Should you buy road hazard insurance when you buy new tyres?

Tyres are expensive. But they're sort of critical to your car so it's not like you can ignore them. Once you include the cost of labour and balancing, it's not unusual to end up spending $900 or more for a set of four. So when the person at the tyre place asks if you want "road hazard insurance" (the name varies by store), the question is - do you? Most places will do free tyre rotations and in some cases they'll also do free puncture repair. So what is road hazard insurance? Generally speaking it's the tyre equivalent of catastrophic health insurance. It covers damage to the tyres which is so severe that the tyre can't be repaired. Blowouts because of debris, getting chunks of metal wedged in the tyre, having it sliced open because of debris - there are many ways you can destroy your rubber without really trying. The cool thing is that most of these plans are not pro-rated meaning that you get a straight replacement tyre no matter what age it is. The price is good too. Normally about $20 per tyre.

But there are some things to check and consider. For example if you have a Subaru or any other vehicle with permanent all wheel drive (no center viscous coupling) then there's a good chance that destroying a single tyre will result in you needing to replace all four. Because of the design of those all wheel drive systems they just don't tolerate tyres with radically different tread depths (and thus radii). Road hazard insurance only covers the one tyre that had the damage.

Also worth considering that tyre failure because of manufacturing defects, while rare, would NOT be covered by this sort of plan. Instead it would be covered by the manufacturer warranty. 

You might ask how a $20 stake can give you a full replacement tyre. Surely the tyre stores would go out of business? Not really. It's a straight numbers game. The number of people who take this insurance far, far, far outweighs the number of tyres that they'll ever need to replace due to catastrophic failure. Tyres these days are pretty damn well made.

So should you take the insurance if offered? Honestly I would. $80 for no quibble coverage on four tyres is also a numbers game. If even one of your $200 tyres suffers this sort of damage, you still only paid $80 to have it replaced. 

The lack of driver training in Utah really shows

I live in Utah now. I've driven in many countries and many states in the US, and by far and away the drivers here in Utah are just useless compared to most other places. They brake and slow down for the most inane things. Bends in the road, traffic cones, bridges over the road, green lights. Literally anything that isn't a dead straight line free of traffic and they'll brake. There's a section of motorway heading north out of the city here that is 5 lanes wide and even in the middle of the night there's a traffic jam there. The only reason is that the entire motorway does a long right-to-left 'S' bend with a slight hill in the middle. There's no on-ramps, no off-ramps, nobody merging, no changes in the HOV lane. Merely the presence of two bends and hill causes people's brake lights to come on. Just for reference, these are not tight bends. You could easily do that entire section of road at well over 100mph if it was empty and you wouldn't even notice it.
It's so bad that I've seen people brake and swerve for a shower of leaves coming off a tree and blowing into the road. People now regularly slow down to a near stop at green traffic lights. They don't know how to pass a cyclist without literally driving into oncoming traffic on the other side of the road. They have no concept of how wide their vehicles are so to pass a bus that has pulled over - well - for the most part they won't, they'll just sit there blocking traffic.
It's all down to one thing : in the US, a driving license is considered to be a right rather than a privilege, and as such it's made as easy as possible to get one. For example in Utah, the road test is 7 minutes in some suburban back street with no traffic, and the written test is a non-time-limited, open-book, multiple choice test. (although believe it or not people still can't pass it). Compare that to places like Sweden, Norway, England, Germany - any other country where driving is taken seriously - where it can cost a couple of thousand dollars and a nine month investment of time to get a driving license.
It's no surprise then that the accident rate in Utah is four times the US national average, and sixteen times the European average......

The key here is traffic FLOW. Get out of the passing lanes!

If you're on the motorway, and you're being law-abiding, doing the speed limit, and everyone around you is going 10mph faster than you, then believe it or not, you're the problem, not them. In fact, in that scenario, YOU are the one breaking the law.
Across the US, there are four different regulations for the left lane - and when you should leave it. The image here shows laws:

A summary of the state-by-state laws in America can be found here. The same laws are true in most countries - you only use the outer-most lane to pass, then you pull in.

Traffic safety has everything to do with the FLOW of traffic and not much to do with the SPEED of traffic. In low-speed areas, if you drive too slow believing you're being safe, what's likely happening is that you're irritating the people behind you. (Remember: if there's more than one lane, and you're in the outside lane traveling below the speed limit, you're the one breaking the law).
You might think that you're doing some sort of civic duty in trying to control the speed of the traffic, but that's not your responsibility. Your responsibility is to ensure that, as part of a collection of drivers sharing the same road, you do your part to ensure everyone is as safe as possible.
10% of accidents happen during passing or changing lanes. By trying to be the morality police, you're enticing others to try to pass you. In a two-lane scenario, people WILL pass you on the right - which in some places is illegal and in others is not advised. In this scenario, the fact is that you are part of the problem, irrespective of what you think.
The key issue here is difference in vehicle speed, not the speed itself. If you're driving slower than everyone else, you're presenting a 'rock in a river' scenario where everyone else encounters you at speed and has to either slow down or pass you. This difference in speed is what reduces the time available for other drivers to take evasive action. That leads to accidents. If you speed up, the difference in speed between you and everyone else drops, the time for others to see you and take evasive action increases and the accident rate drops.
Around where I live, they recently upped the speed limit from 65 to 70 in the motorways around the city. It went up from 70 to 75 on the outskirts and from 75 to 80 in the rural areas. The news was full of panicky people telling us how this was going to cause a horrendous increase in accidents, and how could the police and city be so irresponsible, and won't somebody think of the children?
Naturally, as often happens when speed limits are increased, the overall accident rate actually went down. Significantly.
But why? The change encouraged the slower drivers to speed up. Previously, the limit was 65 and everyone except the law-abiding drivers drove at 75. By increasing the limit, the overall speed remained at 75 but the law-abiding drivers increased their speed to 70 - meaning the difference between them and the rest of the traffic halved (on average).
If you want to see how clearing the left lane works when done properly, and why speed isn't the issue, look to countries in Europe. In places where left-lane etiquette is obeyed and enforced by the police, the accident rates are significantly lower. For example - in the US, the accident rate is about 12.9 deaths per 100,000 vehicle. In Germany it's 6.8 - nearly half. Remember in Germany there are still long sections of motorway where there is no limit. Even in countries where the speed isn't unlimited - countries like England, Finland, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, France and Australia - all these countries have super strict left-lane laws and all of them have fewer deaths per passenger-mile than the US.
But what about the police?
Generally speaking, unless you're being a total dick, the police aren't going to pull you over for keeping up with everyone else on the road. They're more concerned about the overall safety of the volume of traffic than they are about whether you personally are doing 75mph in a crowd of thousands of other cars all doing the same speed.
So please pay attention to the overall flow of traffic when you're driving. This includes everything from speed on motorways to making sure you merge smartly with city traffic when pulling out from side street (ie. don't amble into a 40mph traffic flow at walking pace - speed up and keep up). If you miss a turn, go on to the next one and turn off there and figure it out - don't jam on the brakes and force everyone to stop (and potentially rear-end you).
Oh - and get out of the left lane when you're done passing. And if you're not passing, just pull in.

