Blogs & Ecology

A great way to get all the testosterone soaked hard core engineers who hate whining environmentalists wound up is to say something nice about Jimmy Carter, but here is another eminently sensible thing he did: He capped the maximum speed on speedometers in cars at 85 MPH.

Kent Sepkowitz makes a very interesting point in his New York Times op-ed No Need For Speed about car design: They are all designed to go faster than the law permits.

We noted earlier a study from the Harvard Medical School that calculated that for every 10% increase in gas prices there was a 2.3% decline in auto deaths.

Now a new report from Michael Sivak of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan finds an even more dramatic fall. Associated Press reports that:

Over the previous 10 months, monthly fatalities declined an average of 4.2 percent compared to the previous year. Then, Sivak's data shows, fatalities dropped 22.1 percent in March and 17.9 percent in April of this year...The declines found by Si...

We noted earlier a study from the Harvard Medical School that calculated that for every 10% increase in gas prices there was a 2.3% decline in auto deaths.

Now a new report from Michael Sivak of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan finds an even more dramatic fall. Associated Press reports that:

Over the previous 10 months, monthly fatalities declined an average of 4.2 percent compared to the previous year. Then, Sivak's data shows, fatalities dropped 22.1 percent in March and 17.9 percent in April of this year...The declines found by Si...