bogen.org

If you search for information on-line about how to remove the interior door panel from a 2003 Avalon, you’ll find plenty of questions and no answers. As such, I’ll share my experiences here to help other people.First, I haven’t removed any of the front door panels, but I’m guessing that they function the same way as the rear door panels, which I have successfully removed and replaced. Second, patience is key in this exercise. If you get hasty and overly aggressive, you’re likely to break some of the plastic bits that hold everything together.

1. Start by emptying all the pockets and cubbies in the door panel.
2. Open the door wide.
3. Remove the triangular plastic bit (sail panel?) above the door panel. This pulls straight back to disengage and is held on with one so-so fastener and a piece of double-sided tape obviously added at the factory to compensate for that sub-par fastener.
4. At the bottom of the door are two exposed black screws. Unscrew them completely.
5. Along each side of the door panel are two plastic expanding rivets. Push on the center cicle of the rivet until you feel a click. You should now be able to completely remove both the center circle and the outer portion of the rivet. These can be fairly easily broken so set them aside where they won’t be stepped on or otherwise damaged.
6. Remove the woodgrain plastic piece from the arm rest by gently prying up the rear of the woodgrain part with a flat-head screwdriver or putty knife. There is a clip that links the front of the woodgrain part to the door panel.
7. Unplug the wiring from the woodgrain part and set the plastic piece aside. Note: If you want to put the window up or down, the wiring needs to be connected to the woodgrain part, even if you use the front-seat controls.
8. Inside the cavity where the woodgrain part usually sits there should be a brass-colored screw visible. Unscrew it and set it aside.
9. There is a little door that is snapped shut covering a screw in the hard plastic door handle bezel. Open the little door by using the tip of a knife on the left-hand side of the door and gently prying the door open. Unscrew the screw inside.
10. On the left-hand side of the door handle bezel, insert a flat-head screwdriver, between the door handle bottom (near the axle of the door handle) and the bezel. You should feel a slick click as the bezel is released from the door handle.
11. Repeat the last step on the top left of the door handle bezel, inserting the screwdriver between the lock button and the door handle bezel.
12. You should now be able to remove the door handle bezel.
13. At this point, the door panel should now lift straight up and relatively easily off the door.

One final note: when you’re reassembling the door, you may need to remove and replace the double-sided tape that holds the plastic sail piece on the door.

Monday is mostly over here in Wisconsin, and unlike last week, today was a relatively benign day.Last Monday, I started off the week with a literal pair of bangs. I had an early morning trip to the dentist for a cleaning scheduled and Madison was in the middle of a snowstorm that would eventually drop a couple of inches of snow on the city. The dentist’s office is an unfortunate bike ride away from our house under the best of conditions, and snowy roads make it even less fun than usual, so I jumped into the car and headed out.

About four blocks north of our house, I carefully slowed to a stop at the bottom of a hill and waited for a light to change so that I could turn left. I was lost in that space where people go when they’re patiently waiting for a light to change so that they can continue their journey to an unpleasant destination when, BANG! our car was thrown six feet to the left by a sudden impact.

I’d just about registered that the car had been hit when BANG! another impact struck the car.

When the proverbially dust settled, I turned my head and look at the delivery van that was pointed 180 degrees in the wrong direction nestled right up against the side of our car.

Fortunately, I wasn’t injured, so I got out of the car and to take a look at the damage. The driver of the van, a guy is his fifties got out to see what sort of chaos his moronic driving had caused. My first words to him were, “Oh yeah. Nice job.” Not clever, but not laden with profanity and invective like the situation warranted according to my emotions.

So, we spent the next half-hour on the side of the road exchanging insurance information. I called the police, but since the snow was causing so many collisions, they were only responding to collisions that resulted in injury. Since neither myself nor the other driver was injured, they didn’t come out to the scene.

