defocus·blog

Ahead Stop

Backward. I read think engineers highway

No Rest For You

All the rest areas on Interstate 40 in Arizona are closed, except the one right at the New Mexico border. In the land of John McCain, anti-earmark crusader and former maverick, they can't find the money to pay for the rest areas.

Put It In Neutral

In most of the stories of runaway acceleration in various Toyota cars, what puzzles me is why the drivers don't shift the transmission to neutral. If the entire incident unfolds in a few seconds, okay; but when the car is careening down the freeway for 23 minutes something isn't making any sense.

The Dance of Death

If you drive on the highway for a while, you will see people do some astoundingly dumb things around trucks. Among the most baffling is one I call the Dance of Death.

I Have Seen The Promised Land, The Perfect Car

I think this may be the Perfect Car. It's a rebuilt and modified 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440. Want.

Blondie Is A Group

While driving down the highway in the middle of the night, listening to Blondie, an interesting and odd thought popped into my head and wouldn't go away. I now present it as an Axiom of Universal Truth: Debbie Harry is one of the coolest people ever. I'm just old enough to remember the “Blondie is a group” T-shirts, but not old enough to have ever had one. Back then (and we're talking elementary school here), just knowing that Blondie was a group went a long way toward making you cool. Blondie would be shoved under “Alternative Rock,” if that somewhat-silly...

Fourteen Years

In Illinois, you'll see the signs near most work zones: “Hit a worker, $10,000 fine, 14 yrs jail.” 14 years? Are they serious? 14 years for an accident? Every time I see these signs I am struck by how astoundingly stupid this law is. In criminal justice there is the theory that penalties must be proportionate. If, for example, you sentence robbers to life in prison, it will encourage robbers to kill their victims to avoid capture. Here, we're talking about an accident. It's not “14 years if you're driving recklessly and you kill someone.” It's just hitting someone, with...

Mississippi Bans Red-Light Cameras

Mississippi has passed a law banning red light cameras. No new cameras will go up, and all existing ones must come down by October. Bravo. Meanwhile, New Jersey, where I live, is adding towns to the list for new red light cameras. Other places are adding them as well. That's not so good. Laws were meant to be enforced by people, not computers. And they certainly weren't meant to be a source of revenue at the expense of safety, which is what these things are – even more so than the rest of traffic enforcement. Do you think they make...