(Source: New York Times)

Day after day, night after night, Francisco Hernandez Jr. rode the subway. He had a MetroCard, $10 in his pocket and a book bag on his lap. As the human tide flowed and ebbed around him, he sat impassively, a gangly 13-year-old boy in glasses and a redAfter getting in trouble in class in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and fearing another scolding at home, he had sought refuge in the subway system. He removed the battery from his cellphone. “I didn’t want anyone to scream at me,” he said.

All told, Francisco disappeared for 11 days last month — a stretch he spent entirely in subway stations and on trains, he says, hurtling through four boroughs. And somehow he went undetected, despite a round-the-clock search by his panicked parents, relatives and family friends, the police and the Mexican Consulate.

Since Oct. 26, when a transit police officer found him in a Coney Island subway station, no one has been able to fully explain how a boy could vanish for so long in a busy train system dotted with surveillance cameras and fliers bearing his photograph. hoodie, speaking to no one.

Francisco told the paper that he spent his time on three subway lines, the D, F and 1, and would ride the trains until the last stop then hop on the next one going back the other way.  He ate whatever he could afford from subway newsstands, like potato chips and jellyrolls, then neatly folded the wrappers and saved them in his backpack, while drinking bottled water. He drank bottled water. He used the bathroom in the Stillwell Avenue station in Coney Island.

Otherwise, he says, he slipped into a kind of stupor, sleeping much of the time, his head on his book bag. “At some point I just stopped feeling anything,” he recalled.

(Source: Mashable; Washington Post; Pew Research Center)

Image Courtesy: Pew Research Center

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just published the results of a study on distracted driving behavior amongst teenagers which shows that teens are aware of the dangers of texting while driving, but they choose to do it anyway.

After surveying 800 teens in 4 US cities over the summer of 2009, Pew estimates that 26% of all American teens 16-17 have texted while driving, and 43% have talked on a cell phone while driving.

Even more alarming is that 48% of teens 12-17 have witnessed someone else texting while driving, which points to an ambivalence and acceptance of the practice. The findings also indicate that even state laws prohibiting these activities may not be discouraging newly licensed drivers from using their mobile devices while behind the wheel.

Here are the major findings from the survey and focus groups (courtesy of Pew Research Center):

• 75% of all American teens ages 12-17 own a cell phone, and 66% use their phones to send or receive text messages.
• Older teens are more likely than younger teens to have cell phones and use text messaging; 82% of teens ages 16-17 have a cell phone and 76% of that cohort are cell phone texters.
• One in three (34%) texting teens ages 16-17 say they have texted while driving. That translates into 26% of all American teens ages 16-17.
• Half (52%) of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. That translates into 43% of all American teens ages 16-17.
• 48% of all teens ages 12-17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting.
• 40% say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.

The NHTSA said that 5,870 people died and an estimated 515,000 were injured last year in accidents that police attributed to distracted driving.

That number of fatalities last year was exactly half the number of people who died as a result of drunken driving. The actual number of distracted-driving deaths and injuries is probably much higher than the numbers show. There is nothing like the blood alcohol test to prove that someone was texting — phone records are not clear-cut proof and drivers who cause accidents are no more prone to admit they were texting than they are to say they are drunk.

At a conference he convened to discuss distracted driving, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stressed the importance of parents paying attention to the road to provide a positive example for their children.

The Pew research found that too few do.

“The frequency of teens reporting parent cellphone use behind the wheel in our focus groups was striking, and suggested, in many cases, that texting while driving is a family affair,” the report said.

Click here to read the entire research report in HTML.   Or you can alternatively download/read the report in the PDF format shown below.

(Source: Washington Post; Bloomberg)

The Obama administration will propose that the federal government take over safety regulation of the nation’s subway and light-rail systems, responding to what it says is haphazard and ineffective oversight by state agencies.

How do you drop ~$2m worth in a pond of water in a jiffy?  This is how they do it (at least one man did it successfully) in Texas.  Read along this twisted version of a Pelican Brief style thriller ( though no murder of human beings involved, it involves a very expensive &  rare automobile)..

A man blamed a low-flying pelican and a dropped cell phone for his veering his million-dollar sports car off a road and into a salt marsh near Galveston. The accident happened about 3 p.m. Wednesday on the frontage road of Interstate 45 northbound in La Marque, about 35 miles southeast of Houston.

The Lufkin, Texas, man told of driving his luxury, French-built Bugatti Veyron when the bird distracted him, said La Marque police Lt. Greg Gilchrist. The motorist dropped his cell phone, reached to pick it up and veered off the road and into the salt marsh. The car was half-submerged in the brine about 20 feet from the road when police arrived.

