Sorta... I mean, the industry used to be regulated, then the industry was deregulated and all of the burden was placed on the individual “independent owner-operators.”

Almost like they should all get together to bargain collectively to secure better wages and benefits. Like some sort of... union.

What an asshole.

No, I’m just suggesting that speed isn’t actually a particularly useful variable on its own. It’s speed differential and the orderly versus disorderly nature of traffic flow that leads to different crash rates.

The question is, how much of a sacrifice is justified? Driving fatalities are vanishingly rare - if you take out drunk driving and no-seatbelt deaths (both of which should be considered forms of vehicular suicide), then you end up with about 6,700 per year. Out of billions of trips per year. How much sacrifice is…

It’s the nature of progress. Things were worse even then, so the progress that was being made felt like safety.

I mean, BWRs were never the right answer compared to PWRs. But I would suggest that any interface which allows you to melt down a plant is so poorly designed as to be considered trash.

Yes, those old Soviet reactors had so many critical design flaws. All of the old BWRs did, but the Soviet ones were particularly bad. 

Please, please yes.

What’s wrong with going 90 on a freeway? The rest of the world figured out how to do it safely decades ago. And so did we - the Pennsylvania Turnpike didn’t have a speed limit when it opened, and lots of roads built in the ‘40s were designed with 100 MPH curves. See old Route 66 in downstate Illinois, for example.

So what? I’d prefer to be not hit by somebody going 80 than to be hit by somebody going 30.

I’d say that the problem is, people living with congestion forgot how to drive on open roads.

Not one part of that phrase is true. Both total road deaths and road deaths per vehicle mile traveled are far below the peaks set years ago. It’s not even close.

Driving is a skill which requires a license. While training is too lax and testing is too easy, that still does not relieve us of the responsibility to apply our skill to driving.

Yep. We need to design with human nature in mind, but that doesn’t forgive us the responsibility to be in control of the parts of driving which are in our control.

Philly being Philly.

I think it depends on the noise level, and if you can hear better out of one ear versus the other. I find it’s helpful to have that directional sound to make somebody’s voice stand out over the (stereo) din.

Dick Charleston : [after noticing that he is incorrectly seated next to his own wife, Charleston asks to switch places with Wang. An instant after they both stand up, two rapiers fall from the ceiling to bury themselves in the gentlemen’s chairs] ... Just as I thought: another test that could have cost us our…

How about, “powerless to do anything about the protestors without making things substantially worse?”

‘Cause Waco isn’t still used by anti-government types as a rallying cry, almost 30 years later.

(I’m not suggesting that either a violent or a “let the babies tire themselves out” approach is better. They’re both going to produce bad outcomes. Just suggesting that sending in the military isn’t necessarily better.)