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Drunk pilot found naked, lost in woods {Gadling}
May 21st 2008 2:03AM Pinnacle has been advertising recently in air jobs digest that they will take pilots with as little as 300 hours. This is in contrast to most other regional airlines, that ask for a minimum of 1000 hours. The regional airlines starting pay is about $20,000 per year, for a job that requires almost $100,000 in flight training. When it comes to personnel, you get what you pay for. Until airlines raise ticket prices to something reasonable to pay for high fuel and better pilots, all the best pilot will continue to go to corporate aviation, and the airlines will continue to get the bottom of the barrel, which is what's happening these days. Airline flying is not as safe as it used to be.
Left lane drivers of America want you to move over. You know who you are {Autoblog}
Jun 14th 2007 7:10AM A couple of things. I am a retired CHP officer, and there are some points that need to be made.
Safety is the first and foremost reason to keep to the right, and only use the left lane for passing. Cars who sit in the left lane cause traffic to get backed up behind them. If for some reason there is a problem or accident in the lane ahead of them, that backed up traffic becomes a horrendous chain reaction collision. I know, I have gone to several. These chain reaction collisions usually include a fatality or two, where otherwise the incident that started it would have only been a minor injury accident.
Another problem is emergency response. When I am travelling with lights and siren, I am required to pass on the left, because the response to someone seeing my lights and siren is supposed to be to immediately move to the right (although some idiots in the left lane pull into the center divider, which is wrong!). If I were to pass on the right, I could easily collide with someone who moved right when they saw my lights on their right. Unfortunately, many people don't see the lights and siren until I am right behind them. When people ride the left lane, it severely hampers the responses of emergency vehicles, and causes us to have to continuously slow during our response. This puts peoples lives at risk.
Speed is much less of a safety issue than obstructing traffic. While speed is considered responsible for 1/3 of accidents, exceeding the speed limit has never caused an accident. The section of the california vehicle code that is most often used for accident causes is 22350VC, exceeding the SAFE speed for conditions. Of all the accidents coded speed as the cause, 75% occur below the speed limit. You see, all the rear-enders in stop and go traffic in the cities are coded unsafe speed, even though they occur at 10-15 MPH in 55-65 MPH zones. If you subtract all those accidents, plus all the ones that occur in the rain, while the driver is distracted by children, cellphones, eating, reading, playing with the radio, or putting on make-up, you come to the inevitable conclusion that exceeding the speed limit rarely causes an accident.
Please drive in the right lanes, and leave the left lanes for passing only!
New York Auto Show: Jeep Wrangler Unlimited grows another set of doors {Autoblog}
Apr 13th 2006 2:11PM Remember when jeep used to be for real men, not married with children wannabees who try to pretend their lives aren't over? Real men aren't so lazy they can't climb over a seat. Jeeps aren't about "convenience"!
Commander: Jeep's white elephant? {Autoblog}
Apr 3rd 2006 2:54AM What the world doesn't need is another overpriced, giant mommy mobile in he-man clothes. Most SUVs are nothing more than a station wagon on bad steriods. Slap fake wood panelling on it and call it a country squire. These things rarely go off road, and most people who drive them don't even know how to engage the 4WD. If these married with children people would accept their limitations and true needs, Average fuel economy would skyrocket, and gas prices would plummet. And for the record, there is only one true jeep - Wrangler and its variants!