The driver of the van insisted that he braked at the top of the hill, couldn’t stop, and was trying to steer between myself (in the left turn lane) and the car in the right turn lane. This explanation, of course, wasn’t remotely plausible. First, no sensible person attempts to steer between two vehicles to avoid a collision so that they can enter a higher speed, heavily trafficked six-lane road against the light. Second, you don’t just throw nearly 3500 pounds of vehicle straight sideways when you can’t quite stop in time. You might tap a bumper, you might dent a fender, but you don’t throw the vehicle around. Third, no one else on the road was having trouble stopping at the bottom of the hill. I stopped. The car next to me stopped. The cars that flowed past the scene of the accident during that following half-hour all stopped. It’s hard to believe that this guy found the one vehicle that couldn’t stop given the road conditions. What is more likely is that the driver of the van was traveling way too fast for the road conditions and that my car had to pay the price for his negligence.

The car could be driven, though not legally probably, so I drove it home and took some photos before calling our insurance agent. He suggested some body shops that worked closely with the insurance company and that would guarantee their work for the life of the car. I picked one close to the house, got in and started driving. Ironically enough, on the way there, I almost was in another collision when a woman in a minivan decided that a stop sign facing her didn’t really mean stop. Fortunately, I was traveling a sensible speed and was able to slow down and steer around her before the front end of my car suffered like the right side and rear had less than an hour earlier.

Eventually, I made it to the body shop where I dropped off the car. The rear tail lights were smashed on the right side. The trunk was deformed. The rear quarter panel was junk. There was a hole in the right rear door, as well as plenty of paint scratching and dents. The right front door was scratched and dented. The mirror was smashed on the passenger side. The right front quarter panel was dented and scratched. In short, every nearly every piece of the right-hand side of the car was damaged in some way.

When the estimate came back two days later, it was for $7448. The car needs body work to straighten frame members, a new back door, painting, and all sorts of trim replacement and whatnot. It’s over 100 hours of labor. If we’re lucky, we should get our car back from the shop sometime around 07 Mar 2007.

Since the car had bits hanging off of it, the trunk was no longer weather-proof, and my signal lights were no longer functional, the car wasn’t really great for driving. So, I left it at the body shop and got a rental car from Enterprise. At the time, my choices were for a Dodge Magnum, a PT Cruiser, or a Chevy Malibu Maxx. The Magnum has unusual blind spots, and is a rear-wheel drive, if memory serves, which is not ideal for winter driving. The PT Cruiser has a tall roof, but a short windshield, so that wouldn’t work too well for me. So, I chose the Malibu Maxx. Bad choice. It smelled like feet, accelerated like honey, and had all the handling characteristics of a soggy cardboard box. The seats were stained, the vents on the dash were smashed and non-functional, and the CD player didn’t work. In short, it was a heap. Even Sarah, who is far less judgemental than I am, exclaimed loudly about what a junker that car was. So, I started making plans to get a replacement from Hertz. When the Enterprise folks found out that I wanted to return their car, they offered to replace it with one better, and to their credit, they did. We’re now driving around a black 2007 Toyota Avalon, for the same daily price as the Malibu Maxx.

At least we’re not paying for the damage to the car and the cost of the rental car. The other driver’s insurance company is footing the bill for both of those items. The company that owned the delivery van had only started operations the week before, and so their insurance was just days old. When I called to initiate a claim, they couldn’t find the policy in their system because it hadn’t be assigned a policy number yet. It took the better part of a day playing phone tag with adjusters, an insurance agent, and a call center, to get things moving in the right direction.

So, the car is being repaired, we’re driving a shiny newish rental car, and all is well, right? Sort of. I’m still steamed about the fact that I had to sink so much time into getting us to this point when the collision was in no way caused by me. I feel like I should be able to bill the other driver for my time. Of course, that’s not likely something I could succeed in doing, so I’ll just have to be happy that he was insured at all.

It’s clear that many people do not understand when, how, and why to employ the turn signals.

