Polizei friend, ally and occasional contributor Jordan Vega took some time out from his MBA studies to watch the new Knight Rider…er…in hopes of re-living his mispent youth. Click below to read his review of the first episode.
People who knew Serena Sutton-Smith said she had a history of erratic behavior. The 54 year-old bartender emerged from a side road without stopping, nearly causing an accident with Paula Small. Small then pulled over to speak with Sutton-Smith and while Small was getting out of her car, Sutton-Smith rammed her Vauxhall Nova into Small’s Fiat Punto and then kept her foot on the accelerator.
"Quit building cars that can exceed the speed limit" is Op-Ed contributor, Kent Sepkowitz’s solution for decreasing fatalities. He doesn’t mention anything about improving driver skill or making the tests to get a license any more difficult. Isn’t a bad driver in a car going below the speed limit more dangerous than a good driver exceeding the limit? Speed kills when the driver is in over his head, when he doesn’t know his limits or the car’s limits. Those two skills can be taught.
According to the Transportation Research Institute at the Univ. of Michigan, high gas prices have helped reduced the number of fatalities to their lowest levels since 1961. The study’s author, Michael Sivak, says $3.00-plus per gallon gas has caused a tipping point not only in how much they drive but also where, when and how they drive. Accoring to the AP story, if the pattern continues it could lead to "an unheard of improvement" in motor vehicle fatality statistics. Based on data from three government agencies, Sivak predicts predicts 2008 will drop below 37,000 deaths.
Watch the video and decide for yourself. The witnesses got the cars wrong, and the SUV/trailer appears to have lost control before the Gumballers passed. My gut tells me that the 2008 Gumball 3000 cars nearby probably weren’t the cause of the jack-knifed SUV/trailer accident seen in the right lane above.
And the hits just keep coming! On his way to a private airfield, Schumacher was attempting a pass another car and hit Martin Kingham while the man was closing a security gate that extended onto the street. After the impact catapulted him face-down onto the hood of a nearby van, Kingham said Schumacher was furious with him, yelling, "What the f*****g hell were you doing in the road?"
…But it’s not clear whether or not he was driving or a passenger when the F430 test-mule/prototype went off the Nurburgring track and into a guardrail at 155mph on the Schwedenkreuz corner. Schumacher reportedly called his publicist to say "We have crashed the car but are going to continue with another one," leaving out the identity of the driver. Some reports said Schumacher’s son Mick was in the passenger seat while Schumacher was at the wheel and others say that a driver named Raffaele De Simon wrecked it with Schumi riding shotgun.
According to TheNewspaper, Arizona will soon have the largest speed- and red-light camera network of any state in the US, and in preparation for the increase in rear-end collisions caused by drivers panic-braking before red lights to avoid tickets, the state has set aside $500K to fit police cars with fire-suppression kits. The Peoria, AZ police department thinks that rear-end collisions are a lesser evil compared to the 90-degree collisions caused by red-light running. If Pinto-esque exploding gas tanks aren’t much to worry about, then why the fire-suppresion kits? And why doesn’t Ford fix the problem?
Seems logical that Cali would have the most speed traps (according to speedtrap.org) as they’re the most-populated and have tons of roads. The rest of the top 10 fall into the similar population-to-area ratio. In descending order after Cali, the most speed traps are in Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, NY, Ohio, NJ, Pennsylvania and Georgia. South Dakota, which is near the bottom, also has the city considered the safest to drive in, which is Sioux Falls, according to Allstate Insurance. You probably won’t be finding many of Jalopnik’s Top Ten Real Life Car Chases coming from that state.