Are Car Accidents Going to Become A Thing Of The Past?

According to the Wall Street Journal's Monday section, "Innovations in Transportation", the average licensed driver covers 12,700 miles each year, spends about 18 and one-half hours in the car each week and cannot stop being distracted when they drive.  18% of all injury accidents involve distracted drivers.  Moreover about $300 billion dollars is the approximate costs associated with automobile accidents.

And the average time a driver's eyes are off the road is 4.6 seconds.  Lets do the math.  A car travels one and one-half its miles per hour in feet per second.  So, if I am going 50 mph, I am going 75 feet per second.  If I am going 60 miles per hour I am going 90 feet per second.  So, when a person texts, they are travelling almost, on average, 375 feet along the highway, only they are not looking at the highway!  That is fifteen feet more than a football field plus the end zones of the football field.

Coming down the road, surprisingly soon, is the "driverless car".  According to Dan Neil, the automotive critic for the Wall Street Journal, "BMW's TrackTrainer -- an experimental 330i sedan bristling with machine-vision equipment -- uses GPS, track maps and telemetry recorded during a professional driver's model lap to negotiate a racecourse.  "

In his article, Neil opines, "By the time this technology is commercialized, robotically operated cars will be safer, probably a lot safer, than manually operated cars.  Autopilots will never get distracted, sleepy, lost, angry.  There reactions will be instantaneous and in an emergency always the right one.  They will always signal when changing lanes, never tailgate."  So that means that the people who will continue to drive manually operated cars will be less safe.  I wonder how long it will be, then, before the government REQUIRES the use of the driverless car.

Apparently, these cars are inevitable.  About 68% of those polled thought that the driverless cars were a good idea while only 31% felt that the "driverless car" was a bad idea all the way around. 

My wife, however, claims to have already experienced a "driverless car" -- every time I am behind the wheel!

Poverty

Poverty thresholds are determined by the US government, and vary according to the size of a family, and ages of the members. In 2010, the poverty threshold—known more commonly as the poverty line—for an individual was $11,139. For two people, the weighted average threshold was $14,218. Three people: $17,374; Four people: $22,314; Five people: $26,439; Six people: $29,897;Seven people: $34,009; Eight people: $37,934; Nine or more: $45,220.

In 2010, 46.2 million people lived in Poverty USA, up from 43.6 million in 2009. That’s means the poverty rate for 2010 was 15.1%, up from 14.3% in 2009.

2010 marked the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people living in poverty. The poverty rate, or percentage of the overall population living in poverty, has steadily increased as well, up to 15.1% in 2010 from 12.5% in 2007.  The number of people living in poverty in 2010 (46.2 million) is the largest number seen in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

Poverty does not strike all demographics equally. For example, in 2010, 21.7% of men lived in Poverty USA, but 24.1% of women. Along the same lines, the poverty rate for married couples in 2010 was only 6.2%–but the poverty rate for single-parent families with no wife present was up to 15.8%, and for single-parent families with no husband present over 31%.

Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate for people living with a disability rose from 25% (in 2009) to 27.9% (in 2010). That’s 4.2 million people living with a disability—in poverty.

In 2010, 22% of all children lived in Poverty USA—that’s over 1 in every 5 children.  In 2009, the National Center on Family Homelessness analyzed state-level data and found that nationwide, 1.5 million children experience homelessness in a year.

In the North Country, Franklin County's poverty rate is 14.4%.  In St. Lawrence County it is 16.9%.  In Clinton County it is 13.3%.

Thinking about the poor is something our government shies away from.  Doing something about the poor is something that we have put on auto-pilot:  Food Stamps, Social Service Assistance, (also known as Welfare), and other public assistance programs.

16.4 Million children living in the United States of America are poor.

It is not just the current state of the economy.  The real problem is how we feel about the poor and giving to them from the surplus.  And, there is a lot of surplus.

16.4 million kids in the United States of America are poor.  If only we had the will to change this.