{"id":1496,"date":"2006-07-13T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-13T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2006-07-13T07:51:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-13T14:51:00","slug":"observations-on-the-news-car-talk-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=1496","title":{"rendered":"Observations on the News: Car-Talk Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><b>From the <i>Yackity Yak<\/i> Department<\/b>: The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-phones13jul13,0,3922929.story?coll=la-home-headlines\" target=\"_blank\">LA Times is reporting<\/a> that the Governator condemned on Wednesday one of the most prototypical Los Angeles driving practices \u2014 grasping a steering wheel with one hand and a cellphone with the other \u2014 and gave a strong boost to legislative efforts to outlaw hand-held mobile phones throughout California. My question: How is holding a phone any different from holding anything else. Why can one hold a cup of coffee, a newspaper, makeup, but not a phone. I agree that cell-phones are a distraction in a vehicle, but the engineer in me know that it is not the phone that is the root cause: it is the focus on the conversation&#8230; and we can&#8217;t outlaw conversations in cars. For if it is the conversation (and the fact that the party on the other end can&#8217;t see the driving distractions), then hands-free <i>is not<\/i> the answer. We already have laws on the books about driving while distracted. Let&#8217;s start enforcing those.\n<p>Of course, the Governator can get a bit creepy. Talking about his daughter, who just started driving, he said, &#8220;I told her, I have had many, many conversations with her that if I ever catch her making a phone call while she is driving \u2014 and I sometimes follow her to make sure that she doesn&#8217;t make that mistake \u2014 [that] I will take the car away from her and she can drive the bus because it&#8217;s inexcusable.&#8221; <\/p>\n<li><b>From the <i>Globalization<\/i> Department:<\/b> MGs are coming back&#8230; being made by a Chinese company using an old English design in Oklahoma. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailynews.com\/business\/ci_4043711\" target=\"_blank\">According to the Daily News<\/a>, Nanjing Automobile Corp., China&#8217;s oldest carmaker, just announced they will be building a manufacturing facility at the Ardmore Airpark in south-central Oklahoma. The Oklahoma plant will produce a newly designed TF Coupe. The rear-wheel-drive two-seater was designed by MG&#8217;s former owners but never built. There will be additional MG models: Three sedans will be built at Nanjing&#8217;s facilities in China and the MG TF roadster will be built at the former MG Rover Longbridge assembly plant near Birmingham, England. Nanjing also will fund a new research and development facility at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. I particularly like this quote: &#8220;We can take those junior-level, senior-level, graduate-level engineering students that have interest in automotive and give them practical experience. We are going to give something back to the community, not just take.&#8221; <\/ul>\n<p>QOTD: From <a href=\"http:\/\/summer_of_6.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"lj-user\">summer_of_6<\/a> on his roadtrip along US 6: &#8220;Because most highways would otherwise continue into the lake, which is advantageous for depleting population centres of stupid motorists but generally considered poor form for highway continuity, US 6 in Ohio is a frequent terminus.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Yackity Yak Department: The LA Times is reporting that the Governator condemned on Wednesday one of the most prototypical Los Angeles driving practices \u2014 grasping a steering wheel with one hand and a cellphone with the other \u2014 and gave a strong boost to legislative efforts to outlaw hand-held mobile phones throughout California. <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=1496\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,1],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum","category-lj-xfer","tag-automobiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}