Time for Traffic Sense – Resist the Rouge Drivers Out There

It is often said, the driver license is a privilege and not a right. I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, it is often a misused privilege given the number of traffic violations that occur on America’s roads. I generally feel happy when I find that a cop had stopped a car on the highway and possibly was issuing a ticket to the driver for some traffic infraction. But do all traffic violations deserve a ticket? There may be any number of arguments that side with the violating driver: too many traffic laws that are hard to remember; some trivial or obscure laws that really do not serve any practical purpose other than raking money from the imposed tickets; some human errors that just cannot be avoided given the conditions and the person who is driving; etc. While I wanted to highlight this aspect, my intent is not to categorically defend the violating driver. I wanted to throw a different light related to traffic laws, some of them, that somehow discourage the conscientious driver from being the due diligent traffic rules follower. That’s a shame and you might see why.

When I look at the traffic laws, they are generally very clear in their intent and the displays and other communications that convey them often come to be standardized. A 55 sign board means that from the point of that board the speed limit is 55 miles per hour. And pretty much all 55 sign boards across America are the same in their look and feel. Although, often I find that they are taken lightly as when drivers tend to go at least 5 miles faster than the posted speed limit and that the cops look askance at such an infraction. So why not make a 55 speed limit 60, one might argue but another might argue then the norm (of how the drivers would adapt to the 5 miles-over concept) would become 65. Then the one who argued for 60 would argue that the limit be now 50 so that the norm would, although adjust to 55, would still nicely fit with the original 55. While such an idea generally serves the purpose of keeping the traffic flowing at 55 because a majority of drivers are violating the law and going 5 miles over, it beats the purpose of a law. It also “punishes” those drivers, like me, who strictly want to follow the law. How?

On a single lane highway, I am driving at the posted speed, let’s say 55. Would I be comfortable driving that way? Not at all, not because I didn’t have the will to keep sticking to 55 but because other drivers behind me tailgate to an extent where it becomes dangerous. One is pushed; one succumbs to the push and increases the speed in the hope that one can avoid being tailgated further. But does it work? Not really! One will only be forced to speed up further if there is a crazy driver behind. So the call here for all the conscientious drivers is to resist. I set my speed at exactly the speed limit with my cruise control and avoid altogether the pressure to succumb from the rouge driver behind me. Of course, cruise control may not be conducive for all speeds and without considerable experience using it, must not be used in certain conditions. There are other ways the good driver who is being pushed can resist: temporarily turn the rear view mirror or when possible, give a nasty stare in that mirror; but more importantly, just don’t give a damn to the driver behind who is pushing. The good driver is not breaking the law; the driver behind is! When I last knew, tailgating is a law breakage.

Let me now turn a bit on some traffic laws that openly encourage drivers to violate other traffic laws. These laws while are mutually exclusive seem like they are conditional to each other’s working. Here is a scenario: I am driving on a mountainous, winding one lane 55-speed highway. I am alone so far in my direction. I see a traffic law board explaining that one needs to take a turnout to allow other vehicles to pass if the number of vehicles behind gets to be around 10. After a while vehicles start to accumulate behind me pretty quickly because I am maintaining the speed limit even as I am at the max speed of 55 and the other vehicles obviously are in a haste. There are now about 10 vehicles behind me – don’t ask me how I counted. A little later I notice a turnout. Being the traffic law abider I am, I take the turnout and let all those fast vehicles pass and then I merge back on to the highway. If I continue to drive within the speed limit, I would cause a repeat of the scenario I just described. If I chase the vehicles I let pass, I could potentially get a ticket from a lurking cop but unlikely I would pass the first vehicle when a new turnout appears. Because the speeding first vehicle would not take the turnout, perhaps would not even notice one; the speeding vehicle driver would outrun all the vehicles so that he or she is alone and can conveniently avoid the turnout. From this example, you can clearly see that there is benefit to the driver who is violating the speed limit. And that is a shame!

On interstates and other freeways, the left-most lane is often considered the fast lane. How fast is the question! Independent of how one labels a lane, one can only go as fast as the posted speed limit to conform to the law. So in the so called fast lane one may not go beyond the speed limit and if one is touching the speed limit one is going the fastest lawfully permissible. Very good! Now, if I happened to be the driver who is driving at and sticking to the max of the speed limit, why should someone, in the name of using the fast lane expect me to move over to let them pass – emergency and other authorized vehicles are excepted, of course? That’s the norm, ain’t it? But I am sorry; I would refuse to give way. And you should too! Often times I notice that drivers, in order to please those who are pushing them, like a battered spouse syndrome, want to move over to the right lane to let the “pusher” pass. But what they don’t realize is that they get too close in front of another vehicle that is in the lane they merged into and cause a potential hazard.

I would like to suggest a few innovative ideas I wanted to implement for my vehicles. I never did implement them for reasons that I had no expertise myself and never sought help from others either. One is to have an additional horn that when used is directed at a vehicle behind mine. This would be useful to ward off the rouge drivers who almost want to kiss my bumpers (rear mud guards). The other is to have a marquee that is clearly visible to the rouge driver behind my vehicle on which I can “text message” as desired, hopefully by dictation. For example, I can message “YOU ARE TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT”. I could get nastier without being uncivilized. You probably are realizing that I am on a mission to resist traffic violators, working within the traffic system and without violating any traffic laws myself. I consider these actions kind of analogous to Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience to resist the British rule in India.

I can rant about a whole lot of other traffic related violations that really annoy and distract me. As a driver there is not much I can do except for using a honk here and giving a nasty stare there. I frequently see drivers throwing their cigarette butts on to the road as they are driving. My response, if I can positively identify the car from where the butt was thrown, is to give a directed honk. I also pretty regularly find myself glared at by high beam lights from the vehicles behind. What I do in this case is indicate to the driver behind me by adjusting my rear view mirror several times when possible. If this doesn’t help, dim the rear view mirror – I don’t have the auto dimming feature – and turn my side view mirror if I am getting the glare from it too. And sometimes I gently tap the break several times in rapid succession to somehow convey that the lights from the car behind me that are reflecting from my mirrors are too bright for my eyes. (I am told such behavior is actually aggressive but I don’t think so if I am doing it in a scenario I described above.) If I had my rear marquee perhaps I can communicate more effectively.

Finally, I will leave with another of my resistance tactics. I am being tail gated on a 35-mile road. At some point on the road I need to take a right turn into a narrow lane. I would considerably slow down and turn leisurely. You could do the same in one of two ways and frustrate the tailgater. You could look in the mirror as you turn – a silent taunting, if you will or you could altogether ignore the fact that there is a car behind you. The latter would make your turn more natural but would still frustrate your tailgater. And when you finally park your car, wherever, you can look into your rear view mirror and enjoy your own broad smile.

As a final note, it is best to do the defensive driving thingy to be safe but if you are following the rules and others are not, there is no reason to be too defensive – as long as safety is maintained. Feel free to comment on your experiences when you were following the rules of the road and others were not.

Modern Medical Breakthroughs and Ancient Wisdom

Through the decades, we have been seeing medical breakthroughs unlike any that humans experienced. Eradication of deceases is indeed a beneficial outcome of such breakthroughs. But I wonder if we are playing a cat and mouse game with these medical breakthroughs against the medical challenges. Of course, we must. Otherwise, we will be overwhelmed by the medical challenges that we cannot address. However, even as we advance in the medical field in terms of eradication, prevention and cure of medical sickness (I am using this as a broad term to denote illnesses, deceases etc.) we can never completely conquer unless we broaden the scope of our medical advancement to include a preventive element.

There is no doubt that preventive measures are advocated but how much they are really practiced is a question we must take a hard look at. The lack of such practices actually leads to medical sickness. For example, if you don’t wash your hands, you contaminate and spread bacteria which can cause illness. Or as another example, if you are not physically active, you may develop medically oriented bodily problems.

