Washington Post (January 29)
“Self-driving cars appear to be safer than those with human drivers.” We should welcome their introduction. For example, “Waymo robotaxis have logged 33 million miles, mostly ferrying passengers in San Francisco and Phoenix.” In those two cities, “compared with cars driven by humans, Waymo vehicles have been involved in 62 percent fewer police-reported crashes, 78 percent fewer crashes that resulted in injury and 81 percent fewer crashes severe enough to deploy the air bags.” Moreover, the reality is probably even better as some of these accidents were caused by other drivers.
Tags: Accidents, Air bags, Crashes, Human drivers, Injury, Passengers, Phoenix, Police, Robotaxis, Safer, San Francisco, Self-driving cars, Waymo
New York Times (July 12)
“Mr. Branson’s flight reinforces the hopes of space enthusiasts that routine travel to the final frontier may soon be available to private citizens, not just the professional astronauts of NASA and other space agencies.” Other billionaire entrepreneurs are on his heels, all “risking injury or death to fulfill their childhood aspirations — and advance the goal of making human spaceflight unexceptional.”
Tags: Aspirations, Astronauts, Billionaire, Branson, Childhood, Citizens, Death, Enthusiasts, Entrepreneurs, Final frontier, Flight, Hopes, Human Spaceflight, Injury, NASA, Risk, Routine, Space, Travel
Washington Post (August 29)
Officials took Hurricane Irene very seriously, issuing evacuation orders and taking extensive measures to avoid injury and damage. The measures seemed to have paid off. Of course, “some of that is luck: a shift a few miles to the west, a tick more ferocity in the winds, and the results might have been far different…At least 15 people in six states were killed in the storm, and as always the casualties seem heartbreakingly random: an 11-year-old Newport News boy dead when a large tree crashed into his apartment; a 15-year-old girl killed in a North Carolina car crash; a Maryland woman struck fatally when a tree toppled the chimney of her house.”
Officials took Hurricane Irene very seriously, issuing evacuation orders and taking extensive measures to avoid injury and damage. The measures seemed to have paid off. Of course, “some of that is luck: a shift a few miles to the west, a tick more ferocity in the winds, and the results might have been far different…At least 15 people in six states were killed in the storm, and as always the casualties seem heartbreakingly random: an 11-year-old Newport News boy dead when a large tree crashed into his apartment; a 15-year-old girl killed in a North Carolina car crash; a Maryland woman struck fatally when a tree toppled the chimney of her house.”