You’ve got yourself a sale as long as: 1) 50% of the door handles work; 2) one of those is on the driver’s side; and 3) same conditions for the power windows. I’ll assume the moonroof doesn’t work unless you tell me otherwise.

I’ve noticed that surge pricing mobilizes the worst of the worst Uber drivers. Rainy evening rush hours are just awful in DC.

Back in the day, when I was pre-law — for a hot semester, the county attorney told me that three families were responsible for 90% of the crime in the county. That was in MN, but after reading this post it seems like that rule holds true elsewhere.

The new four horseman: War, Religion, Disease, and too much free/cheap Parking.

Weird — I thought I was the only one who noticed the Altima-shitty driver correlation. Yesterday, when I saw one sporting an Uber tag, I just pulled over before anything bad could happen. My payback for giving that one a wide berth was a close call with a Super Shuttle. (Bet his other car is an Altima.)

You had me at ‘mall-crawler.’ On the plus side: 1) the blindspot warnings are now making my life more pleasant when riding in city traffic; and 2) the higher front ends of new vehicles should soon be making a difference on pedestrian fatalities and injuries. On the minus side: we seem to be killing more pedestrians…

Household debt is at an all time high (20%, or $4T, Federal Reserve). The average new vehicle MSRP is now over $34k (Edmunds). The average age of a registered vehicle was 11.8 years in 2016 (forget where I read that — NHTSA or IIHS?). That means: your trade-in is worth less, your new car costs more, and to manage the…

You can come to your own conclusion about uber’s business practices, but the facts are pretty clear: Levandowski was actively recruiting Waymo employees to defect; and the entire reason for the Otto acquisition was to wash the tech and the IP — 10gb worth — that Levandowski stole. Uber’s due diligence of Otto was a…

Yes. In the end I think Google and Apple will be the two companies left standing.

Re. 1: It would be sweet retaliation for Uber’s industrial espionage. There’s an irony here that both companies seem to be following the same battle plan of burning cash in hopes that their competitors’ money runs out first. Google/Waymo is doing that with self-driving; Uber is doing that with ride-sharing.

Geez. Lucky you. Replacing the stem and bars every couple years as a precaution is a good idea. Between replacements watch for corrosion on your stem’s faceplate bolts. Sweat pools there and will eventually weaken the aluminum. A drop of triflow every once and awhile will take care of the problem.

I am. From what I’ve seen state DOTs and MPOs will only send their people if they are presenting. Mostly the crowds are consultants, exhibitors, and NGOs with very few public agency employees. The USDOT people had fewer restrictions but that may no longer be the case.

I would if only I had an employer who believed in professional development.

Right now uber and the other mobility companies are at $2/mile. That pricing, in a rainy day in DC, generates enough traffic to grind the streets to a halt. What’s going to happen when the price drops further? More congestion.

Yes. I am a transportation planner and I have come to the same conclusion. We need better groomed roads and we need to build out the public IT networks to handle all the data which will be generated. Where’s the money going to come from? VMT tax? Increased gas tax? Robbing public transit programs? Public-private…

Yes. Thank you. A good city is a shit place for driving and vice versa. Adding supercharge stations won’t make urban car ownership any more attractive.

Great. And in 3-2-1 my local Whole Foods locations clearcut their bike racks to make way for these stupid charging stations.

Think of all those company men & women who developed the tech that became the patents that made Kodak, Xerox, IBM, Polaroid, and so on into giants; they got nice Christmas bonuses and maybe some company stock for their invaluable contributions. Should we feel good about their modesty and self-sacrifice, or should we…

The breach was discovered on July 29 and three days later (August 1) the stock hit an all time high. I wonder how Vanguard, Blackrock and T. Rowe Price are feeling about this news since collectively they own 30% of the shares or $5b in value. Oops, well more like $4b and change now that the stock is down 15%. Justice…

Maybe there are certain fuel cost and mileage scenarios in which the diesel would pay for itself, but where I live most of those TDI wagons are parked in front of million dollar row homes, so my conclusion is that the drivers cared more about image and MPGs than they did return on investment.