Seems humans are intervening in drone car testing far more than we knew.

In my single-man crusade to try to keep people from being blinded by hype on drone cars, here's my first post for 2016.
You're likely aware by now that for a company to test drone cars in California, they need a permit, and they need to report many things as part of the permit process. One of those things is how many times the driver is forced to take control of the car. Well - the first round of filings is in, and if you're holding your breath for drone cars to be the hot new thing, you might want to start breathing again.
Overall, seven companies (Bosch, Delphi, Google, Nissan, Mercedes, Tesla and VW) filed 'disengagement' reports in the fifteen-month period between September 2014 and November 2015. A disengagement is defined as either the self-driving software failing and needing a human to take control, or the test driver feeling compelled to take control to avoid a dangerous situation.
If you read the report (linked below) you'll see there were 2,894 disengagements logged. By far and away the most disengagements were for "perception discrepancy". This means the car failed to see something, or failed to react in the correct way to external stimulus. The lowest number of disengagements were for "incorrect behaviour prediction of other traffic participants". This last one flies in the face of Google's (in particular) oft-touted excuse that it's always other people to blame for their car having accidents and disengagements.
The reports are not a glowing endorsement of drone cars: for the public to properly accept them as an alternative, the error rate will have to be ridiculously low. 12 potential crashes per 50,000 miles is far, far, far from perfect.
DMV Autonomous car disengagement report

Shocker : motorcyclist fatalities skyrocket after Michigan repeals helmet law.

This ought to surprise nobody, but in the three years since Michigan repealed their mandatory helmet law for motorcyclists, the accident and injury rates have skyrocketed. Deaths at the scene of the accident have quadrupled. Deaths in hospital from head injuries have tripled. Severity of injuries to the head have massively increased. Why? Because people are idiots. When the helmet law was in effect, 14% of riders rode without helmets. Since 2012, that number has jumped to 68%. Apparently these people's brains are so dumb that they can't figure out to protect the skulls they live in.
Helmet law or not, I always ride with a helmet. And an armoured jacket, leather boots and armoured reinforced gloves. It's common sense. Well - it should be - but for 68% of the riders in Michigan, it seems they have no common sense. They don't seem to care about their own lives, or the effect their death has on their friends and families. They don't seem to care about the cost to all taxpayers who are having to foot the bill for uninsured riders who are killing themselves. They don't seem to understand the effect that a crash has on the other people involved. But shit - yeah they understand 'Murica, freedom, fuck yeah! You know what - being mandated to wear a helmet is not infringing on anyone's freedom.
Injuries soar after Michigan stops requiring motorcycle helmets

The rise of fuel-delivery services

In the same way that Uber and Lyft crowd-sourced taxis and ride-sharing, there are an increasing number of companies springing up who are catering to the laziest of lazy drivers - those who can't be bothered to fill their own car with petrol. PurpleDelivery, FuelMeApp, FuelDrop and FillD (among others) all offer the same basic service. For a small fee (usually $5) they will fill your car up anywhere. You just need to leave your petrol cap unlocked (or give them your keys) and give them your credit card details.
What could possibly go wrong?
Apart from the obvious issues with giving a complete stranger your credit card details and the keys to your car, there's the 'green' issue to consider. When you fill up, you drive your one car to the filling station and fill it up. When someone comes to you, you've driven your one car to where you are, and now they're driving to meet you, arguably doubling the CO2 emissions required to fill your car with petrol.
Then there's the cost consideration. All the services say their fuel is a 'fair price' but in checking, they're all a good 10¢ to 20¢ above the price you would pay at the pump if you filled your own car up. Add on to that the $5 service fee and it begins to look a lot less attractive.
What about grade? If you have a high compression engine, you need higher octane fuel. I think we can surmise with absolute certainty that most of these companies would happily charge you 20¢ above the premium price whilst delivering the regular grade petrol to you.
Then there's the liability of a crowd-sourced network of privately-owned cars and trucks driving around with jerry cans full of gas in the back. If you were a driver for one of these companies, I guarantee your insurance wouldn't cover you for transporting a volatile compound, nor conducting business. Plus, generally speaking, you need the volatile compound warning placards on the outside of your vehicle if you're using it to transport stuff like petrol. Do you really see people wanting to put this on this private vehicle?:

Don't be lazy. Just go and get petrol yourself like you've always done. It's really not that difficult.