thewayne: (Default)
From Slashdot: Highway patrols across America "are reporting a rise in reckless driving," writes ABC News.

Slashdot reader quonset shared their report:
In Connecticut, traffic has been cut in half compared to last year, but fatal motor vehicle accidents are up by about 40%. "We're finding that with the open roads, certain individuals are taking this as an opportunity to push their vehicles to the limit," Connecticut State Police Trooper Josue Dorelus told ABC News' Transportation Correspondent Gio Benitez. Dorelus said they have seen a 90% increase in cars going over 15 miles above the speed limit during the coronavirus pandemic...

"When you're going in excess of 100 miles an hour, these crashes are inevitably going to be fatal or near fatal," Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase told ABC News. In Massachusetts, the fatality rate for car crashes is rising. In Minnesota, motor vehicle crashes and fatalities have more than doubled compared to the same time period in previous years... Pam Shadel Fischer, the Governors Highway Safety Association's senior director of external engagement, said it could be because it is harder for drivers to gauge their own speed without other drivers on the road.

I wonder if that percentage increase of fatalities appears higher in a low-population states like Connecticut (3.565 million people). The article also notes that in California (population 39.5 million), their Highway Patrol "issued nearly 2,500 citations statewide for driving over 100 miles per hour from mid-march to mid-April -- an 87% jump from the same time last year..." But another article points out that from March 19 to April 30, the overall number of crashes in California dropped 75% while the number of people killed declined by 88%, and there was a 62% decrease in injuries (plus a 42% drop in DUI arrests).

Interestingly, that same article points out that from late March 19 to May 13 there were 6,043 citations for driving over 100 miles per hour -- so it's spiked by 3,543 in the last month since "mid-April", to a number that's over 1,000 more than the month before.


ABC News article: https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-uptick-speeding-fatal-crashes-amid-pandemic/story?id=70751844

Slashdot article: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/05/23/0342225/with-highway-traffic-down-are-reckless-drivers-still-increasing-highway-fatalities


I saw a video of an idiot in New York City who took a hypercar, probably worth half a million or more, and blitzed it down a street, thinking the streets were empty. They weren't. He hit I don't know how many cars, a City bus, destroyed his car and caused I don't know how much damage or injuries.
thewayne: (Default)
Saturday we drove from Cloudcroft to Phoenix. We stop in Tucson at Cheesecake Factory before the final leg. And we have our nibble and tea and we pay. I make a pit stop, Russet goes to the car to walk the dogs.

And she can't open the door!

A little back story.

Last year or very early this year, I don't remember, she took the dogs for a run up the mountain approx half-way between Cloudcroft and the observatory. Unbeknownst to her, she had a hole in her pocket, and her car keys fell out! She calls me, I come out to help her look for them, and we fail. But at least I have an aux key for her car and can get her home. We go out a second time, and while we don't find them, there's RV campers who figure out what we're doing and they'd found them.

And they'd been run-over. Her remote key fob was OK, the remote fob for my car: RIP. Thoroughly crushed, the circuit board was snapped in half. It was hit just right.

Since that happened, she started using my valet key, which manually opens the door - you know, insert key in lock and turn - and starts the car. Beats paying $3-400 for a new remote.

Until Saturday night when we discovered that not only does her key no longer open my car, but MY key no longer opens my door when inserted into the lock!

The event between, let's say pre-Thanksgiving, and now? My car accident where the woman made the illegal left turn and smashed the left front of my car.

They had to repaint the driver's door, apparently there was some mild damage. Apparently when they put the inner door back on, someone failed to notice they hadn't reconnected the key lock!

So now I'm going to have to take it back in to the body shop and have them do that. Hopefully it won't take long, but they'll have to take that door panel off, which is a bit of a hassle.

*sigh*

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123456 7
8910 11121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 13th, 2025 06:55 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios