Personal taxis are starting to find a home with regulations. Services like Lyft and UberX helped to connect drivers with passengers via their respective apps. The idea was great; if you needed a ride, you checked the app to see if there was someone with a car in your area offering a lift, you’d contact them and next thing you know you are sharing a ride to your destination. The problem came when lack of regulations shut down these services. Taxi companies are heavily regulated: their drivers are background checked, the insurance is kept up-to-date, vehicle inspections are performed regularly, etc. These new “personal taxi” services, as they have been deemed, were not regulated and were forced to shut down because of such. Well recently, Colorado has become the first state in the US to set regulations for these services (UberX and Lyft respectively) so that the service can run lawfully and undisturbed. California has since also began to regulate the new form of transportation, and hopefully other states will follow soon.
Today we’re talking about the six-fingered man. No, not the one that Inigo Montoya was looking for, but Mel Brooks. On the 40th anniversary of his film “Young Frankenstein” Mel Brooks was immortalized in cement along the Hollywood Walk of Fame outside the famous Chinese Theater. In typical Mel fashion, however, he couldn’t just stick his hands in the cement. Rather, he donned a prosthetic sixth digit on his left hand, leaving an eleven-fingered handprint under his signature in the cement. The man always found a way to make the masses laugh, and it seems that he’ll continue that trend whenever someone passes by his cement handprints.
The world of transportation is constantly changing, and these days it’s seems to be happening quickly. We’ve seen electric cars, high-speed rail transit, solar power coming into the mix, and now the newest progression, JPods. JPods are a cross between a train and a ski lift, the technology was developed by West Point graduate Bill James. The commuter pods work very similar to the train system you already know, the difference is; the tracks will be elevated above the roadways, and the individual pods will be able to fit a small group of friends in each one. This allows for a more desirable commuting experience than cramming onto an over crowded train car. Because of the smaller size of the pods, and the accompanying technology to direct them, these JPods will be able to bring their passengers closer to their destinations than a typical train car can. Now, as if the concept didn’t sound good already, the pods will also be covered in solar panels, assuring that the entire system is self-sustainable on renewable energy. JPods will first be tested in Secaucus, NJ, a town with a rather large transportation issue. Secaucus is just the beginning though, Bill James, CEO of JPods envisions the personal commuter pods showing up all over, including across major bridges like the George Washington bridge to help reduce auto traffic as well. The more green transportation ideas like this that make their way to reality, the better road congestion and pollution becomes, so this could be a win win for everyone.
We’re all trying to eat healthier these days, but it’s hard. You go to the grocery store and the produce aisle literally looks like a garden. Then you walk down the snack aisle and everything is colorful, fun looking, full of life and exciting buzz words that make my impulse buy reaction kick in. Well, times are changing and they are starting to bring that kid friendly marketing to the produce aisle. They are packaging healthy snacks like baby carrots in snack size bags with chili-lime powder to sprinkle on them. Not only will the packaging entice kids to tug at their parent’s shirts until they buy them, but the healthy flavoring will give them the same satisfaction they have when eating a bag of Doritos. They literally make the carrots finger-lickin’ good. That’s not where it stops though, they have fruit purees that kids can slurp on the go, or kid targeted health smoothies. The produce aisle will begin to look more like the cereal aisle with colorful mascots and eye-catching packaging. If you ask me no harm can come from using these types of marketing tactics to get kids away from the sugar and into the fruit and veggies.
Up until recently, the automotive industry has improved safety by creating airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones, and other such things to aid in keeping drivers and passengers safe during and accident. Now the US DOT is beginning to look at ways to prevent crashes with vehicle technology. The DOT is currently looking at establishing a short ranged radio system geared towards allowing “connected vehicles” to talk to each other. This technology would allow the transmission of vehicle speed, location, direction and other important data to other connected vehicles. Now, rather than keeping you safe when you get into an accident, your car will be able to “know” if another car is going to run their red light. Your car will alert you of the danger allowing you to avoid the accident altogether. There is even talk of integrating these features with the safety features of the car to allow the car itself to jump in and avoid the crash, either by braking automatically, or some other form of accident avoidance. The plan will take some time, and require a lot of cooperation to be implemented. The NHTSA plans on implementing rules for installing such systems before the end of the Obama administration. This way it will allow automakers to know about the communication standards needed in their cars. Rules and regulations will also need to be established and a segment of the radio spectrum will need to be kept free to use with this technology. Although the timeframe may take a while, these seem to be steps in the right direction when it comes to traffic safety, with estimates of reducing up to eighty percent of the current 30,000 traffic fatalities a year.
