On the Move

Live longer by driving less (or at least slower)

San Antonio traffic jam photo from viainfo.net.

A recent study laid out what I found to be an amazing stat.

For every hour driving, U.S. life expectancy decreases by 20 minutes, suggests analysis in a University of Toronto study. The shorter life spans are due to crashes.

An hour a day is about the average two-way San Antonio commute. So the typical driver here loses four days a year, about half a year over a 40-year career. The payoff is a year and a half slogging through traffic to make the bucks.

The finding that drivers lose a minute of life for every three minutes on the road wasn’t even the main point of the study. Authors wanted to consider the risks of driving faster to reduce travel times. They determined that time saved by speeding is far outweighed by shortened lives due to higher chances of crashing.

The conclusion: Americans drive a little too fast and can live longer by driving slower.

Hurricane Alex delivers blow

Latest radar from National Weather Service.

Hurricane Alex is grinding into a Mexican coast, its tails whipping South Texas and spitting out tornadoes. Winds are blowing more than 100 mph.

Though the brunt of the storm wandered south, it was powerful enough to drive both Texans and Mexicans away from their homes to find safer shelter, the Associated Press reported. A slew of tornado, flooding and wind warnings are in place in South Texas, including a flood watch in Bexar County, the National Weather Service says.

Officials closed the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge in South Padre Island due to winds and State Highway 87 in Galveston because of flooding, the Texas Department of Transportation announced. More than 100 TxDOT workers and 200 pieces of equipment will move in tomorrow to open roads and fix traffic signals and signs.

Helpful links:

• National Weather Service
• Weather Channel
• Statewide road conditions, or call (800) 452-9292
• TxDOT hurricane page

It happens to the best of us

I’m a good driver.  No, really, I am.  I do all the things good drivers do: I try to predict what other motorists are going to do and plan accordingly (and I’m right most of the time, no small feat in this town); I keep an eye far enough down the road so as to see hazards well in advance; I know traffic laws inside-and-out and obey them (OK, except maybe for a few mph over the speed limit); I yield the right-of-way to bozos who aren’t paying attention or just don’t care; and so on.  But last Friday I did something I’ve seen dozens of others do and something that I’m usually very aware of and am careful to avoid, and the result was a lovely fender bender. 

Of course, the first question folks ask is if anyone was hurt.  Fortunately, everyone was fine– in fact, the airbags didn’t even deploy.  So the next question, then, is what happened?

What happened to me has probably happened to most motorists at one time or another.  I was making a right turn and there was a vehicle stopped in front of me waiting for a gap in the traffic.  A gap came along and the vehicle in front of me started moving forward, so I started looking back for a gap to merge into.  When a break came along a few seconds later, I started to accelerate only to realize that the car in front of me didn’t actually go when I thought they did.  I hit the brakes hard but it was already too late.  BAM!

Of course, the way to avoid this is to always look forward again at where you’re going before you start to accelerate, not only to make sure the preceding vehicle has cleared, but also to make sure that another previously unseen vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist, UFO, or whatnot hasn’t suddenly appeared in your path.  I usually do this, but this time I was in a hurry and, as a result, was a little careless. 

So hopefully my story will help someone else avoid this all-too-common traffic mistake and the unfortunate results it can bring.

Every driver commits at least some of these six sins

Does talking to a passenger distract your driving?

Yes, it does, according to safety officials. And that’s just one of a half dozen habits that distract motorists.

Drivers are considered distracted when they:

• Talk to passengers
• Smoke
• Eat
• Fiddle with dashboard controls
• Reach for something
• Talk or text on a cell phone

OK, so some of these, especially the last one, aren’t surprises. And it’s the last one that Oprah Winfrey is targeting with her “No Phone Zone” Day, which is tomorrow.

Agencies across the nation, including the Texas Department of Transportation, have joined Oprah’s campaign. Tomorrow, electronic highway signs will flash, “Make Your Vehicle a No Phone Zone,” or “Drive Now. Text or Talk Later.”

Motorists using hand-held devices are four times more likely to be in a crash, TxDOT says. All distractions caused 103,526 accidents and 524 deaths in Texas in 2008.

Nationwide, distractions led to 5,870 deaths and 515,000 injuries, statistics show.

Young people are especially vulnerable. Almost half of teens use phones while driving, a Texas Transportation Institute study found.

More information:

• Distraction.gov
• Oprah’s No Phone Zone

Five things to know before heading to Fiesta events

Soggy skies put a damper on the start of the year’s biggest party, with officials cancelling tonight’s Fiesta kickoff at Alamo Plaza and moving the opener to Market Square tomorrow. Hope you didn’t head out to Alamo Plaza. 

