TxtStopper: Probably Illegal

I saw a press release about a device called the TxtStopper, which is a cell phone jammer you wire into your car's 12v power line to jam cell phones when your engine is running.  The idea is to keep your teenager from texting while driving.

This device is probably not legal in the U.S., since it interferes with legal and regulated cell phone signals.

Also, I don't see how they keep it just to your vehicle.  If it is so low powered that it doesn't extend much beyond about a 5 foot radius, it may not be powerful enough to reliably jam your phone.

Also, cell phones in vehicles have legitimate safety uses, such as 911. 

Bad idea.

Boycott BP?

Should you boycott BP?

Yes, maybe, no.

Yes because reduced wholesales of their products will hurt them in their pocket books and teach them a harsh lesson.

Maybe not, because chances are if you have a 401(k) or pension plan, you are infact a shareholder of BP, one of the largest (by capitalization) companies in the world.  You will help to damage your own retirement funds.

No, because you will hurt your local small-business owners who own BP stations, which are almost all franchises.  And BP is one of the largest employers in oil producing regions.  Many more people will lose jobs, than already are.

Myself, I am ambivalent.  I don't actively avoid BP stations these days, but I don't really seek them out either.  Besides, near me, Speedway and Valero brands are usually cheaper!

Want Less Oil Use? Raise Gas Taxes!

The laws of economics are nearly as immutable as the laws of physics.

If you want to reduce consumption of an item, increase its price, or reduce its supply (same effect, different mechanism).

David Frum points this out in a very lucid piece on CNN.com, here.

We want to get the country off oil? Tax it. (Politicians may not wish to say it, but their advisers can at least think it.) Then liberate people to find their own best alternative -- and incentivize industry to develop alternatives that make sense at the new higher price. And be prepared to argue candidly and straightforwardly in the marketplace of ideas why this new tax is right and justified.

If not, then kindly please spare us the grand speeches about how the status quo is the thing you will not accept. It is precisely the thing you are accepting.

However, as Frum correctly points out, a politician who raises gas taxes by $1+ per gallon will soon be an ex-politician.  That's because there is not really a strong consensus on reducing our use of fossil fuels in this country.  As I write here so often, people want cheap gas and high fuel efficiency, but they aren't willing to pay much for it.

One sensible solution to the sting of higher taxes is to do a "feebate" scheme, where the taxes which are collected are distributed back to the taxpayers as tax rebates.  This way, you would nudge the consumer to consume less fuel, but on average wouldn't hurt the economy much.  Congress can even play with the rebate rules, to penalize higher income consumers less than low income consumers, exclude business and agriculture uses, etc.

Instead, we have the perverse system of CAFE, which tells automakers what cars to build and in what mix they can sell them, but is largely invisible to the consumer except on the window stickers at the dealership.  

Well, CAFE isn't free either.  Getting to 36mpg is going to have some nasty side effects on the vehicles available on the marketplace, foremost of which is that cars are going to get more expensive.   So instead of slightly less expensive cars and pricier gas, we are going to have cheaper gas and more expensive cars.  You still pay in the end, though--efficiency costs money.  The advantage of the market approach is that the consumer has choice--if someone wants to drive a thirsty vehicle, and they can afford the gas tax,they can choose to pay.  With CAFE, the very choice of the thirsty vehicle may be taken away, depending on how the fleet average works out.

Gordon Murray's (Controversial) T.25

There are new photos out of designer Gordon Murray's proposed T.25 city car (see photos here).

It looks like a very tidy design, with a 1+2 seating arrangement where the passengers sit behind the driver, who is front and center.  But the ergonomics look very tricky--to get those 2nd row passengers in their seats, they have to climb over (I assume) a folded forward drivers seat, after negotiation the forward tilting cab.  

Unless the rear of the cab opens as well?  It is hard to tell from the press photos.

Even if the rear cabin opens, I don't think a forward opening door will be well received.  If it is raining, you (and our seat) are getting wet while you work on getting in or out.  If you are in a front end accident, it seems like it would be harder to open the door, if the hinge was crushed.  

