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Speaker 2: Jay that is going too slow on the freeway is dangerous.
Speaker 2: What about going way too fast?
Speaker 3: Well, you know our freeways, the controlled access highways. The
Speaker 3: US interstate highway system is actually built on the same
Speaker 3: model as the German autobonds. So if you're a fairly
Speaker 3: competent driver and you're not weaving in and out of traffic,
Speaker 3: you can go reasonable speed.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at.
Speaker 3: The speed limits around the country. In Utah, the same
Speaker 3: highway is eighty miles an hour as a speed limit,
Speaker 3: and in other parts of the country the exact same
Speaker 3: design of a highway is sometimes fifty five miles an
Speaker 3: hour or fifty or sixty miles an hour. So the
Speaker 3: speed limits on our highways are pretty arbitrary with regards
Speaker 3: to the jurisdiction that you're driving through. And so what
Speaker 3: we recommend in terms of how we set speed limits
Speaker 3: is something called the eighty fifth percentile speed. That's the
Speaker 3: speed that eighty five percent of the people don't exceed.
Speaker 3: It's the natural speed that everybody sort of congregates on
Speaker 3: the roadway. So the most dangerous thing actually is speed
Speaker 3: variation that is, some people going much faster, some people
Speaker 3: going much slower. But if everybody's going about the same speed,
Speaker 3: that's been proven to be the most safe thing, even
Speaker 3: if that's a little faster than say what somebody arbitrarily
Speaker 3: stuck a speed limit on that particular roadway.
Speaker 2: For There's nothing worse though than a driver doing forty
Speaker 2: on the freeway right exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's even worse if they're stuck in the
Speaker 3: left lane and refuse to move over. The National Motors
Speaker 3: Association one of the things we do in most years
Speaker 3: is we have what we call Lane Courtesy Month, and
Speaker 3: we try to encourage people, you know, stay to the right,
Speaker 3: pass left, and leave that left lane open for the
Speaker 3: people that want to drive a reasonable speed on the roadway.
Speaker 2: Now, some states have a high speed lane, but you
Speaker 2: have to have more than one person in the car.
Speaker 2: Is that happening throughout the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, what they're doing is they have they have
Speaker 3: carpool lanes that has been proven not to be very successful.
Speaker 3: But what they're starting to do now is they're starting
Speaker 3: to have these lanes in which you have to pay
Speaker 3: to be in those lanes. There's nothing wrong with building
Speaker 3: a lane in which you have to pay for. If
Speaker 3: that's an extra lane. The problem would be is if
Speaker 3: they took away a lane that we've already paid for
Speaker 3: with our tax dollars and then made that uh and
Speaker 3: a lane in which you had to pay for. So
Speaker 3: so it depends on whether or not you know how
Speaker 3: how you built the lane, and how you how you've
Speaker 3: used that money, and whether you've used new money for
Speaker 3: that and added to capacity. But what we're seeing around
Speaker 3: the country is what they really want to do is
Speaker 3: they want to reduce capacity to have this thing called
Speaker 3: road diets. And I don't if anybody's heard that before,
Speaker 3: but what that basically means is they want to take
Speaker 3: away car lanes because there's too much car lane you're going,
Speaker 3: you know, it's too easy for you to get around,
Speaker 3: So they want to take away car lanes. And this
Speaker 3: is happening in a lot of cities. Los Angeles and
Speaker 3: New York City has done this, you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of major cities and sometimes in smaller places around the country,
Speaker 3: and it can lead to some very very dangerous things
Speaker 3: that have happened. You probably have covered on your show
Speaker 3: the fire up in Paradise, California, when that happened. And
Speaker 3: one of the things that happened there A lot of
Speaker 3: people don't know this is that they did a road
Speaker 3: diet in the middle of town on that roadway, after
Speaker 3: they were told that the route out of town was
Speaker 3: already not safe. What they did was they took away
Speaker 3: a car lane and a number of people I think
Speaker 3: it was eighty somewhi people lost their lives in that,
Speaker 3: and part of that was because people couldn't get out
Speaker 3: and you know, in an area, in a mountainous area
Speaker 3: where there was only one route out and they took
Speaker 3: a car lane. And unfortunately, that's what some of this
Speaker 3: ideology leads to, leads to things that are much less safe,
Speaker 3: not more safe.
Speaker 2: Jade, does your organization ever look at road rage?
Speaker 3: You know, it is something that we don't spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time on, but it is it's an interesting question.