The complete lack of turn signal use by many people is a well documented phenomenon. Instead, I want to address inappropriate or useless use.Many people are taught in their drivers education classes that one should signal a lane change by using the appropriate turn signal. What many people fail to understand or remember is that the turn signal should be activated before starting the lane change. Throwing down the turn signal for a few click-blinks when you’re half-way across the center line doesn’t do anyone a lick of good. Once you’re out of your lane, we can see that you’re headed into another lane. There’s no real mystery there. A few quick blinks of your blinker doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know at that point except that you have no idea why and when you should use the device in question.

Similarly, activating a turn signal once you’ve started a ninety-degree turn to the left or right is, again, a waste of effort. Everyone can see that you’re in the midst of a radical change of direction and a few quick flashes of the blinker gives us no new information.

What is lost on many people is that the turn signal is meant to give us a chance to give you feedback to your intended action. For instance, if someone is driving in your blindspot and you throw on a turn signal a few seconds before starting a lane change, the other driver has a few options available to them. They can:

• Panic
• Lay on the horn
• Drop back out of your blind spot
• Some combination of the above
• Continue chatting blissfully unaware on their cell phone

In any case, they at least have the option of reacting to your upcoming move before two metal behomoths trade paint at seventy on the Interstate.

That, of course, is the point. A turn signal is supposed to signal your intentions not your current actions. We can all see your current actions; what we want is information about what you’re planning on doing in the near future so we can react appropriately.

The following article was published in the Boston Daily on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006.

CAMBRIDGEPORT [AB] – Amy S. Bogen of Lawrence St. learned today that the 1992 blue Buick Regal sedan that was the inspiration behind the 2002 pop hit "My Black Mouse" (Words and music by Diane O’Meara – former lead singer/songwriter for the group Diane LoPiccolo) has been donated to the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans (NESHV). Bogen, the car’s owner, said she was shocked and dismayed to receive a phone call from a local towing company, informing her that they would like to pick up the car sometime during the day on Thursday, January 12, 2006.
In a recent interview, O’meara recalled fondly the creepy dream about the Buick that turned into a mouse, which she rode around the mountains. "Most people are confused when they hear the part of the song where the Buick’s wheels become paws and I ride this new little mouse into the wilderness. But, what they don’t know, is that I omitted some scenes of the dream from the final version of the song," explained O’Meara. "See, early in the dream, I meet Rick Moranis, and he shrinks me and the Buick to be in proportion with a 20g mouse. But, I didn’t think that was relevant to the song. I really wanted the song to describe the transportation aspect of the dream. Plus I’ve never been a big fan of Rick Moranis. Someone once told me he used to date Natalie Merchant, and that John Mayer sang at his wedding. Like I would write about [Moranis] in my song! That’s CRAZY."

Bogen donated the car via the NESHV website on Monday night, after three failed attempts to sell the car on Craigslist – Boston. Miss Bogen only received one response from the Craigslist advertising she posted on 1/5/06, 1/6/06 and 1/9/06, and the respondent, a Slavic man from the Boston area, was only interested in a driver’s door for his 1993 Buick Regal, which is a strange coincidence, considering that the only damaged door on the Lawrence St. Buick is the driver’s door.

Although her Buick has been sitting motionless on Lawrence St. attracting parking tickets since mid-September, Bogen still feels a sense of loss at this sudden development. "I think of this car as part of my family. I admit I have been an absent-minded caregiver, which has resulted in the exaggerated deterioration of the Buick’s body, electrical system and mechanics, but that never stopped the Buick from bouncing through Cambridge to Target, the free dryers laundromat or just across the street to avoid a street-cleaning violation and tow," Bogen commented. "This car inspired a musical masterpiece, and it breaks my heart to think it will be refurbished and sold at auction, with the proceeds to benefit homeless veterans. I mean, I don’t have anything against homeless veterans, but I hope the sale price of the car is enough to buy them more than a couple of cans of soup for their food pantry. I almost wonder if it would be more helpful to donate the car as shelter, to take one of these poor veterans off the streets. Except for the leak in the windshield, it would make a fine home. The front seats fully recline and the radio still works."

Bogen often fondly remembers the memories she shared with the Buick, which included a cross-country drive from Colorado to Massachusetts, transportation to the 1997 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for pop singer Diane O’meara, Tom the Cat and herself, and numerous adventures around the Boston area, cutting off BMWs, Audis, and Mecedeseses’ without a second thought.

Bogen does admit that the Buick is an unneccessary expense. In the past few months, the car has cost almost $500 for insurance and parking tickets to maintain it as an on-street storage unit. "I’m pretty sure I could rent a storage unit for less than $100 a month, but it definitely wouldn’t be as convenient as the Buick, which is parked across the street from my apartment. The only drawback to the Buick storage is that the car can’t be locked, so nothing valuable should be stored in it," Bogen shared, weeping. "It’s hard to believe that tow-away day has finally come, after all the times the rear brakes were replaced. I just kept thinking, ‘Maybe if I replace the rear brakes one more time, the car will be happy and we can work out our differences.’ But sometimes relationships don’t work out the way we expect." Bogen’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Winthrop, agreed. "It will be hard for Amy to part with her car, but this is a necessary step on the road to recovery. Most of my Buick-owning patients eventually realize that the electrical system will die, the carpet will rot, the doors will stop working, and the struts will rust through. You just can’t change fate. The only solution is to deal with the resulting pain."

Other Lawrence St. residents feel quite differently about the Buick’s departure. "That piece of sh**’s been taking up a parking space for the past 2 years. In a city where parking is tight, such as Cambridge, people don’t take kindly to wasted parking spaces," commented resident Eric Grant. "Not to mention that the Buick attracts so many Indie Rockers to Lawrence St. that some residents have been forced to rent Handy House port-a-potties for their front yards. And I can tell you that no one is going to miss the greasy smoke from the tofu sausage vendors that followed the tourists when Amy moved onto our street in 2002."

"I think Amy’s making a smart move, getting rid of her car," agreed Attorney Bill Mahoney of 24 Lawrence St. "Once her initial grieving period ends, she’ll find that she’s freed from the guilt she experienced watching her vehicle rot in the street. I have a driveway, so street parking spaces aren’t as valuable to me, but I can already feel a change in the attitude of Lawrence St. residents. And, rumor has it that the blonde chick that drives the Audi TT convertible leaked info to the Cambridge police about a certain rusty blue Buick on Lawrence St. that doesn’t have a current motor vehicle inspection sticker. I’ve already seen a few of my neighbors wearing ‘Stop Snitching’ t-shirts, and I’d hate for the Buick to be caught in the middle of that argument."

As for O’meara, she’s not too worried about how the end of the Buick will impact the popularity of "My Black Mouse." "’My Black Mouse’ was an instant hit that inspired a generation, and even if the Buick isn’t able to remain on Lawrence St. as a monument for the song, it will always be remembered as the inspiration that inspired the inspiration for a generation. Not to mention all of the spin-off hits that followed ‘My Black Mouse,’ like ‘Walls of Webs’ and ‘My Wet Dolphin.’" O’Meara is scheduled to perform "My Black Mouse" this Saturday at the Hall of Mormons in Salt Lake City, UT where she is a PA student at the UU. Although the Hall of Mormons does not serve alcoholic beverages, O’meara insists that she no longer needs a buzz to perform for strangers. "Ever since my marriage to Seinfeld’s architect Geoff O’Meara, I’ve felt confident performing sober in public, and it’s not because the Mormons don’t serve liquor. Being married to Seinfeld’s architect has been a life-altering experience. Did you know that Jerry and Jessica each have their own bathroom?"

Bogen adds, "I have had the pleasure of owning and driving a national Indie Rocker icon while being close friends with Seinfeld’s architect’s wife. Anyone who can’t see through the Buick’s body rot, dents and flat tires to the rusted core of the transmission or the ripped upholstery of the driver’s seat, well, I just feel sorry for those people. Tonight I’ll be emptying my on-street storage unit, and tomorrow morning, I’ll open the back door, reach around the front seat to the driver’s door handle and push open the driver’s door from the inside, so I can leave the key and the title on the front seat. Then, I’ll probably drink a Nespresso and walk to the bus stop." She doesn’t plan to leave the lyrics of "My Black Mouse" in the Buick’s glove compartment. "My week as an Indie Rocker was over 3 years ago," says Bogen. "How much longer do I have to pretend that I give a sh*t about Ryan Adams?"

