Get up fifteen minutes earlier

For as much as I drive, you'd think it would be difficult for me to be surprised by anything I see on the roads any more.
Not true.
I'm used to seeing women driving with the rear view mirror skewed at an odd angle - it means they're putting make-up on. Don't think that's a sexist or chauvinist comment - it's the absolute truth. We've all seen it happen. I see it regularly on my commute. A few weeks ago there was a new experience for me though. I'd followed a woman for a couple of miles, watching her primp and preen using the rear view mirror to fuss with her hair and finish putting on her mascara, and when she'd done, she straightened it up. A good sign, you'd think, but then her driving deteriorated even more and I was curious to see why. She clearly wasn't on a cellphone - the normal culprit - and she wasn't wrangling kids in the back, so I drove alongside to have a look. It turned out that she was eating cereal, out of a bowl, with a spoon. ie. she was using both hands to eat breakfast, whilst driving at 50mph in heavy traffic with her knees.

Here's the deal, people. Get up earlier. Anyone who does stuff like this and uses the excuse "I don't have enough time" is an idiot. Of course you have the time. Set your alarm 15 minutes earlier, get up, do your make up and have breakfast at home, then drive to work. If you can't figure something that simple out, you shouldn't be driving.

Hack your car ... through your TPMS sensors

A short blog post this week. Merely a link to an interesting article relating how some researchers have proven that you can hack a car's ECU via its tyre pressure monitoring sensors. As these are wireless, snooping their ID gives a hacker a way into the ECU, allowing manipulations from the benign activating of your windscreen wipers, to the dangerous disabling of your brakes.
Hack your car via the TPMS (ars technica).

Why do cyclists think road rules don't apply to them?

I grew up in the Netherlands, so I spent the formative years of my life cycling everywhere. I still have a bicycle and still use it. Apparently I'm the only one who understands that road rules apply to cyclists too, because in this day and age, they do seem for the most part to be a menace. Frankly it's surprising more of them aren't hood ornaments because they certainly make every attempt to get into an accident.

Every morning on my pleasingly short commute, I come across people cycling three-wide, blocking the road. They refuse to cycle in-line in the cycle lane, and get really pissed off when people honk or shout at them. But then they go on to filter to the front of the line at traffic lights (which I have no problem with) before then cycling through the red light (which I very much have a problem with). Every day I get some bozo breezing through a stop sign that I've stopped at, then getting bent out of shape when the drive who had priority nearly runs them down. Every day I see these two-wheeled idiots hopping up and down kerbs menacing pedestrians one second, then blocking the road the next.

I'm sorry people but if you're going to cycle like complete assholes, then expect to be treated like complete assholes.

American roundabouts

Roundabouts are a wonderful invention. Traffic generally flows on and off without too much hassle. You wait for a gap in traffic, the hop on, and hop off at your required exit.
Here in America, they've taken that notion and ruined it by turning roundabouts into 4-way stops - sort of like traffic lights on roundabouts in England but without the lights. So rather than flowing traffic, like they're supposed to, they stop traffic. Worse, if the roundabout is big enough, rather than giving way to traffic already on the roundabout like everywhere else in the world, you have to give way to traffic entering the roundabout.

It does rather explain the following comment I saw once:
Watching Americans trying to negotiate a roundabout in England is an entertaining and embarrassing representation of the human ignorance about an intersection that does not require you to stop but does require you to yield. It seems to cause some sort of severe psychological disorder since it is neither green nor red, but requires them to steer and calculate approaching distances at the same time.

EPA Proposing new window information labels

The EPA are busy redesigning the familiar window labels that American buyers are used to seeing in car windows. They're trying to come to terms with how best to represent newer hybrids and all-electric vehicles. The simplest proposal has a slight label redesign, but essentially remains much like the labels available today. The larger redesign involves adding a prominent colour-coded grade to the vehicle, ranging from A to D, to give you a one-shot indicator as to how good or bad the vehicle is in terms of fuel economy. The US auto manufacturers aren't too keen on this last idea - probably because a lot of the vehicles would end up in the "D" category, but there's a way to go yet. If you want to get involved, the EPA have a website where you can see the new sticker designs and comment on them if you like:
New EPA fuel economy labels

A Toyota saved my wife's life.

Given all the bad press Toyota have had recently, I thought a positive note would help out. My wife drove a Yaris - a reasonable sized car in Europe but considered to be "too small" in the US. And by "too small" people equate that to "not safe". Fact: they're perfectly safe. Unfortunately my wife found that out the hard way. An early 90's Ford Explorer ran into her in an intersection last week. You know the ones - chunky, boxy, with I-beams for bumpers. My wife was able to get out and walk away because the Toyota did its job and protected her. We found out this morning that it was a total loss. So next time you have concerns about "small" cars in crashes with SUVs, look at this photo and remind yourself that the only injuries to my wife were seatbelt and airbag burns.