Speaker 3: A lot of what's happening with road rage nowadays, I
Speaker 3: think is people are very frustrated by the policies that
Speaker 3: are making their commutes and their ability to get around
Speaker 3: much more difficult. So they're stuck in traffic for no reason.
Speaker 3: They're frustrated by that. But of course we certainly can't
Speaker 3: condone anybody doing anything dangerous on the roadway or being
Speaker 3: unsafe to other people on the roadway. We think people
Speaker 3: need to be courteous. That's why we promote the lane
Speaker 3: courtesy and you know, people need to get along and
Speaker 3: you know, but people also need to be courteous. So
Speaker 3: you know, if somebody wants to go a little faster,
Speaker 3: then you get out of their way, don't don't try
Speaker 3: to block them in intentionally.
Speaker 2: And I'm convinced road rage occurs when a bad driver
Speaker 2: or in consider a driver does something to a person
Speaker 2: who's having a bad day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely what leads to this kind
Speaker 3: of thing. I mean, certainly, I think just everything in
Speaker 3: our society now is a little bit too close to
Speaker 3: the boiling point. So we really knew need to kind
Speaker 3: of take a step back just overall. But we tend to,
Speaker 3: and this is more of a psychological thing, that we
Speaker 3: tend to ascribe bad motives to people when that may
Speaker 3: not be their intention. You know that guy cut me off, Well,
Speaker 3: maybe he just didn't see you, or he wasn't paying attention,
Speaker 3: or he's having a bad day.
Speaker 2: Or he made a mistake.
Speaker 3: A little bit of grace. Yeah, maybe just made a mistake,
Speaker 3: you know, I you know, I accidentally, you know, a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago, I actually made a mistake and
Speaker 3: and you know, unfortunately I didn't quite cut somebody off,
Speaker 3: but somebody got mad at something that I did on
Speaker 3: the roadway and they, you know, they came after me
Speaker 3: and driving like a maniac. That's not going to get
Speaker 3: you anywhere. That's not going to help you. You're going
Speaker 3: to hurt somebody. Don't do that, you know, just just
Speaker 3: let it go and and and don't be you know,
Speaker 3: don't don't don't put more people in danger because you know,
Speaker 3: you you you know, you can't just sort of say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe that person's having a bad day, or
Speaker 3: maybe that person just made a mistake. They weren't intending
Speaker 3: it towards me. Everybody takes things a little too personally
Speaker 3: these days, and we need to we need to have
Speaker 3: a little bit more grace to people.
Speaker 2: I think I tried to go out of my way
Speaker 2: to help people. Somebody's trying to cut into traffic and
Speaker 2: they're stuck on the side, I'll slow down, let them
Speaker 2: go in. Or somebody do this where they put their
Speaker 2: turn signal on to change lanes. Nobody lets them in.
Speaker 2: I'll let them in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do the same thing because you know what,
Speaker 3: here's the thing. I want to treat people the way
Speaker 3: I would like to be treated on the roadway. That's
Speaker 3: one of the things that we promote in our organization
Speaker 3: is this sort of the golden rule, and you know,
Speaker 3: treat people the way you want to be treated on
Speaker 3: the roadway. Be courteous. If somebody's trying to merge, let
Speaker 3: them merge. It's only one car in front of you,
Speaker 3: don't you know, don't be a jerk about it, you know,
Speaker 3: and just you know, just just be nice to people
Speaker 3: will all get along. We'll all get there much more
Speaker 3: safely and get there, you know, in a reasonable amount
Speaker 3: of time. It's the things that we fight about are
Speaker 3: the are the unfair policies that the government is imposing
Speaker 3: on us, which which leads to a lot of these
Speaker 3: behaviors because people are already frustrated because the government intentionally
Speaker 3: is creating traffic congestion unfortunately, and that's going to make
Speaker 3: people a lot more angry because they sometimes have to
Speaker 3: be somewhere and they can't get there because somebody, you know,
Speaker 3: some government official decided it was better for you to
Speaker 3: be on a bus, and they want to make your
Speaker 3: commuteity a lot more difficult.
Speaker 2: Jay, My mother is ninety five, lives in Detroit and
Speaker 2: still drives, and she was bragging today about how she drives.
Speaker 2: And I said, Mom, if I'm ever in Detroit and
Speaker 2: you're on the road, I'm getting off.
Speaker 3: But you know, my mom is ninety one and she
Speaker 3: still drives, so I'm thankful I still have her around.
Speaker 2: Does she do freeways. I don't think mine does freeways.
Speaker 3: She tries to stay away from some of the higher
Speaker 3: speed roadways. And she, you know, at ninety one, she
Speaker 3: doesn't drive as far as she used to, but she
Speaker 3: you know, she still goes to the grocery store. She
Speaker 3: still gets around, as you know, go to her doctor's appointments,
Speaker 3: but certainly doesn't take those long trips that we used
Speaker 3: to take when I was child, That's for sure.
Speaker 2: What's going on with these bike lanes or these bikes,
Speaker 2: you pedal bikes that are in the middle of the road.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, this is an interesting phenomenon. There is
Speaker 3: this push to have everybody be on a bicycle, and
Speaker 3: there is unfortunately a very militant, small, small, small part
Speaker 3: of our population that identifies as bicyclists. They see it
Speaker 3: as their identity, and they want everybody to be on
Speaker 3: a bicycle, and they want the roadways tore themselves. Now
Speaker 3: they'll say, oh, we just want to share the roadway,
Speaker 3: but what they want is at least half of the roadway.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the amount of people that
Speaker 3: use bicycles to get around to commute, it's very small.
Speaker 3: It just saw a statistic from the Washington Post and
Speaker 3: it said that the percent of US commuters who usually
Speaker 3: make a trip by bike commuting is a half a percent.
Speaker 3: Now it's bigger in some areas like Manhattan and some
Speaker 3: other areas, but overall in the US, it's a half
Speaker 3: a percent. It is basically the same in twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: as well, you know, before the pandemic, as it is now,
Speaker 3: and it's actually down from twenty fourteen. But what they're
Speaker 3: doing is they're taking away car lanes in order to
Speaker 3: give it over to bike lanes. And my wife and
Speaker 3: I have this joke whenever we do see the rare
Speaker 3: occasion we see a bicyclist actually in a bike lane,
Speaker 3: will say, oh, they're just a unicorns. They're so rare
Speaker 3: that we rarely ever received them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: They say, well, if you build it, they will come. Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: they have spent billions of dollars around the country building
Speaker 3: out bike lanes, and the amount of bicycling has barely moved.
Speaker 3: It's barely moved, and it will never reach the amount
Speaker 3: that people drive by personal automobile, which is in close
Speaker 3: to eighty percent of people get around by personal automobile.
Speaker 3: And what's actually increasing, not just because of the pandemic,
Speaker 3: because this was happening before the pandemic, is that people
Speaker 3: working from home is way way before the pandemic, way
Speaker 3: out numbered the people that were traveling around by bicycles.
Speaker 3: And so we're never going to get people to switch
Speaker 3: to bicycles as a major form of transportation in this country.
Speaker 3: And it's a fool's errand and we're making a lot
Speaker 3: of people miserable or making a lot of people or
Speaker 3: because of it, and it's it's really a bad idea.
Speaker 3: And that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be bike lanes
Speaker 3: here and there, or there are, there shouldn't be places
Speaker 3: for people to bike if they need to, but the
Speaker 3: amount of bike lanes that they're putting in in places
Speaker 3: in taking away car lanes as a result, is a
Speaker 3: very very very poor policy.
Speaker 2: And some of these bikers don't have reflectors or lights
Speaker 2: on their bikes, and they're pedaling in the pitch darkness.
Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, the satistics, the statistics show that the
Speaker 3: vast majority of pedestrian and bicyclists collisions and fatality occur
Speaker 3: in the dark because people can't see them, can't see them, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, good.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, you can't see them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And unfortunately there are you know, a set
Speaker 3: of bicyclists who don't want to follow the rules of
Speaker 3: the road. They don't think the rules of the road
Speaker 3: apply to them, so they'll blow through a stop sign,
Speaker 3: or you know, they'll blow through a traffic light, or
Speaker 3: they'll right on the wrong side of the road or
Speaker 3: cut in and out of traffic. Seeing this all the time,
Speaker 3: you know, but god forbid a driver in a car
Speaker 3: slowly rolls through a stop sign when nobody's around, you know,
Speaker 3: they they they lose their minds because of this, and
Speaker 3: so they're they're really inconsistent and really hypocritical about this.
Speaker 3: So the rules don't apply to them, but you know,
Speaker 3: everybody else has to follow the law exactly to the
Speaker 3: absolute letter of the law. And again going back to
Speaker 3: what we were saying before, no grace for anybody else.