In addition to the preventive measures, we must also consider ancient wisdom drawn from, say the Indian Subcontinent, regarding food ingredients that are shown to have properties that are both preventive and curative from a health point of view. If you consider ginger, widely used in India, there is no dearth of benefits it bestows on its consumers (I mean literally). Another example of the Indian Subcontinent’s present to the world is yoga that can simply transform, say a generation of folks into a healthy lot, should they practice it. Prior to 20th century (AD) probably America knew nothing about Yoga. Now it is a different story.

The simple opinion I am trying to profess here is that the modern medical field with its superb technological advancements must synchronize with ancient wisdom on food and healthy lifestyle to strengthen the health of a populace. I just gave a few examples from the Indian Subcontinent but there, I am certain, are many examples from the world over. Thanks for reading!

“Leechy” Financial Institutions That Received Bailouts

Big financial institutions which were pretty much melting away during the Bush administration (the one under whose administration 9/11 happened) had to be bailed out because they were considered too big to fail. How pathetic! These institutions that were bailed out were cowardly, and leechy on middle class customers.

Those that ardently support and embrace capitalism must show a sense of fair and balance. Some of these capitalistic zealots don’t have a problem supporting the leechy financial institutions in terms of bailouts but invoke capitalistic competition when it comes to financially poor people who might demand a living wage for the hard work they do. If you have this kind of a twisted position, how do you sleep at night?

Government Job Seeking Republican, You Are For Less Government, Really?

I hear conservatives talk about less government. From a conservative values point of view, it makes sense. The smaller the government with an ensuing limited bureaucracy, the greater the independence of people under the government. The missing element in all this is that the government is of the people, by the people and for the people. In other words, the government is people. So why not have more power to the people with an expanded government. Agreed, it doesn’t always work that way. Government bureaucrats and politicians (I mean politicians who are in the government, say a conservative federal senator) can work toward wielding enormous power and indirectly subdue the independence of the people. At least until they seize to be a government person.

My problem with these less government advocates is that why they seek governmental positions such as a senator or a congress person or even president? Doesn’t joining as one goes contrary to their advocacy of less government? What do you think?

How Not to Do it

The following is a reference to workplace related design but you can see how it has implications to any design effort, particularly when we want to enable a good user experience.

In a classic narrative Mark S Sanders and late Ernest J McCormick, Human Factors Psychologist and Industrial Psychologist respectively, recall one of their conversations with a few engineers regarding nuclear power plant displays’ console design. One of the authors, as a consultant, met with two engineers to discuss the console. Additional background to the following conversation was that there was a scale drawing of a preliminary design with no mock-up (and no intent to create one either). “The consultant asked the engineers to ‘walk him through’ the console so he could become familiar.”

Here is the verbatim of the conversation Sanders and McCormick (1993) wrote in their book:

Engineers: These are the six XYZ concentrate indicators.

Consultant: What is the operator’s task here? Does the operator have to read a specific value, compare values between indicators, or use these indicators while manipulating controls?

Engineers: We really don’t know – that is Operations’ responsibility. We will see that someone from Operations come in later to answer your questions.

[The Operations office was 25 miles from the office where the preliminary design was developed. And I believe there was no Internet, leave alone the Lync, at that time.]

Engineers: Let’s continue. This is a digital readout that directs the operator’s sequence of actions.

Consultant: How does the operator use that? What displays and controls are referred to by the readout? How much time does the operator have to respond to the display?

Engineers: We really don’t know – that is Operations’ responsibility.

Consultant (now becoming a little irritated): Exactly what did the two of you have to do with this console anyway?

Engineers: We designed it! Each of us started at a different end, and we laid out the displays going across. We then compared the layouts and selected the parts from each we liked the best.

Consultant: I think this would be a good time for a coffee break.

Reference:

Sanders, M.S., & McCormick E J (1993). Human Factors in Engineering and Design (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill, Inc.

