Tag Archives: Driving

Prionic “Driving”, by Eric Peters

Posted on June 22, 2021 | 1 comment

Eric Peters has an interesting hypothesis: the Covid vaccines impair mental acuity and its showing up on the roads and highways. From Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Prionic Driving is becoming a thing.

What is Prionic Driving? It is “driving” – finger air-quoted to emphasize the absurdity – practiced by people who’ve been Needled. Or at least, there seems to be some correlation between the one and the other.

They are behind the wheel, alas. But to call what they are doing driving is akin to describing what Old Joe does as leading.

I mean, c’mon man!

The Prionic seem unaware they are behind the wheel. Or at least, they are unaware of what’s displayed by the speedometer. In relation to the signs on the road. The latter generally considered to be a kind of clue as to the speed that ought to be displayed – and at least kinda-sorta maintained.

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The Narc in Your Next New Car, by Eric Peters

Posted on March 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

You car will watch you, and report everything you do to those who have an “interest”—like insurance companies, and maybe the government—in the way you drive. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

For years, the insurance mafia has been trying to get people to voluntarily plug a driving monitor into their car, using the prospect of a “discount” as an inducement. Most people don’t fall for this because they understand that the “discount” is of a piece with advertising that promises you’ll save “up to 20 percent” but actually save you nothing or very little – while always paying more.

Well, your next new car may come standard with the driver monitor already plugged in. Embedded, actually – which means you can’t remove it. Or say no thanks to it. If you buy the car, you buy the embedded narc.

Allstate and Nationwide just announced they’ve “partnered” with Ford to pre-wire most 2020 (and likely all 2021) model Ford and Lincoln vehicles with the embedded tech to “participate” in what is styled the Milewise program, which uses the vehicle’s in-car WiFi to transmit to the mafia data about your driving habits.

Elena Ford, chief customer experience officer at Ford Motor Company says: “This is the latest way we’re improving the customer experience . . . (it) makes getting insurance easier for connected-vehicle customers to cover one of their biggest investments – their vehicle – while saving money.”

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Posted in Business, Government, Privacy, Surveillance

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Revenue Collection and Something Else, by Eric Peters

Posted on December 7, 2019 | Leave a comment

Tickets use to be revenue collection devices. Now they’re part of a design to make driving as painful as possible. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

It used to be that roadside mulctings were primarily, even exclusively, motivated by simple money-lust. Traffic enforcement as a kind of random tax-raising effort.

Many towns and even cities in the United States are extremely dependent on the “revenue” – as it is styled – which is generated by the fleecing of motorists. This is why there are so many “infractions” – and it is why many of them are deliberately contrived so as to assure almost every motorist will be “guilty” of at least one “violation” every time he drives.

Examples include absurdly under-posted speed limits that are often functionally impossible to comply with – unless you want to get run over. And pedantic requirements about exactly where one must stop at a stop sign – and how long one must stop. The touching of a yellow line, etc.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Law, Money, Morality, Politics, Taxes

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The Evils of the Automatic, by Eric Peters

Posted on August 5, 2018 | Leave a comment

Automatic transmissions turn driving into a soporific. From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:

It’s easy to get suckered by the convenient. We’re all susceptible. It is human nature to take the path of least resistance.

This is the nature of the subtle evil that is the automatic transmission.

It has taken most of the effort out of driving. In particular, out of learning how to drive. Accordingly, most people never do learn. They know how to push the start button and pull a lever from Park to Drive, of course. But that is not what I mean

It has ruined the art of driving.

And it is an art.

Or, was.

Well, a skill at least.

Before the automatic came along in the ’40s, brought to us by GM through its Oldsmobile division, driving a car required more talent than being able to open and close a door, sit down – and push on two pedals.

There was a third pedal – the clutch pedal. When it was out, the engine was directly connected to the transmission, which was directly transmitting the engine’s power to the driven wheels via the driveshaft. If the driver did not push the clutch pedal in as the car rolled to a stop, the car would buck and finally, stall out – because the engine could not turn the pavement (or the Earth to which it was attached).

To resume forward motion, the driver had to gradually let out the clutch while simultaneously easing into the gas pedal – allowing just enough enough slippage to avoid (once again) stalling out the car. It took a bit of practice to master this delicate balance – to be able to do it smoothly. It was a right of passage, something almost every aspiring teenage driver had to learn.

Clutching was just the beginning. There was also shifting.

Before the advent of synchronizers in the transmission, one had to time one’s shifts just so – matching engine speed to road speed. It was necessary to choreograph this delicate ballet yourself. If you failed to do so, the result was a a hideous grinding of the gears and general embarrassment, especially if you were a man and had a woman along for the ride.

To continue reading: The Evils of the Automatic

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Time To BIN Our Government, by Karl Denninger

Posted on January 19, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Karl Denninger, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

From the NTSB comes their latest “Most Wanted List”, and it includes some doozies.

One of them is a desire for mandated collision-avoidance (e.g. automated braking, etc) technology in all cars and trucks. Like the previous airbag and ABS mandates this will drive up the cost of vehicles further, a price paid by everyone whether you happen to be attentive or not.

But it’s the booze demand — a drop from 0.08 to 0.05 BAC to define “drunk” — that got my dander up the most.

Here’s why.

An 0.05 standard would render most men legally intoxicated after two beers in a couple of hours. It would also render many women legally intoxicated after one drink, effectively making it impossible for a woman of light body mass and small size to consume any alcohol in a social setting where she might have to operate a vehicle.

The NTSB admits that they have no idea whether such a change in the law would actually reduce drunk-driving injuries and deaths at all, or if it would, by how much.

But let’s cut the crap — the NTSB lies about DUI to begin with. They claim that some 10,000 deaths and about 30% of all accidents “involve” someone who is “impaired.” But they don’t define “impaired” as legally intoxicated; any presence of alcohol is sufficient for said accident to count under their “rules” and what’s worse the person who had the alcohol in their system doesn’t have to have been at fault!
In other words if I go to the bar, have one beer, and on the way home a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and rams my vehicle from behind, killing me, that counts as an “alcohol-impaired” fatality — even though (1) I was not at fault and (2) the person who was at fault had zero alcohol in their system. The accident is reported this way even if it was logistically impossible for me to evade the wreck (e.g. I’m stopped at a light with cross traffic in the intersection; there is literally nowhere for me to go even if I see it coming.)

Now 10,000 deaths a year, if they’re due to intoxicated driving (but they’re not; see the last two paragraphs) would be bad. The cost to society is terrible, say much less the cost to individual families and people.

But what is the cost of the DUI laws to society?

To continue reading: Time to BIN Our Government

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Posted in Government, Law

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