The story reported by Chris Paschenko @ The Galveston County Daily News has some interesting details. The man was uninjured after escaping the partially submerged Bugatti Veyron as it came to rest in about 2 feet of saltwater. The man, who refused to give his name, was looking at real estate in Galveston.

About 3 p.m. a low-flying pelican distracted him as he traveled north on Interstate 45 just south of the hurricane levee near Omega Bay. The man jerked the wheel, dropped his cell phone, and the car’s front tire left the frontage road and entered a muddy patch, which foiled his attempt to maneuver away from the lagoon. Chris’ report says Veyron’s powerful engine gurgled like an outboard motor for about 15 minutes before it died.

(Soureces: AP Via Google; The Galveston County Daily News; The Inquisitr)

(Source: New York Times)

Car-to-car communication is a dream of traffic researchers. Radar, video and other sensors in a car would understand the environment around it and communicate such information as sudden braking, rainfall and speed to the receptors in other cars, enabling other drivers to avoid accidents and congestion.

High-tech car-to-car communication is already here in France, but the object is avoiding fines of 90 euros ($140) or more for speeding. Several companies have introduced devices that will alert drivers to the presence of mobile radar units set up by the police. One such device is made by Coyote, a French company, which plans to bring its product to the United States early next year.

Coyote’s best-selling model is the Mini Coyote. It costs around $225, which includes three months of service. After that, there’s a monthly charge of $15.  Business Wire says Coyote has already expanded to Italy, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Belgium and will be available in the United States in January with its main service and an iCoyote application for iPhones.

The Mini Coyote is the size of a cellphone and fits on a car’s dashboard. When a subscriber to the system spots a mobile radar unit beside the road, the driver pushes a button on the device that sends a signal to a central computer giving the location and direction of travel being watched. Three seconds later, the computer sends a warning to all other subscribers within 12½ miles of the point.

Jean-Marc Van Laethem, chief executive for Coyote, started the company with a partner in 2006. Today, there are 250,000 subscribers in France.

Click here to read the entire article.

Transportgooru Musings: As rightly pointed out in the source article, I wonder how this product would compete against the ones that are already in the market place, especially those that are already doing what exactly the  Coyote is designed for.  One particularly popular application on the ever expanding iPhone market is the “Trapster“, also relies on the same principles (crowd sourcing) and has made serious inroads with roughly 50,000 downloads per day, ranking it the 2oth most popular application in the iPhone’s App store.  Even if Cayote starts todays, it still has a long way to go before catching up with Trapster and its ilk that have firmly established themselves.  Maybe it was a good sell in France and some European markets where there is little competition from SmartPhone market applications such as Trapster but in the US it will be a bloody battle before Cayote even makes a mark.  Me thinks, Cayote is a tad bit too late to enter the US market. Also, I think the days of walking into a store to buy a product that is exclusively designed to detect radar signals are fast coming to an end and the future of such “busting” applications are pointedly looking at mobile smartphone platforms such as the iPhone and Droid.  It would be interesting to see how the company takes that subscription-based business model from European markets and applies that to the US market.  That said, Cayote must have some compelling data that convinced them to make the product for sale at brick and motor stores. Let’s see how they do it in the days ahead…

(Source: Washington Post)

Since the spring, Metro officials have barred independent monitors from walking along subway tracks to observe safety procedures while trains are in normal service, even if escorted by Metro employees, newly obtained records show.

The monitors, from the Tri-State Oversight Committee, wanted to determine whether Metro was following rules put in place in recent years after a number of workers had been fatally injured on the job.

Instead, they have spent the past six months pressing Metro in writing and in person for access — a period in which two Metro employees were struck and fatally injured on the tracks.

The monitors became so frustrated that at one point, internal e-mails show, they discussed formally notifying federal officials and invoking their toughest sanction: declaring Metro to be officially out of compliance with safety requirements. Such a move could cause Metro to lose part of its federal funding.

In July, the oversight committee made a plea in writing, telling Metro that without access to live tracks, it couldn’t ensure workers’ safety.

On Aug. 9, a track vehicle on the Orange Line struck and killed Metro worker Michael Nash.

A month later, committee members met with Metro officials, telling them that if they were unable to get on the tracks they would “elevate this issue,” notes of the meeting show.

At 10:40 the next morning, a train near Reagan National Airport struck and fatally injured Metro technician John Moore.

Now, more than six months after the dispute began, safety monitors said they remain barred from entering the right of way along active train tracks.

Metro officials told the monitors that they were looking out for their safety. On Friday, Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that there had been a “misimpression” and that committee members could approach the tracks if accompanied by safety escorts.

The dispute encapsulates what many safety experts and federal officials have described as a fundamental flaw with Metro and other subway systems: a lack of effective and enforceable oversight that leaves transit systems in charge of policing their own safety.