The half-windows are also not going to go over well, although perhaps in the U.K fast food drive-through is not as common as in the U.S.  

Mandatory Breathalyzer Interlock?

Did you know that the NHTSA, together with 13 automakers, is working on a device which will test your breath alcohol concentration, to be installed (they hope) in all vehicles?  Did you know that they are spending $2,000,000 per year (some of which is taxpayer money) on this project?  Now Senator Udall from New Mexico is proposing to increase funding to $12,000,000/year.   

To its credit, the DADSS project acknowledges that in order to be accepted by the public, the system they come up with must be practical and non-intrusive.  They are pursuing several methods of doing a passive test, to avoid having to have the driver blow into a tube and wait several minutes before allowing the car to start.

They are looking at both contacting and non-contacting methods.  One method is to have an IR spectrograph system which reads the blood alcohol level by analyzing the reflected light from a persons skin, which would have to be touching a sensor hidden somewhere such as the steering wheel or shift knob.  Another method would be to analyze the vapor in the cabin using several "sniffers".

However, even a passive system has some significant issues that will need to be overcome before the average person will agree to have one in their vehicle.  The chance of a false positive must be vanishingly small.  But at the same time, the system must be difficult to defeat, or it loses its protective effect.

And any system that degrades over time, to the point where it starts calling false positives, would not be acceptable.   

Consider a contacting spectrograph sensor.  What if it is winter, and our driver wants to wear gloves?  Do you make him remove his gloves to start the car?  Would people submit to that? (No).   

Can the system tell the difference between a bag of saline solution and a persons finger?  Could it be fooled with a hot dog? 

Or what if you are using cabin air sensors, and you are sober but your friend in the passenger seat is drunk?  The system must be able to tell the difference reliably to be acceptable.

Would an air analyzer system work with the windows down, or with the ventilation fans blowing?  Any solution which requires people to start with closed windows or without ventilation won't be accepted.

Could a cabin air analyzer be fooled by taping over the sensor inlet ports?

To be effective and safe, the system would have to make an up or down call quickly while the car is parked.  Which means it will almost certainly have to be a default-to-guilty (restrictive) system as opposed to a non-restrictive  default-to-innocent system.   If the system allows you to drive away, but then makes a "intoxicated" call later, and stops your car, it may leave you in an unsafe situation.  

I am skeptical about the idea that every car should have an alcohol detector on board.  I think many lives could be saved if, instead, the system were required as an after-market installation for anyone who is caught DUI.  I am not ready to accept, and I don't think most people would accept a system which presumes that you are drunk unless you can prove otherwise.  

You can read more about the DADSS project at http://www.dadss.org/.

An interesting source of counter-advocacy is here: http://interlockfacts.com/, which is run by the American Beverage Institute.

Camry Most "American" Car?

According to the Detroit News (here), Cars.com finds that the Camry is the "most American car", based on domestic parts content and popularity.

I suppose it is fair, and congratulations to Toyota for supporting the U.S. economy as much as the Camry does.

But...

If you follow the flow of engineering and the flow of money, the picture is a little different.  The Camry has quite a bit of its engineering done in Japan, which means that Japanese engineers are doing the work, not U.S. engineers.  Also, the profits from the sale of the Camry flow back through Japan, though the shareholders of Toyota are global.

Consider instead a car designed in the U.S. and built over the border, such as the Ford Fusion, or the Chrysler 300.  Yes, it is being bolted together by Mexicans (or Canadians, or even Mexican-Canadians), from parts that flow from all over.  However, U.S. engineers and technicians worked on the product, and and the profits flow mostly to U.S. shareholders (and the .gov in the case of Chrysler and GM).

It isn't black and white, and if you buy a Camry, to my thinking it is much better than buying a car designed and built overseas.  But if you want to support American engineering and American shareholders, you can do better than Camry.

The Truth About The Vuvuzela

The vuvuzela was originally invented by the Jews! Made of a rams horn, the shofar was blown during battle, and I am sure during ancient soccer games. Today, it is blown during the high holidays.