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Fatal Model S accident
- Thread starter docherf
- Start date
Exactly why I hope Utah presses charges against Ms Firetruck kamikaze.
FSD Does Not Exist.
60 MPH
Attention on cellphone
slams into stopped traffic.
No grey area.
Press charges please, Utah?
Press to have them press charges please, people?
In the drivers seat, you are responsible.
*
Fla case, I really feel for the parents of the kid.
Kind of thing we all have to deal with, a terrifying decision.
Godspeed people.
Be careful out there.
Hugh Mannity
Mediocre Member
actually a correction to what I wrote; I meant to write we can't get our registration renewed without insurance not your license. You can get a license without a car.
AustinPowers
Total Smeghead
This is interesting. When I was in the US in 1997 and 2004, I was shocked at how bad the roads in general were. Cracks and potholes galore in the (mostly concrete) surfaces, oil spills at traffic lights (as well as in most car parks), and general signs of extremely bad maintenance. Compared to that, even the worst roads we have in Germany (or the UK) seemed like perfect examples of road enginieering and maintenance.
I was somewhat surprised at the comment as well. I spend my time about 50/50 between the UK/USA and mostly in Texas when in the USA.
There are indeed some fine examples of new road building in Texas, but maintenance of the old roads is pretty poor.
Also general design of interchanges from a safety perspective is and pretty much always has been poor with shared entry and exit lanes forcing those decelerating to leave to compete with those accelerating to join all before the shared lane runs out...
Road maintenance varies a lot from state to state and federal road funds have been starved the last decade or so.
Road design varies from state to state and even within a state. Houston is big on frontage roads running parallel to each freeway. Those crossover lanes where the incoming and exiting traffic have to cross are rare in the Portland area/Oregon and I don't recall many in California either (I do remember the first one I ever saw was in Bakersfield). Seattle has the crossover lane on critical interchanges that become a massive mess every day at rush hour.
I can only think of one of those crossover lanes around here, though it is on a major freeway interchange. For some reason I've never had the back up problem there I used to see in Seattle.
On the interstate highways, the lane width is standard 3.7m with wide shoulders in most areas. Curves are usually fairly gentle and in some places banked. My friend would make the run from Los Angeles and Portland in one long drive alone on I-5. That's about 950 miles (1500 KM). He found it a lot easier than shorter distances on the A1.
Road design varies from state to state and even within a state. Houston is big on frontage roads running parallel to each freeway. Those crossover lanes where the incoming and exiting traffic have to cross are rare in the Portland area/Oregon and I don't recall many in California either (I do remember the first one I ever saw was in Bakersfield). Seattle has the crossover lane on critical interchanges that become a massive mess every day at rush hour.
I can only think of one of those crossover lanes around here, though it is on a major freeway interchange. For some reason I've never had the back up problem there I used to see in Seattle.
On the interstate highways, the lane width is standard 3.7m with wide shoulders in most areas. Curves are usually fairly gentle and in some places banked. My friend would make the run from Los Angeles and Portland in one long drive alone on I-5. That's about 950 miles (1500 KM). He found it a lot easier than shorter distances on the A1.
I'm from the UK and have also spent considerable time in the US. I had the same feeling about generally poor condition of US roads compared to UK roads while I was in cities most of the time, but the roads out into rural areas were definitely far larger in the US and in much better condition than a lot of narrow lanes in the UK countryside!
The states have to actually use the road money to fix the roads.
This is a problem.
1. Because it is so easy to just cry to the Fed Gov't to grab more cash,
it becomes a nice available eternal flow of cash for things.
Nobody is counting, really.
I hate accounting too.
It is a boring subject, who cares if some folks got beach houses, swimming pools, as long as I get mine?
Issue 2: Government jobs moved from low pay civil service, to the golden path
(road?) to guaranteed riches in the US.
Cost of being a whistleblower is getting booted from the gravy train
and having to get a job.
You want fries with that?
Problem states, problem areas are generally one party controlled.
Things done on a "Friend Of" Basis.
Does not matter which party, once you have nobody screaming foul,
or a small enough community to take notice, it goes astray.
3: MSM abandonment of journalism.
Our Watchdogs are in the buffet line.