The Importance of Literacy

All the literates certainly know that literacy is a very important aspect of human life. It denotes a certain basic level of knowledge with potential for acquiring more knowledge for the general benefit to human kind. It does not mean that someone who is illiterate is not knowledgeable. Often times, the so called illiterates tend to have more practical knowledge than their literate counterparts in certain areas of human endeavor.

Worldwide there has been progress in the literacy rates. Take the example of India which had negligible literacy rate at the time of British withdrawal of their illegal occupation of the Indian sub-continent in the late 1940s. The Indian literacy rate is now deemed to be around 75% although a recent report published in Times of India emphasizes that despite the increase in the rate, there are far more illiterates than literates when compared to the decade of 2000 to the current year. Of course, one must look at this discrepancy from the stand point of India’s enormous population which is touted to overtake that of China’s not far from now.

It is a shame that countries that have enormous resources and a very knowledgeable education base cannot bring up the literacy rates to near 100%. The state of Kerala in India has achieved that. Why not the rest of the country and other countries as well?

A factor that for centuries thwarted the growth of literacy among certain countries’ populace is simply this. Child labor either through family “enterprise” or other small businesses. It is good to see that is changing with the introduction of strong child labor laws but there is a long way to go.

Let Former Felons Vote – We Are a Democracy, Aren’t We?

In recent news heard of restoration of voting rights to former felons in Virginia. The state’s governor, Terry McAuliffe, was instrumental in doing this. This is indeed laudable. When a convicted felon has served the society through incarceration or whatever penalties imposed on them and completed the punishment, it is time to let them be able to vote. Otherwise, democracy has no meaning.

I heard of some folks opposed to the governor, referred the action to taking political advantage for potentially helping Hillary Clinton (the democratic presidential candidate – still campaigning in the primary at the time of this opinion). This is absurd! After all, the former felons could be of any political leaning, democratic or republican or for that matter, independent. Just because their voting rights are restored doesn’t mean they would vote for a candidate that the governor supports. It is a stupid argument, to say the least, to think otherwise.

I did a little review of the state of the different states’ position on this issue. A lot of gaps to fill. I hope the other states will follow suit and adopt governor McAuliffe’s position.

A CBS News Report on Wounded Warrior Project

Watched a report on CBS News yesterday that highlighted the excess spending by the Wounded Warrior Project. The gist I got from the report is this: The Wounded Warrior Project which is a charity for wounded veterans was wasting a lot of the donation money for meetings at luxury hotels etc. An Iraq veteran clearly criticized the charity while another, who is a spokesperson, defended it. However, the latter could not answer a simple question by a reporter on why so much spending happened.

I also watched a report by Sharyl Attkisson in the ABC channel about the “uncharitably” huge salaries that the CEOs of charitable foundations take home. It’s high time that the authorities who regulate the criteria for non-profit status given to these charitable entities take a serious look at them and either force them to change their mode of operations or close them down. I have given some money (not much) to the KIND fund and I have complete confidence in their ability to provide their target folks what they said they would do with the funds that they get. But it looks like not all can be trust worthy, for example, the Wounded Warrior Project if what is reported in the news is proven to be true.

Mammoth Finding at Reser Stadium in OSU

Just in news yesterday that construction workers at the Oregon State University (OSU) sports stadium, called Reser, found mammoth bones believed to be at least 10,000 years old. They also found bones belonging to other extinct animals. That is great! However, I am wondering how come these were not discovered when they were originally building the stadium. How could they have missed then?

Of course, the construction workers are not experts in archaeological or anthropological findings. They could have easily missed then or never dug at the place that was dug now. I have been visiting OSU for the past 4 years for my kids. Seen a lot of construction with some new buildings popping up.

Regarding the Reser stadium construction work (it is actually an extension of an existing stadium), I would have thought, “come on, do you really need all that construction to extend an already existing and great looking stadium?”. But now I think that was worth it given the mammoth discovery. Hope some good research would go into this at OSU.