More Drilling?

I  think any additional drilling for oil should be done only on the precondition that the additional supply would be offset by a decrease in demand (i.e conservation).  That way, it won’t just get pissed away on increasing domestic demand, like what happened in the mid-1980’s when a huge amount of new supply pushed prices way down and ushered in the SUV era. Continue reading “More Drilling?”

Yet another cycling is dangerous story

With gas prices the way they are, stories about cycling in mainstream press abound. As I have pointed out before (see Media Bias) these stories for mass consumption generally paint a one-sided cycling-is-dangerous story. Despite my high hopes for the journalistic balance of the Wall Street Journal (news that is. I don’t expect balance in the editorial content), Rhonda Rundle’s story from August 1, 2008 fell into the same familiar pattern. The title, Risking Life and Limb, Riding a Bike to Work in L.A., should have been a give away Continue reading “Yet another cycling is dangerous story”

Gas Guzzler Tax

Decades ago, harkening back to the oil shocks of the 1970’s, the US Congress instituted what would seem to be a reasonable idea of discouraging gas guzzlers. Vehicles below 22mpg are slapped with a special tax, usually referred to as the gas guzzler tax ( the legislation was called: The Energy Tax Act of 1978). The tax is collected by the manufacturer or importer, and is paid by the first buyer.

An economist would refer to such a tax as a disincentive to guzzling gas (actually a disincentive to producing/buying gas guzzling vehicles).

As is usual, what would seem to be a good idea is destroyed by spineless politicians and weaselly lobbyists.

Therefore, SUVs (light truck), of course, are exempt 🙂

In 2005, about 170M was collected. There are untold hundreds of millions of dollars of foregone revenue due to the SUV loophole.

Source: TRANSPORTATION ENERGY DATA BOOK: EDITION 26–2007, Tables 4.20 and 4.21
(a treasure trove of energy data. Also interesting is the studies on speed vs. mpg — generally vehicles peak around 50mph).

Mejia guilty of neg hom and hit-and-run in death of Walmsley

This is remarkable only in that the county attorney sought negligent homicide charges…

From an earlier azcentral story “On May 2, 2007, Mejia was arrested after deputies obtained a search warrant and gathered evidence from a Ford F-350 pickup truck linked to the hit-and-run suspect” .  The article doesn’t mention any allegations of evidence tampering(?).

Arizona Superior Court Docket CR2007-006287,  All case minutes. Here’s the Warrant to search the large 2007 pickup truck involved. Sentencing Minute from 6/17/2008 — I guess fairly standard, the charges are deemed “non-dangerous” and thus you can get a light sentence the negligent homicide is an F4 (class 4 felony; smaller number are more serious). One oddity was the hit-and-run was listed as an F3, whereas it should have been an F2 (because the defendant clearly caused the collision by driving on the wrong side of the road).

There are a lot of case minutes, including a request to be released early from probation, and numerous requests to revoke probation; finally in the 4/18/2014 minute “Defendant admits violation of probation for condition 1” (whatever that is, i can’t find it in the sentencing minute). It doesn’t seem like anything bad happened.

Mejia TR-200701627 speeding 2/28/2007 in Avondale Muni; dismissed w/driving school; a couple of months before he caused the fatal crash.

These cases from 2013/14 seem to have something only to do with the original case’s restituation, not a new criminal beef:  CR2013-462094 and CR2014-110154

 

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Avondale man gets 3 years in cyclist’s hit-run death
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Arizona Republic, The (Phoenix, AZ)-June 20, 2008
Author: Brent Whiting, The Arizona Republic

An 18-year-old Avondale man has been sentenced to three years in prison for killing a cyclist in a hit-and-run traffic crash.

Victor Manuel Mejia, who pleaded guilty to charges of negligent homicide and leaving the scene of a serious injury accident, also was placed on a five-year probationary term.

The sentence was handed down last Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court after relatives of Mejia and the victim, Bob Walmsley, were offered a chance to address the judge.

Walmsley, 65, of Sun City West, was killed April 9, 2007, while he and other cyclists were pedaling on 99th Avenue in the Southwest Valley, south of Interstate 10 near Southern Avenue.

He was hit by the driver of a pickup truck who was traveling north on 99th Avenue and was trying to pass another vehicle. The driver fled after striking Walmsley, according to sheriff’s investigators.

On May 2, 2007, Mejia was arrested after deputies obtained a search warrant and gathered evidence from a Ford F-350 pickup truck linked to the hit-and-run suspect.

Walmsley, a cycling enthusiast, moved to Arizona in 2000 after retiring in California as an engineer and computer programmer.

Arizona 2007 Traffic Fatalities Plummet

I just heard Michael Hegarty, spokesman for AZ GOHS and/or AZ GTSAC, on the radio reporting that 2007 traffic fatalities fell to 1066 — a 17% decrease from 2006.
This would be an enormous decrease. He seemed pretty nonchalant about it. A drop of this magnitude is unprecedented.

Bicyclist’s fatalities fell the most, 27%, which is good news of course. But I must caution that since there are very few this number fluctuates greatly from year-to-year. The number of bicyclist fatalities has varied from as low as 15 to as high as 36 over the past couple of decades, with no perceptible trend.

Anyway, overall this would be consistent with a large reported drop on state highways (as opposed to all roads). This data was announced back in January and comes out much sooner than the whole-state rollup.

Press accounts published June 6th papers were likewise muted: Arizona Republic and KOLD ran the AP account, East Valley Tribune, which carried this breakdown, sourced to the GTSAC, though I can’t find anything on their website:

TYPE 2006 2007 Change
Pedestrians 167 157 -6%
Motorcyclists 142 135 -5%
Bicyclists 29 21 -28%
Others 18
TOTALS 1288 1066 -17%

Associated Press – June 5, 2008 6:04 PM ET

PHOENIX (AP) – State officials say traffic accidents are claiming fewer lives in Arizona.

The Governor’s Traffic Safety Advisory Council says 1,066 people were killed in traffic-related accidents in 2007. That’s down 17% from the 1,288 deaths in 2006.

The council also says the 2007 figure is the lowest since 2001 and that the state’s population has grown by more than 1 million since then.

The council credits driver education and law enforcement efforts for the reduction.