So ends a legend.

Gas prices are now a major concern for many people. Prices here in Madison are at $2.69 a gallon while they are higher around the state and around the nation. Recently, the Bush Administration agreed that it will not raise fuel efficiency standards for pickup trucks, big SUVs, and minivans.

People in various groups–including that inveterate junk mailer, the Sierra Club–railed against this idea. Their position is that the government ought to force industry to produce large vehicles that get better gas mileage.

Quite frankly, the Sierra Club is dead wrong in their approach to this issue.The problem with increasing Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards is that it takes entirely too long to have any effect. In addition, it only affects new vehicle purchases. It does nothing to get fuel guzzling behemoths off the road that have been purchased in the last ten years.

If the Sierra Club was truly interested in getting more fuel efficient cars on the road it would be a big player in the oil market. Nothing is going to get SUVs off the road faster than gas prices moving towards four of five dollars a gallon. In addition, higher gas prices not only discourage people from buying new SUVs, they discourage them from buying and driving old SUVs.

For instance, a Ford Excursion has a 44 gallon fuel tank. At current prices ($2.69/gallon), it costs $118.36 for an Excursion owner to fill up their tank. Annecdotal reports place Excursion gas mileage in the single digits. So, if we’re generous and assume that means 9 mpg, an Excursion can travel 396 miles on a tank of gasoline.

Our 1998 Saturn wagon, for comparison, gets about 31 mpg on the higway and 29 mpg in the city. It has a 12.5 gallon fuel tank. If we were to run that tank dry and fill it up at $2.69 per gallon, it would cost us $33.63. Assuming we were doing highway driving, we could then travel 387.5 miles on a tank of gasoline.

If someone is dumb or wealthy enough to spend $118-plus every time they fill up their tank, then let them. Most people simply cannot afford that for very long, no matter how much credit card debt they rack up.

So, if the Sierra Club is really interested in getting SUVs and other mosters off the road, they ought to be buying up oil as quickly as possible to drive up the price. As long as they don’t put the oil into the market, they can create artificial shortages that further drive the price of oil (and hence, gasoline) upwards. If you want to change how people act, hit ‘em where it hurts–in the pocketbook.

On my way to curling last night, I witnessed the aftermath of a car crash in Madison that resulted in the death of one person and injuries to several others.42,643 people died on America’s roads in 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available. In 2002, 43,005 people died on America’s roads making highway deaths the number one cause of death among people aged 3-33.

If you conservatively assume that 40,000 people have died every year since 1990, over 560,000 people will have been killed.

560,000!!

Everybody and their dog started a Tsunami victims relief fund when 100,000-plus people died in a one-time event. Where is the outrage about five times as many people dying in a series of events that continues right to this very moment?

If you assume 40,000 deaths per year (which is low, but easy to work with), someone dies on America’s roads every 13 minutes. If you commute one-half to work in each direction, four people will die on America’s roads during your daily commute.

What do we have to show for the deaths of 560,000 people? A few new suburbs, a decrepit and nearly bankrupt rail system, bankrupt or nearly bankrupt bus lines, struggling public transit systems, and some very wealthy tire, gasoline, highway construction, and automotive companies. Are those worth the price we’ve paid in human life?

By the time I was heading back to the house after my curling match, the accident had been clearly and the highway had been reopened to traffic. As I passed the accident scene, I looked hard to try and find some sign that marked the fact that someone lost their life on a cold Wisconsin night surrounded by screeching metal and dirty concrete.

The only thing I saw was skidmarks on the highway.

The Consumer Reports 2005 Buying Guide arrived in our mailbox today. About halfway through the book, a reasonably good sized quantity of paper is devoted to rating the various vehicles currently on the market.Each vehicle is assigned a symbol for “Predicted Reliability” and another symbol for how well the vehicle retains resale value. The next field is a brief general comments field.

