Security

20 Dead Per Day: 75 Percent Rise Since 2010 of Pedestrians Killed by Cars

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Driverless cars and all that jazz about AI seems to be having none of the promised “safety” effects, as more people are being killed than ever, especially pedestrians who are non-white.

Here’s the latest from Smart Growth America’s report “Dangerous by Design 2024“.

A historic increase in these deaths from 2020 to 2021 shocked many, but this epidemic continues to get worse. In 2022, the most recent year with complete federal data, the number of people who were struck and killed while walking grew to 7,522, marking a 40-year high.

This represents an astonishing 75 percent increase in these deaths since 2010. Danger outside of a vehicle is getting consistently worse: The share of all traffic deaths that were people outside of vehicles hit the highest share in 40 years. Those 7,522 deaths are roughly the equivalent of the population of a small town like Buena Vista, Colorado, the student population of Gonzaga University, or more than three Boeing 737s full of people falling from the sky every month for a year. 61,459 people walking were struck and killed in the last decade from 2013-2022, compared to 45,935 in the previous decade from 2003–2012. 61,459 people killed over the last decade is a shocking number. Each one of these deaths was a person who left behind a grieving family and friends.

The proportionality of the risk related to economic status, and therefore historic racism and discrimination, really stands out.

Dangerous by Design 2024 finds that 7,522 people were struck and killed while walking in 2022, an average of more than 20 per day. As in previous years, we found that not everyone lives and walks with the same risk. Black and Native Americans, older adults, and people walking in low-income communities die at higher rates and face higher levels of risk compared to all Americans

Security

CO Police Made $400K in Two Weeks With New Robotic Traffic Camera

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There’s something not quite right about this story. 10,000 tickets were issued by a robot in the first two weeks of being setup, with nothing to suggest there will be a slow down.

With so many violations, [Morrison Police Chief Bill] Vinelli said the town had to jump to a higher data plan to store all the tickets. […] Each ticket is $40, meaning the camera brought in more than $400,000 during that two-week period.

They issued so many tickets they ran out of storage.

Hint: if enough people refuse to pay these robotic tickets, as an act of civil disobedience, the cost of operating the system will cause it to fail.

So what’s the point of this extremely excessive revenue generation system targeting outsiders?

The cameras are setup to issue tickets to people leaving town. So it’s a tax on city people? A tax on people who live somewhere else, like an amusement park ticket?

Source: CBS

This doesn’t even sound like a 25 mph street, given that more than 10,000 cars in two weeks have driven through… like the throughput of a highway.

Can’t we just call it a toll road?

A toll road was constructed up Mount Vernon Canyon passing through the town of Mount Vernon. In 1880 the road was purchased by Jefferson County and opened up for free travel.

Fast forward to today:

The town’s not doing it to make money…

Prove it.

More than 90% of police activity is issuing speeding tickets.

Why not raise the speed limit? Has the town, for example, considered why there are so many cars and how to avoid issuing tickets or get rid of the traffic?

In 2021 a Morrison Police Chief was forced to resign when ticket revenue dipped.

The system reads to me like it’s sucking money without a reason.

Maybe if the money made were used to build a train so there’s no need for cars, then we could see the reason? What will the town make with the money if not doing it for the money?

Taking a look at Morrison demographics, it has a population of 400 people and 93% white. What’s the demographic data on the people they are taxing?

Related: Speed camera tickets don’t have to be paid if there was a “dead man driving“.

Also related: “Increased crashes where traffic cameras are posted”

And finally, related: “The $180K grant in 1966 to develop automated license plate readers.“

Security

New “Silence” EV Has Swappable Batteries Like It’s 1947 Again

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Years ago I pointed out how the Japanese air force, under occupation by America after WWII, transitioned its engineers into designing EV cars for the 1950s. A natural result was the “bomb bay” doors that allowed hot-swap of battery packs on wheeled trolleys.

Nissan’s car making origin story is this electric vehicle from 1947 with “bomb bay” rapid battery replacement doors on the sides.
During the 1940s’ switch to a peacetime economy, around 200 Tachikawa Aircraft employees moved to the newly established Tokyo Electro Automobile Co., Ltd., which embarked on the development of an electric car. One reason for this was the extreme shortage of gasoline at the time. In 1947, the company succeeded in creating a prototype 2-seater truck (500-kg load capacity) with a 4.5-horsepower motor and a new body design. It was named “Tama” after the area where the company was based.

What a cool car even for today that absolutely nobody gets to drive, and most people never knew existed.

Fast forward and the Chinese have announced a “Silence” EV design called the S04, with basically the same concept. In addition, they have a two-wheel option as well as the four-wheel.

Can you tell the design features that signal it’s from China?

