for the "plus monthly fees"? Again, not a car owner, but I reckon most car owners wind up paying a pretty penny on upkeep for their vehicle every month anyway, if not every other month or so. Between the already-stupid mandatory insurance, vehicle repairs, and that ever-rising price of gasoline - is an extra monthly fee really that noticable? Besides, if you tacked it onto your insurance plan, it'd benefit in the long run. Fees could go down for good drivers, get raised for those who still manage to mess things up. Just like your normal insurance plan screws you over, you know?
Think about the end results, though! No more drunk drivers! (Okay, well, a severe decrease in drunk drivers!!)
It's true - you'll never get rid of drunk drivers. After all, who's to say what goes down after the car's been started? Wouldn't be the first time someone was drinking while AT the wheel - won't be the last. I'm sure plenty of sober idiots would be blowing into their friends' breathalyzers as payment for a ride home or something. And luckily, DNA evidence would prove who was driving wasn't the person who blew into the device last, and more people could be arrested for "enabling" the drunken driving dilemma.
I won't say it's the best idea I've had - or the most practical to put into effect - but at least it's an idea. It's an idea that has some potential. Maybe in the hands of some other sane and rational people (not government officials, I need some RATIONAL thinkers here) it could become a feasible idea, and a practical one. Maybe then it could be passed to the legislators to hem and haw over until someone shows them Red Asphalt and they all cry, "Yes! Make this a law so there's no more Red Asphalt!!"
After all, that's how it worked with the whole "foie gras debacle". Let's get to brainstorming and make this happen. Then maybe we can get to work on abolishing the pointless seatbelt laws...
Read more!
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