Look, some guy over there said the N word, and Not in a Rap Song!
*
All of this is why the US pays the most and gets the least return in many areas.
Roads, education...
Too Big to Count.
This is a problem.
1. Because it is so easy to just cry to the Fed Gov't to grab more cash,
it becomes a nice available eternal flow of cash for things.
Nobody is counting, really.
I hate accounting too.
It is a boring subject, who cares if some folks got beach houses, swimming pools, as long as I get mine?
Issue 2: Government jobs moved from low pay civil service, to the golden path
(road?) to guaranteed riches in the US.
Cost of being a whistleblower is getting booted from the gravy train
and having to get a job.
You want fries with that?
Problem states, problem areas are generally one party controlled.
Things done on a "Friend Of" Basis.
Does not matter which party, once you have nobody screaming foul,
or a small enough community to take notice, it goes astray.
3: MSM abandonment of journalism.
Our Watchdogs are in the buffet line.
Look, some guy over there said the N word, and Not in a Rap Song!
*
All of this is why the US pays the most and gets the least return in many areas.
Roads, education...
Too Big to Count.
GatorGuy
Member
I don't think there is any better engineering in Germany. The difference in the US is we have exponentially more miles of road than any country in Europe. Our roads are wider, longer and have more traffic on them. Roads We also drive bigger vehicles. Semi trucks are one of the main methods for cargo transport which has take a heavy toll on highways. All of this adds up to easier/cheaper maintenance on roads in Europe.
AustinPowers
Total Smeghead
Ever driven on a German Autobahn?
The right hand lane is almost always (except on Sundays) completely clogged by a neverending stream of Semis from all over Europe, which also takes a heavy toll on the road surfaces.
And I didn't really mean that our engineering on the whole is better, but on the whole the conditions of the US roads (especially in cities) I experienced were shockingly bad for a supposedly leading country of the western world. Same with other kinds of infrastructure like walkways, power lines etc. I was just amazed.
Where in the US were you? Quality of infrastructure can vary a lot from one place to another. When I was in Milwaukee, WI for a summer I went down to Chicago a few times. You could tell when you crossed the state line blindfolded. The Wisconsin roads were rough and chewed up and the Illinois roads were mostly in great condition. California's roads went to pot when Arnie was governor, but they have been doing a lot of work on them the last few years. The last few times I've been to California I had to drive through major construction projects somewhere.
The Autobahn is usually more than twice as thick as the interstate and undergoes meticulous inspection. It is very expensive to build, but holds up much better.
AustinPowers
Total Smeghead
Columbus, Ohio was our base. Then going up and around Pennsylvania, New York, then into Canada (Toronto and surrounding area) and back via Michigan to Columbus.
The winters in that part of the world are very hard on the roads. It's also the part of the country called the Rust Belt. Economically it's been depressed since manufacturing started moving overseas. I haven't been to that part of the country, but I wouldn't be surprised if the roads were pretty bad around there.
Here on the West Coast road maintenance has a fairly high priority. The roads in our town took a beating when we had a bad snow two winters back. Snow and ice were on the road for about a week and a lot of pot holes developed. The city went out and patched them as soon as the weather allowed. Our neighborhood street was developing cracks and the city sealed all the cracks last summer.
I get a chuckle out of this. We Californians spent $1,400,000,000 recently in my area to take a freeway that is in great shape, and rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. The surface roads around it are crumbling from all the construction. That's no exaggeration. Potholes and grass growing through the pavement abounds; you cannot avoid it.
Why would we spend that much of our earnings on fixing a road that was in excellent shape? So we could swap our HOV lanes for more toll-roads:
Did $1.4 billion 91 Freeway toll lanes project make traffic worse in Corona? – Press Enterprise
The end result was more congestion, more confusion, more accidents, less money for badly needed road repairs.
But there is always a bright side. For the rich. I don't care if it costs up to $25.55 (and rising) to drive 18 miles. That would not cover the tip on a lunch for 4. It just sucks for the working class who cannot afford it, so they must surrender more hours of their life to that sea of taillights each day. The King's Highway. It's good to be King.
It sucks if you are a peasant though. Welcome to California, please kiss Jerry's ring on the way in. Thanks in advance.
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