No worries about the revelry cranking up. It will. But before joining the fun, here are some things to check on:

PARKING: Even tested downtown drivers can lose a little focus when Fiesta fills up parking lots and kicks up parking fees. The Express-News has a decent map of parking lots, but alas, doesn’t include fees. MAP

EXPRESS BUSES: Avoid parking altogether by hopping on special Fiesta express buses. VIA set up an event page with details, which includes reroutes of regular services due to street closures. FIESTA BUSES

DRINKING: If you drink, have a drinking and NOT driving plan. The easiest thing to do is assign a designated driver. In a pinch, Yellow Cab will provide up to 700 free rides for certain events, thanks to a state grant. Of course, you can always fork out your own $25 for a cab, and it’ll be a lot cheaper than a $17,000 DWI fine. CALL 222-2222

TRAFFIC: Make it easy on yourself. Just a few minutes checking TransGuide’s site for wrecks and slowdowns can save you an hour on the highway. TRANSGUIDE

WEATHER: Nuff said on that. FORECAST

Now go have a great time. And be safe. 

More links:

• Express-News Fiesta page
• Official Fiesta site

WTF? Oh, it’s a FYA!

“What the heck is that?!”

That seems to be a common reaction of local motorists as they first encounter one of the flashing yellow arrow (FYA) traffic signals that have popped-up at San Antonio intersections over the past year or so.  What began as an experiment in late 2008 at a couple dozen intersections along Wurzbach Rd. and San Pedro Ave. has now spread to about 40 or so intersections across the city and will now become a standard, not just here in San Antonio, but nationally as mandated by the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).  As often happens in these cases, there has been some second-guessing amongst the general public as to the necessity of this newfangled signal, but understanding the research that went into it and why it’s beneficial generally allays those knee-jerk criticisms.

more »

Tragedy provides reminders

It’s been over two weeks now since the accident that killed Rosita Davila.  According to reports, off-duty SAPD officer Gabe Trevino was entering Loop 1604 westbound near Stone Oak after midnight that night and collided with a car being driven by Davila, causing her car to skid off the roadway and flip over the center barrier, killing her and injuring a passenger.

This tragedy serves as a tragic reminder of two important traffic laws, both of which have been a focus of the initial investigation.  Firstly, drivers entering a freeway must yield to traffic already on the freeway.  Inexplicably, I’ll get an e-mail from time-to-time from someone who firmly believes that traffic entering the freeway has the right-of-way unless there’s a yield sign (which is fairly rare.)  However, traffic entering a freeway is considered to be changing lanes, and you must always yield to traffic already in a lane into which you’re merging.

Secondly, all drivers have a fundamental duty to do everything they reasonably can to avoid an accident.  I can’t count how many times I’ve seen drivers forcibly assert their right-of-way and nearly cause an accident.  Please understand that I’m not saying that’s what happened in this case, but the initial accident report did proffer that as a possible cause, and even if it’s moot, it still offers a reminder that’s it’s entirely possible to be “dead right.”

It has recently been reported that Trevino was texting or otherwise using his cell phone at the time of the accident.  The dangers of this are obvious, and again, this case offers yet another reminder.  If not, take a look at the new AT&T ads about texting while driving:

http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/03/new-antitexting-campaign-breaks-hearts-and-unsafe-habits.html

New traffic sign needed: “Take turns”

Someone sent me this and I thought it was interesting enough to post here.  It’s about four and a half minutes long and worth a look.

Fifty percent of traffic accidents happen at intersections. Gary Lauder, who is the managing partner of Lauder Partners, a venture capital firm, and the co-creator of the Socrates Society at the Aspen Institute, shares a brilliant and cheap idea for helping drivers move along smoothly: a new traffic sign that combines the properties of “Stop” and “Yield” — and asks drivers to be polite.

http://bit.ly/bTllML

“Whoever put traffic lights on Loop 1604 needs to be punched”

The oft-maligned 1604/Braun intersection

Well, once again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  I’ve been working on what I think will be an exciting new addition to my website (stay tuned for more on that soon.)  However, as I was watching the Sunday morning political talk shows, my wife mentioned something that motivated me to write this post, which is one that I’ve been meaning to do for a while.  While Facebooking (can that really be a verb?), she came across a new Facebook group with the same title as this post.  After rolling my eyes (as I often do in these situations), I realized (also as I often do in these situations) that the creator of that group– and those who subscribe to the explicit as well as implicit sentiment of it– probably just doesn’t have the back-story to understand why things are the way they are and that my initial reaction made me just as guilty of jumping to conclusions as that person was.  Whoever created the group is obviously frustrated– they even say they’re “pissed off” at the “stupid” traffic lights, and I sympathize with their frustration.  But, as is often the case, there’s more to the story than meets the eye, and maybe if folks understood how things got to be as they are, they might be more forgiving.  This posting is an attempt at that.

more »

Live steam coming to San Antonio

1925 Baldwin steam locomotive at Pearl Brewery

Question:  How do you return a long dormant steam locomotive back to active passenger service in 2010, with all the heightened concerns about safety?  Answer:  Very, very carefully.  This ain’t 1964.  Way back then early Texas Transportation Museum members including one Dave Wallace, acquired the 1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive from New Braunfels where it had sat idled in a shed since being retired around 1928, brought it to San Antonio, placed it on tracks adjacent to Pearl Brewery, simply filled the boiler with water and fired it up.  While it didn’t explode, it sent out enough smuts and soot that those same volunteers ended up cleaning car windshields for several blocks around. more »