Click here to read the entire article (free registration req’d)

Transportgooru Musings: Does anyone care to explain what the term “misimpression” is that Lisa Farbstein has cited in her rebuttal?  Does it usually take more than 6 months and a ton of e-mails to resolve this issue?  What happened to the good old telephone to the Committee Chair? How about a phone call from Catoe to the Tri-state Oversight Committee Chair explaining how favorable “Metro” is for such random safety checks? Hey, at the very least, can’t someone at Metro administration send a memorandum explaining what Lisa said to WashPost – ” committee members could approach the tracks if accompanied by safety escorts.”.. Now by NOT doing any of the above, Metro & its management has to do a big battle to undo this public relations mess…Oh not to mention, may be its time to think about a having a chat with the Chief Safety Officer while cleaning up this PR mess..

(Source: Mashable)

This astonishing video of a Russian forklift driver who smashes until shelves of Cognac and Vodka, and subsequently destroys a huge portion of the Moscow warehouse.

The driver of the forklift lost control, slammed into stock shelves, and seconds later was covered in bottles of alcohol. The driver is said to be okay with a minor leg injury, but the warehouse is looking at over $100,000 in damages.

(Source: Mashable & Guardian, UK)

Could the satnav (Satellite Navigation, for those not in know) – the saviour of many a long car journey – about to be consigned to the dustbin of history, alongside Betamax tapes and HD-DVDs?

After enjoying years of seemingly unassailable popularity with gadget fans and travelling salesmen, those little gadgets hanging on your vehicle’s Dashboards could become redundant excesses because of the threat from a new breed of mobile phones that feature the sort of mapping technology that wouldn’t look out of place on the most expensive TomTom. Google just released a beta version of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0. operating system, a new tool, based on Google’s existing road maps platform, that will provide turn-by-turn directions, automatic re-routing and 3D street-level views. In short, pretty much everything your satnav can do, but without the need to worry about an extra bit of kit when you load up the car.

The share prices of leading satnav manufacturers, such as TomTom and Garmin, nosedived on the news. Garmin’s share price dipped by 18 per cent, TomTom’s by 13 per cent – a huge hit, and a clear sign that the market is taking the threat posed by Google very seriously indeed.

Here’s a quick overview of the features:

• Search in plain English – quickly search and navigate to places, businesses, landmarks
• Search by voice
• View of live traffic data over the Internet.
• Search along route – find locations near your current path
• Satellite view – you can view the same satellite imagery you’ve seen Google Maps, on your phone
• Street View – check out what the exact surroundings of a location look like
• Car dock mode – when you place certain devices in a car dock, a special mode activates that enables easier operation

GPS turn-by-turn navigation has historically always been something you had to pay for. Creating and maintaining a map of the entire world, together with points of interests and traffic info, plus developing the algorithms that make sure you don’t take a wrong turn, costs millions of dollars. But Google is now offering it for free. The result was devastating for shares of GPS navigation companies: Garmin’s shares fell by 16.4%; TomTom’s by 20.8%. We’re talking billions of dollars of market capitalization, gone in one day, just because Google presented another free product (they release new products on a monthly, if not weekly basis).

(Source: Wired)

The senate, the Department of Transportation and the FCC want you to stop texting while driving, and on Wednesday, they all but declared a war on texting, promising education campaigns and laws to convince you to put your phone down — at least while you are piloting a two-ton SUV going 70 mph.

In a Senate hearing Wednesday, using a mobile phone while driving was said to be more dangerous than drunk driving, the cause of 16 percent of fatal accidents in the United States and a “perfect storm” of distraction.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood concluded his testimony by calling texting while driving a “menace to society,” saying the department’s research showed that 6,000 people a year died because it distracted drivers of all kinds. Here are some excerpts from the Secretary’s blog on this topic:

Here’s a start: Experts agree that there are three types of distraction–

Visual – taking your eyes off the road;

Manual – taking your hands off the wheel; and

Cognitive – taking your mind off the road.

While all distractions can adversely impact safety, texting is particularly troubling because it involves all three types of distraction. In the words of Dr. John Lee of the University of Wisconsin, this produces a “perfect storm.”

Not convinced? Our latest research shows that nearly 6,000 people died last year in crashes involving a distracted driver, and more than half a million people were injured.

At issue is the Distracted Driving Prevention Act of 2009 (.pdf) that Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) introduced Wednesday that seeks to ban texting while driving, a category that includes using a PDA, checking e-mail on a BlackBerry or manipulating a GPS unit with your hand. The bill (S. 1938) also targets drivers who make calls without using a headset. Texting or calling while pulled over on the side of the road is fine, but not while at a red light.  