While eating my lunch today, I was scanning through the book and started reading writeups of various vehicles. The writeup for the Ford Excursion is an absolute killer:

Designed to be the largest SUV on the road, the Excursion is a clumsy, fuel-guzzling behemoth with a noisy engine, atrocious fuel economy, an uncomfortable ride, and marginal brakes.

No, don’t hold back, CR. Tell us what you really think.

Maybe someone can ask Ford engineers exactly what they were thinking when they designed a huge vehicle with “marginal brakes.” Did the idea of a gigantic vehicle that has trouble stopping really strike a chord with a focus group somewhere? Was the focus group composed entirely of demolition derby attendees? Didn’t anyone think to run that idea by a lawyer familiar with the concept of liability?

The “Big Vehicle That Can’t Stop Too Well” brought to you by Ford, the same folks who brought you the “Vehicles with Exploding Tires and Rollover Problems.”

An Open Letter to Madison-area Drivers:My fellow Madisonians,

As most of you have undoubtedly noticed, the City of Madison and the surrounding areas got several inches of snow during the last 36 hours.

What you may not know, however, is that the presence of snow on the ground does not automatically suspend all legal, social, practical, and ethical constraints on your automobiles.

Perhaps you remember when the city got snow last year. Many of you drove too fast for conditions and caused collisions with your fellow citizens. If you were lucky, no one was hurt by your reckless actions.

The fact that snow makes roads slippery is something of an unchanging fact from year to year. That means that if snow is on the road this year, the road will be slippery just like last year.

As a result, you may want to slow down a bit. If you usually speed, err, I mean drive, 35 miles per hour down the street in front of my house, chances are good that doing the same thing with snow on the ground will get you a personal audience with a tow truck driver and an insurance adjuster or two.

Also, I checked with the city’s legal eagles and none of the local traffic laws have been suspended. That means you need to stop for stop signs. You still need to yield the right of way to pedestrians. Driving over medians to effect a U-turn is still verboten. If you wouldn’t do it on an 80 degree July day, don’t do it on a snowy 21 degree January day.

Here’s a helpful hint: If the snow around your parked car is piled higher than half-way up your tires, you’ll have to actually exert yourself, pick up a shovel, and shovel your car out. Your car might have a really kickin’ sound system, but that doesn’t subvert the laws of nature and physics one bit.

(Confidential to the driver of the Pontiac Bonneville that I helped push out of a driveway this morning: Try a bit of effort next time, loser. You didn’t shovel one lousy foot of your walk, much less your driveway. It was no surprise that your crappy car with street performance tires got hung up on the sludge the snowplows pushed into your driveway. I especially liked the way you, in your late twenties or early thirties, stayed in the car with the windows up while myself and a large woman in her late forties pushed your lousy car for you out of the goodness of our hearts. Your complete lack of gratitude as you drove off really warmed my heart. Don’t worry. We’ll meet again. I walk by your house every day.)

Those of you who drive SUV’s might want to check the definitions of both “All-Wheel Drive” and “Four-Wheel Drive.” See, the key word in both of those phrases is “Drive.” Just because you can travel the same speed on snowy roads as you can on dry roads does not mean that you can stop in the same distance. There is a reason that SUV owners often meet twenty at a time in the ditch. It’s because as a group, you drive too fast.

This is Wisconsin, folks. We should know better than this. If you find yourself in the ditch or involved in a collision, spend the time waiting for a tow truck observing those of us who are not similarly handicapped by a lack of good sense and see if you can mimic how we safely and politely navigate roads the winter.

Earlier today, I found myself riding west on Dayton Street in Madison. Pedestrians were crossing Dayton at Dayton & Frances (near the Kohl Center — the arena where the UW-Madison basketball and hockey teams play) and traffic was (remarkably) stopped for them.

I pulled up to the intersection just in time to hear the following through an open window from the back seat of a car full of young males:
“This is bullshit! We have a car for Christ’s sake!”

There was then some wild gesticulation at the pedestrians peacefully crossing the street as the young males waited.

