Dr. Conor Boland explained that red-light timing can erase small speed advantages, allowing a slower car to catch up again and again. He noted, 'You pass a car, and then a few minutes later, it ends up beside you again.' This phenomenon is partly psychological, as we remember surprising moments when the same car shows up again, but it is also built into how traffic works.
I don't know how many of you drive and how often, but I will tell you there is a plague in this country of headlight brightness. It is shockingly bright. If you look back to halogen lightbulbs, you're reaching somewhere around 700 to 1,200 lumens. New LED technology - these sons of bitches get to, like, 12,000 lumens.
Both technologies involve cameras mounted on poles designed to read license plates, and at a moment when Americans are rightly more alert to the dangers of unchecked surveillance, it makes sense that people would approach any new camera with skepticism. But similarity at the surface is not sameness in design. These systems are built for different purposes, governed by different statutes, and constrained by different guardrails.
Compact, low-rise villages and cities made sense based on how far people could reasonably travel on foot or by horse. This was true all the way up until the late 1800s. Then came an invention that let people travel incredible distances in seconds, entirely reshaping cities with dense population clusters.
The recent snow and ice storm turned much of the nation into a winter wonderlandfrom the safety of a nice, cozy sofa indoors. If you step outside in such conditions, however, you'll find a dangerous obstacle course that can turn walking the dog or checking the mailbox into an emergency room visit with just one false step. There's no good clearinghouse for data about injuries related to winter weather, but studies do suggest that fall rates increase with snow and ice, especially among older adults.
OAKLAND The city's transportation director stood Friday morning at a busy Oakland intersection, explaining how newly installed road-safety cameras will work, when suddenly his voice was drowned out by a car roaring down a nearby road. The vehicle, nowhere in sight, was apparently going fast enough that its rattling engine could be heard loudly by those gathered at Broadway and 27th Street, where one of the new cameras is mounted to a street light.