3. Avoid becoming an aggressive driver yourself. It is important to keep your own emotions in check. Don’t take your frustrations out on other drivers and always plan ahead allowing enough time for delays. Focus on your own driving. Acting out won’t make traffic move any faster.
4. Don’t compete or retaliate. If someone’s driving annoys you, don’t try to educate him or her or turn it into a competition. Leave traffic enforcement to the police.
5. Don’t Trigger Aggression: Research shows that certain actions trigger aggression in other drivers, which can lead to you being the focal point of an aggressive driver. Stay safe by trying to avoid these actions: failing to turn when a right on red is permitted, blocking traffic, failure to signal lane change, inappropriate speed, and distracted driving.
For more, see TheFirstReporter.
Recently in Transportation Category
1. Know the warning signs. Keep yourself and others safe by recognizing aggressive driving characteristics in other drivers. Aggressive drivers typically use excessive speed, frequently or unsafely change lanes, fail to use proper signals, tailgate, fail to yield to the right of way, and / or disregard traffic controls. Knowing these warning signs will help determine potentially aggressive drivers.
2. Know what to do if you encounter an aggressive driver. If you notice the warning signs mentioned above, authorities recommend that you do the following things to ensure your safety: keep your distance, do not pass unless you have to, change lanes only when it is safe, if you cannot change lanes and an aggressive driver is behind you maintain the proper speed and do not respond with any gestures and remain calm. You may also call 911 to report an aggressive driver.
For more, see TheFirstReporter.
Aerospace engineering expert Dr. Robert Key Dismukes, of NASA's Ames Research Center, testified Thursday in the hearing to determine what caused Flight 3407 to plummet to the ground on Feb. 12, killing 50 people. The expert spoke on what causes pilots to lose attentiveness and was surprised by the actions of the pilots when the stick shaker went off, signaling the plane was on the verge of a stall because insufficient air was passing over its wings. BuffaloNews also reports:
The pilots in Continental Connection Flight 3407 went from a landing speed approach of 182 knots to 130 knots in less than half a minute, when a stall warning went off in the cockpit... He (Dismukes) said the only way for pilots to react to such emergencies was continued training, so when it happens, the pilots can automatically know what to do.
Transportation
engineering expert Michael A. Replogle, Environmental Defense Fund
Transportation Director, and adviser to the US Department of Transportation has
this to say on the economic stimulus plan that Congress and President-elect
Barack Obama are preparing to launch next month:
Bringing roads and bridges to a state of good repair, not building new roads should be a priority. Research shows that transit spending creates more jobs than the same spending on new roadway construction. National studies show that every $1 billion communities invest in transit yields $6 billion in economic returns, creating 35,000 jobs.
Many ports are trying to invest in cleaner trucks and machinery. Stimulus money should also support diesel clean-up programs, replacing old trucks with new ones, installing and manufacturing filters, and helping truckers get the most advanced technologies.
Excerpted
from Boston.com.
The holiday season is a deadly time on America's roadways. Experts report that nearly 1,500 people were killed in crashes involving a drunk driver from Thanksgiving 2007 through New Year's Day. An estimated 2 million drunk drivers with three or more convictions will be on our roadways this holiday season. MADD is ramping up its call for every state to introduce interlock laws that cover all convicted drunk drivers including those facing their first convictions – as Washington state did in 2007. NAMIC reports:
An alcohol ignition interlock is a breath test device linked to a vehicle's ignition system. When a convicted drunk driver starts his or her vehicle, he or she must first blow into the device. The vehicle will not start if the driver is violating probation by having alcohol in his or her system. If interlocks were required for all convicted drunk drivers in the United States, thousands of lives could be saved each year.
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Judge Kenneth Koss ruled MTA's plans unsafe, and the community and LAUSD's safety concerns valid. The decision is a tentative decision that will either be adopted or amended by the full CPUC commission on November 21.
At the evidentiary hearing three expert witnesses testified on behalf of the community group including Professor Najmedin Meshkati, an internationally renowned expert in human risk analysis and creator of USC Transportation System safety program, Ed Ruszak a nationally-renowned expert in traffic impacts and vehicular accident causation, and West Point graduate and retired Major Russ Quimby, who for 22 years led the rail and rail-transit accident investigation group at the National Transportation Safety Board before he retired in 2007.
Quimby testified that the street-level crossing 10 feet from the property line of Dorsey HS, where every day afterschool hundreds of students flood the narrow sidewalks, left a high risk of catastrophic accident.