The Silence S04 even has a wheeled cart that takes the battery out of the side so it can be easily maneuvered for swapping or charging.

Worst parking job ever? It just occured to me these should be called a “battmobile” instead of EV.

You may also remember Tesla announced it would do battery swap technology so good it would be better than anyone else. It infamously took a huge handout from the US government and (perhaps obvious to anyone familiar with South African apartheid) stuffed hundreds of millions of dollars in their pockets and then claimed the project lacked enough “support” and had to be cancelled.

A decade ago, Tesla announced it would build out a network of battery swapping stations that could change out Model S’s battery pack in 90 seconds.

Journalists now tend to say out loud that Tesla fails at engineering because without fraud there would be no Tesla.

Tesla Motors has earned more than $295 million in green subsidy emission credits during the past three years for a battery-swapping technology customers weren’t getting, a Watchdog investigation reveals. In fact, the electric car company, owned in part by billionaire Elon Musk, may have earned credits up to nearly half a billion dollars in value…

Imagine if 500 million dollars of taxpayer money had gone into actual technology companies instead of the Tesla advanced fee fraud.

Meanwhile in companies where actual engineers do actual work…

Chinese EV maker Nio has been offering battery swapping for its vehicles since 2019. Nio now claims to be the world’s largest operator of battery swapping technology having performed over 32 million battery swaps since then at more than 2,100 stations.

People often talk about the need to swap in terms of range anxiety, but that’s probably false hype and overlooks reasons for developing Tama “bomb bay” doors in 1947. I mean only 2% of trips in America are over 50 miles, right?

Having obsession with designing giant long range cars is about as logical as America insisting everyone needs drums and banana clips for their assault rifle collection at home. Anxiety isn’t a proper market.

History, Security

Fighting Nazis With Nature: “when it was raining, I knew I was safe”

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As the extreme far-right AfD party repeatedly gets called out in German court for crimes including trying to diminish horrors of Nazism, the Guardian has posted a new first-person account with incredible detail of the pain and suffering from fascism.

Maxwell Smart still feels at his safest when it rains. The 93-year-old first learned this as a boy of 10, alone in a forest, lying on a bed of leaves in a makeshift bunker, waiting out the Nazi occupation of Poland. For two years he hid in the forest, evading hunters. Detection meant likely death.

“It was a sport to kill a Jew,” he says. “[Your typical Nazi] is not going to go in the mud and get dirty and filthy; he is doing it for happiness, for enjoyment. So when it was raining, I knew I was safe.”

When Elon Musk jokingly pals around with his AfD contacts and other extremist far right-wing hate groups and accounts on social media, one has to wonder if it brings him happiness, or enjoyment. Here’s what lies just behind such droll exchanges.

One day a notice was given for all Jewish men aged 18-50 to register for labour. Smart’s father was ordered to the town square along with 350 others. His father told him he’d be right back. On the square, the men were separated into two groups: one for professional workers (doctors, lawyers, teachers); one for skilled tradesmen. The professionals, including Smart’s father, were taken to a nearby hill and shot. Smart did not find this out until many years later.

The families were told that their men would be released if they relinquished their assets. “I remember my mother went to borrow money to pay them off,” he says. “It was all just a story. They were already dead. They collected the money but I never saw my father again.”

It’s extremely harrowing tales like this that beg the question why Elon Musk on Twitter (and with orchestrating the purchase of Twitter) has generated a reputation of being heavily and personally involved in promoting extreme right platforms around the world. Here’s what that really means.

In one Gestapo raid at the apartment his family shared with others in the ghetto, his grandfather was shot in the head right in front of him. “I could not really associate myself, a nine-year-old boy, with death,” he says. “I knew old people died, but I didn’t even think that it was possible to kill. It’s only when I saw that in front of my eyes I realised they were murderers.”

The family were imprisoned and the next day, they were violently herded into trucks. His mother told him to run.

“I was angry,” says Smart. “I said: ‘What do you mean you don’t want to take me? You are my mother.’” He followed her until she pushed him away and boarded the truck. “This saved my life,” he says.

Smart knew he would be shot if he ran, so he removed his Star of David armband and walked away until he reached a bridge, where he saw a German officer walking towards him. “He takes out the gun, points it at my head and he says to me: ‘Tell me the truth, are you a Jew?’” Smart denied it and somehow the officer believed him. “I am not a religious man,” he says. “But I believe it was a miracle.” He never saw his mother and sister again.

There is so much more to his story, one that obviously needs to be told again and again especially given recent AfD news.

…of the 8,000 Jews who lived in Buczacz, fewer than 100 survived. “I am one of the 100 and I kept it a secret,” he says. “I should remember. I have to remember. I have to tell it to the world.”