I was hungry and on my way to get calories. It seemed like a shouting match was the likely result such an action, so I resisted the urge to explain that while they had a car, they lacked common courtesy, common sense, and knowledge of traffic laws beyond “Red light: Stop. Green light: Go!”.

Anyone who wonders why some people don’t feel safe walking or biking might look to this young man’s comment for possible inspiration. Clearly, there is a reasonably large segment of our population that believes driving a four wheeled vehicle makes right. Those behind the wheel can do no wrong while those of us with just two wheels or feet must look out because we don’t have cars and that makes us stupid, liable, targets, dead, or some combination of the above.

If you see a black Pontiac Grand Am inhabited by four young males cruising around the streets of Madison, don’t count on them to stop for you.

They have a car, after all.

Nine people died on Wisconsin’s highways and by-ways over Memorial Day Weekend.Of course, all seventy words of that story ran on page B2 of the Wisconsin State Journal.

The big news was that the Madison metro area got more rain over Memorial Day Weekend and some people’s docks are covered in water. That apparently much more newsworthy article got 530 words of page B1 coverage, above the fold.

So, the body count on America’s highways keeps going up. Nine people died last weekend? Who cares?! We got rain on the a three day weekend, after all.

Why don’t Americans find something wrong with this sort of news coverage? Even more baffling is why they don’t find something wrong with the deaths of nine people over a weekend (270 people have died so far this year just on Wisconsin highways alone). That’s more than one person a day who leaves home or work, never to return because they died in a wreck on some Godforsaken asphalt somewhere.

This morning on NPR’s Marketplace, I heard that sales of SUVs rebounded in May after falling off in April. What are people thinking? The great American public once again has its collective head up its collective ass! The actual need for these gas-guzzling, environment-destroying vehicles is about 5% of the total actually bought.

Let’s start paying attention to the EPA numbers that every vehicle model has assigned to it.

A couple of suggestions:

1. Unless you’re a business & can prove a need, slap a 25% surcharge at time of purchase on any vehicle with a rating below 20 mpg.
2. Put a chip in every car identifying its EPA rating & have gas pumps that can read that info. Then when you go to fill up your gas tank and if the pumps detect that your vehicle is wildly inefficient (anything below 20 mpg), you get the pleasure of paying an extra $1.00 per gallon.

All money collected should go to EPA enforcement efforts &/or Superfund cleanups, which the present administration has de-funded.

My rant for today.

-Mike

Front page news reported above the fold in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Mall to build parking ramps

Memo to people with “Share the Road With Bicycles” bumper stickers:

If you run a bicyclist off the road in a car bearing said bumper stickers, I will think the following about you:

• You are a hypocrite.
• You can’t read the (very simple) sentences you affix to your car.

Fifteen people died on Wisconsin Highways in the first two days of
2004. Fifteen!

More people died on Wisconsin roads last year (837) than in any year since
1981. What do state officials blame for this shocking statistic?

Let’s start by examining the following facts:

• Subdivisions and shopping centers are now built almost exclusively with
  cars in mind.
• Funding for public transportation is either stalled or shrinking in
  almost every municipality.
• Funding for highway construction and reconstruction is growing at a
  healthy yearly rate.
• As a result of these factors, the number of miles driven by citizens has
  increased every year. (58.6 billion miles for all Wisconsin drivers,
  combined; 586 million more miles than last year)
• There is a direct correlation between the number of miles driven
  by any given individual and the chances of ending up in some sort of car
  crash. If you don’t believe me, ask the automobile insurance industry.
• More of the vehicles on the road are bigger and heavier (read: SUVs)
  than historically has been the case.
• The average speed driven on Wisconsin roads has also crept upwards.
• Heavier objects traveling at higher rates of speed have more energy that
  must be dissipated in any sort of crash, thereby causing more injury to
  drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians.

Given all that, what would state transportation officials blame for the
grim highway death statistics? Motorcyles, of course. 22
motorcyclists did the state DOT a disfavor and got themselves killed.