Speaker 3: Everybody else is at your but you're perfect. That seems
Speaker 3: to be their attitude.
Speaker 2: Tell me you hate self driving cars and trucks because
Speaker 2: I knew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there there are could be some benefits
Speaker 3: from that. You know, you're you're you're your mom my mom.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe you know, maybe a self driving car
Speaker 3: is appropriate for them to get around. But the thing
Speaker 3: we're concerned about self driving cars is the amount of
Speaker 3: control that the government potentially could have over our lives if,
Speaker 3: for ale, they decided to force everybody into a self
Speaker 3: driving car in the same way they want to force
Speaker 3: everybody into an electric vehicle. And what I mean by
Speaker 3: this is that the that no manufacturer will will build
Speaker 3: a self driving car that breaks the law. They can't.
Speaker 3: It's it's by its very nature, so it's much easier
Speaker 3: to control the machine than it is to control the
Speaker 3: human being. So all they have to do is pass
Speaker 3: some ridiculous law and then everybody, you know, that car
Speaker 3: has to follow it. The human being inside that car
Speaker 3: will have no control over it, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: Let's say, I know, some crazy thing happens, like a pandemic,
Speaker 3: and they decide everybody needs to stay home, or nobody
Speaker 3: can go to work and nobody can go to a
Speaker 3: certain partner.
Speaker 2: To us, they never happen.
Speaker 3: I know they would never happen. But in the case
Speaker 3: that it did, if all of our cars were self
Speaker 3: driving cars, all they would have to do is pass
Speaker 3: that law or pass that rule. Not even a law,
Speaker 3: They probably just have to pass the rule and the
Speaker 3: car will have to follow it because the manufacturer of
Speaker 3: that car that makes the software for that, they will
Speaker 3: get in trouble if that car doesn't follow it. So
Speaker 3: that's the concern we have is is you know how
Speaker 3: much freedom will you have left when that car is
Speaker 3: controlled by the government and that car is controlled by
Speaker 3: some giant tech company that may not like where you're
Speaker 3: going and decides, you know what, we're not going to
Speaker 3: take you there in our in our self driving car
Speaker 3: because we don't agree with your life choices.
Speaker 2: Or we're going to just simply shut the car down
Speaker 2: for a week and it won't move exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's another thing that they want to do. They
Speaker 3: want they there is in the bipartisan Infrastructure bill that
Speaker 3: passed a couple of years ago, there is a mandate
Speaker 3: for the government to come up with a plan for
Speaker 3: now we call it a kill switch. They you know,
Speaker 3: they say it's for impaired driving, but of course it
Speaker 3: never stops at what they say that it's for. And
Speaker 3: so they want to have this switch in the car
Speaker 3: that the car, either automatically or remotely can be shut off.
Speaker 3: And think about how dangerous that would be if the
Speaker 3: car makes a mistake. I mean, you've been you've been reporting,
Speaker 3: you know, over the last day or so on this
Speaker 3: CrowdStrike thing that this Microsoft thing, and just I mean
Speaker 3: technology is not perfect, okay, so they're always going to
Speaker 3: be false positive. So somebody gets in a car and
Speaker 3: you know, maybe somebody else is in the car who's
Speaker 3: impaired or whatever, and that car won will you will
Speaker 3: not be able to go where you need to go
Speaker 3: because the car mistakenly thinks that the driver is impaired,
Speaker 3: or while your car is driving and you're in the
Speaker 3: middle of nowhere, you know, think if you're you know,
Speaker 3: a lone woman out there and the car makes a
Speaker 3: mistake and now you're stranded somewhere. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: really dangerous technology that is not ripe for prime time,
Speaker 3: and we're very concerned about the fact that they're mandating
Speaker 3: that in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, they're supposed
Speaker 3: to have these rules and this technology does not exist
Speaker 3: properly yet. Even if it did, it wouldn't be a
Speaker 3: good idea. But we're very concerned about this, and we've
Speaker 3: been talking to Congress. Is one of the things that
Speaker 3: the National Motor Association does is we do talk to
Speaker 3: elected officials a lot, and we try to convince them
Speaker 3: and explain to them what the problems are for some
Speaker 3: of these ideas that sound good on paper, but when
Speaker 3: you get into the details of it, they're not a
Speaker 3: good idea, and there are oftentimes very
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