Archive for the 'Cars: Damocles’ Last Sword' Category
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Ford Thumbs its Nose at Distracted Driving Facts
Do corporate capitalists really commit highly-researched mass murder in order to reap their profits? You bet your expendable “consumer” ass they do.
Today’s example: The Ford Motor Company’s promulgation of its “Sync” package of telecommunications interfaces in the dashes of new cars and trucks.
Among many other extremely dangerous things, the newest version of “Sync” is going to add hands-free text messaging to the increasingly distracted driving experience.
A long train of independent research has shown that the use of hands-free cellular telephones provides little or no safety benefit compared to hands-on use.
Given that text messages are inherently denser and not genuinely live and interactive, even when converted to audio, they almost certainly require quite a bit more attention than does a phone conversation. Hence, hands-free texting is virtually certain to contribute to thousands of additional automobile deaths every year.
Ford cares not:
“[Sync] is a reason now to buy a Ford,” Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally said in an interview.
“Sync is easy to sell to a person under 35,” said John Wolkonowicz, an analyst at IHS Global Insight of Lexington, Massachusetts. “Sync is about entertainment and connectivity, which is very Gen Y.”
To the extent it bothers to explain its murder-for-money, Ford relies on the old tobacco corporation gambit: Fudge-talk about unreleased internal “studies”:
Ford, which has endorsed legislation to outlaw texting while driving, said its research indicates that hands-free communication doesn’t distract drivers.
“Most of the industry studies show that just driving and just talking is the same,” Kuzak said. “As long as the customer’s eyes are on the road, they are not compromised.”
And our public servants’ response to this blatant bullshit? Nothing, nada, nil.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood testified Oct. 29 that he found Ford’s Sync system distracting when he tested it on a Taurus sedan during a visit to Dearborn.
“As much as I liked driving the Taurus and as much as I liked the Sync system where you put your BlackBerry in and it syncs all your numbers, it’s a distraction,” LaHood told a House highways subcommittee at a hearing on distracted driving.
Despite this personal finding of the highest transportation official in the land, literally nothing is being done to block Sync and its counterpart plans at the other car corporations.
At the level of social criticism, this increasing encroachment of entertainment and marketing on the space of the car-driver is still more proof of the totalitarian nature of corporate capitalism. As somebody once noted:
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
Even when the invasions and expansions begin to threaten the future viability of the system’s own core commodity!
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
“Green Car” Facts
Two items of news from the ongoing overclass effort to perpetuate cars-first transportation:
Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle Costs Likely to Remain High, Benefits Modest for Decades
Ethanol-powered vehicles generate more ozone than gas-powered ones
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Death by Car
I am starting another blog devoted to the topic of the book I’m trying to finish. That topic is the homicidal perpetuation of cars-first transportation by our corporate overclass.
Take a look at the initial post, if you so desire.
Also, the questions and comments are great. I’m preparing some posts to address the topics you raised.
Thanks!
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Here Come…the Station Wagons!
For all the sponsored chatter about hybrids and alternative fuels, the fact remains that smaller cars mean smaller profits.
Hence, if you pay attention to what the overclass transportation dictators are actually putting out, you find them working hardest to recapture as much of the profitability of the embattled behemoth/SUV size bonanza as they can.
One sign of this effort is the return of the station wagon, as reported in today’s edition of The New York Times.
Here are the lovely stats on this facet of “change you can believe in”:
click image for larger view
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Cars in China
Having long since reached saturation in their main citadel of car-pushing, what do the corporate capitalists have in store for transportation arrangements in China?
According to Yang Jian, Managing Editor of Automotive News China, present trends suggest that China will have somewhere between 200 and 300 million cars in operation by 2030.
If electric cars become cheap enough, it could be far worse:
Their influence could be profound.
Electric cars, for example, are prohibitively expensive today. Yet given advances, they could become affordable to the mass of consumers tomorrow.
If that were to happen, the many millions of people riding electric bicycles could switch to electric cars. That would boost vehicle ownership to a level that is now unimaginable.
Something to think about the next time you’re tempted to swallow the notion that inexpensive electric cars are a good thing for anybody but corporate investors.
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
The New Party Line on Cars
Keith Crain is the publisher and editor of Automotive News. In his latest editorial, he enunciates the new capitalist party line about the pivotal issue of transportation choice.
Crain begins with what appears to be some refreshing honesty:
For starters, there is the energy crisis. In truth, there has been an energy crisis since the early 1970s, only someone finally noticed. In the United States, those who could have helped end the crisis with an intelligent energy policy stuck their heads in the sand and hoped the thing would blow over. It didn’t.
Crain, of course, neglects to mention that nobody has shoved heads down into siliconic powder harder than capitalists in general and automotive capitalists in particular.
According to Crain, all that has now ended:
When Congress finally discovered the problem, it swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. So today the world is scrambling for new ideas and products that will help reduce the use of gasoline and open up opportunities for other forms of transportation.
Everyone knows about the Toyota Prius, now in its third iteration. It was the first successful gasoline-electric hybrid. It owns that market. But there are lots of hybrids on the market, and there will be plenty more.
This is where the crucial trick of the new orthodoxy occurs: After quickly mentioning “opportunities for other forms of transportation,” Crain returns to the business class’s century-old claim that micro-choices between car models is all anybody could ever want or need:
General Motors Co.’s long-heralded Chevy Volt will be introduced to the public next year. It is an electrically driven car with a gasoline engine that generates electricity for the car’s drive motor, not unlike the Electro-Motive trains GM manufactured for decades.
Plenty of new companies are popping up. Fisker will start production of a luxury plug-in hybrid in Finland next year. The car has enough design appeal that it turns heads wherever it is tested. Fisker has received a half-billion dollars in federal funds, most of which will be used for development of a second plug-in hybrid that will be built in the United States.
More minicars are on the way. The Smart, developed by Mercedes, will be joined by the Fiat 500 in the United States. And you can rest assured that the Asians will be right behind with similar vehicles.
We’re bound to see some electric vehicles and hybrids that use diesel engines for even better fuel economy. And it won’t be long before we see two- and three-cylinder engines being used for vehicles and charging systems.
It’s an exciting time for the engineers who are developing all sorts of new engines and vehicles.
It will be even more exciting for consumers. They have never had so many choices.
What Crain neglects to mention here is the extreme danger of his own intended purpose, which is to restrict public discussion of our continuing lack of serious transportation macro-choices. Sure, if you can spend $40,000, you might soon be able to choose a Chevy Volt. But, especially in most American cities, when will walking, cycling, and rails gain anything like equal infrastructural footing with automotive support systems?
They won’t, barring a social movement to reform the society. That’s because the world’s corporate overlords are deeply and systematically hostile to anything that would spoil their ability to continue selling automobiles at something like present volumes. So, particularly here in the world’s largest car market, nothing could be farther off the official agenda than providing “opportunities for other forms of transportation” to genuinely compete with cars-first transportation arrangements.
If we hope to save ourselves from impending ecotastrophe, we must resist the heavily sponsored, increasingly strident tricks of the car peddlers. Towns and cities built to favor walking and bicycling over energy-wasting machines are the only possible basis for a sustainable, progressive global civilization. Cars, due to their extreme inherent energy demands, can only be a minor part of the human future. Anybody who suggests otherwise is an enemy of your children.