Rockefeller noted  “Nowadays, you have to text or you are not with it — you are not educated. But it’s lethal behavior when you get in a car.”   He wants some sort of phone-blocking device installed in cars, presumably one that knows the difference between a driver’s phone and passengers’ phones.

Rockefeller seemed to recognize that perhaps the only thing more dangerous than texting while driving is trying to take the media spotlight from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), and so let him testify at the hearing on the Rockefeller-Lautenberg bill because Schumer had introduced the Alert Drivers Act earlier this year.

By contrast Schumer’s bill would withhold 25 percent of federal transportation funding from states that don’t implement strong anti-texting while driving rules, a tactic Congress has used in the past to force states to lower their speed limits and raise the drinking age to 21.

(Sources contributing to this hybrid report:  The Hill, Guardian, UK & NY Times)

Refiners Warn of ‘Staggering’ Costs, Job Losses From Senate Climate Bill

A Senate climate change proposal could add 77 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline, according to Domestic oil refiners.  A group of refiners used the possible price hike on Wednesday to launch the latest in a series of attacks against the proposal. The CEO of refining giant Valero Energy Corp. also warned today that the Senate climate legislation would give a competitive advantage to foreign refiners and cost U.S. jobs.

But Democrats on a key Senate panel shot back, saying the industry’s estimate is based on an inflated projection of the price of permits companies will have to hold to cover their carbon emissions. A cost containment mechanism will keep the price from approaching the industry’s estimate, supporters said.

The lawmakers said the bill will spur industry innovation and that will create millions of new “green” jobs. The chief complaint from refiners is that they wouldn’t get enough free pollution allowances to cover emissions they are on the hook for under the legislation. The Senate bill would give refiners 2.25 percent of the allowances available to cover emissions at their plants. But the industry is also responsible for the emissions from vehicle tailpipes.

To make up the difference, refiners would have to buy emission permits on the market created under the legislation.

Addressing the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Valero’s Bill Klesse alleged that the Senate bill and its House counterpart would create large new costs that would drive domestic gasoline and diesel production offshore, cause job loss, and reduce U.S. energy security. He spoke on behalf of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, the industry’s main trade group.

“You must remember we are a global business,” Klesse said. “You will simply be driving the carbon dioxide emissions overseas.”

Klesse said Texas-based Valero — a large independent refiner with 16 refineries in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean — would face “staggering” costs even at a carbon price of $20 per ton, he said.

For instance, he said the company’s Corpus Christi, Texas, plant would face costs of up to $92 million per year. The industry as a whole, if held responsible for its process emissions and consumer emissions of its products, would face more than $67 billion in annual costs, he said.

But EPW Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill (S. 1733 (pdf)), attacked Klesse’s conclusion that the bill would harm U.S. security. “The opposite is true,” Boxer said. She cited multiple analyses that conclude global climate change creates national security risks.

The bill would set up a cap-and-trade system under which facilities that produce carbon dioxide emissions must obtain permits for their emissions. Boxer said the bill includes provisions to cushion the effects on refiners. The bill provides 2.25 percent of the free emissions allowances to the refining sector.

Overall, Reicher and other backers of the congressional energy and climate efforts say the effort will increase jobs. “The job creation potential in energy efficiency is extraordinary,” Reicher said.

A major provision is the authorization of so-called border adjustments, or carbon tariffs, on imports from countries that do not adhere to emissions-cutting measures.

The provisions, a priority for lawmakers from manufacturing states, are aimed at preventing “carbon leakage,” in which energy-intensive manufacturing and jobs migrate to countries that do not impose emissions-cutting mandates.

The Senate bill also joins the House bill in providing free allowances to these trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries, although the formulas differ slightly.

The Senate plan provides these sectors with 4 percent of the cap-and-trade program’s freely distributed allowances in 2012 and 2013, rising to 15 percent in 2014 and 2015 and then phasing down after that.

The epic confrontation about how America will power the economy of the future formally got underway on October 27 amid stark warnings from the Obama administration of the costs of inaction on energy reform.

The first of three blockbuster sessions in the Senate held on Oct 27th can be held as a last heave by administration officials and Democratic leaders to advance a bill to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions before an international climate change meeting at Copenhagen, now just six weeks away.

American legislation on climate change is seen as essential to reaching a meaningful deal at Copenhagen. But the White House held up action in the Senate on a climate change bill to focus on healthcare reform. The proposed law, which now stretches for more than 900 pages, would cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20% over 2005 levels by 2020 and encourage the development of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Democratic leaders in the Senate are now struggling to advance a bill – which does not have solid support even among their own party – before the meeting in Copenhagen.

Click here to read more on this topic.