44,000 DEATHS On Our Highways: DAMN good news!

From : backyard mechanic

Q: this poster has more experience with diesels than i do. believe him not me. -- christopher a. young you cant shout down a troll. you have to starve them. .. what you are seeing is the grid heater operating. when it cycles on it draws a huge amount of current 100a iirc and that will cause your gauge to swing to the low side. supplying this level of current does not come for free and when the heater is drawing this power the alternator will put a large load on the engine trying to supply it and that will cause your idle speed to drop. it is all normal operations and i wouldnt worry to much about it. otoh you might want to get your batteries load tested as it appears that they no longer have the reserve capacity they should have and the vehicle is relying far more on the alternator alone to supply the required current needed during the warm-up phase. -- if at first you dont succeed youre not cut out for skydiving .

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From : frank from deeetroit

mike hunter wrote the problem is in the various states we allow people that do not know how to drive to teach others how to drive. every driver should have to pass a competent defensive driver training school test before being allowed on the highways and byways. they generally cost a $1000 or more but one will save one many times the cost of the school in lower insurance rates. i sent all of my children and grandchildren to the bob bondurant driving schools at major raceways at a cost of around $2000. none of them to date has ever been charged with a moving violation or ever been involved in a fender bender let alone had a serious accident.. speed is always the fall guy for accidents but the fact is the vast majority of accidents happen at around 35 mph or less. the cause is generally driver inattention or incompetence and that can be corrected or improved drastically if we want to do so. truckers are fall guys as well. drive any major highway at 3 pm then drive the same highway at 3 am when the traffic is mostly trucks and you will be amazed at the difference than when it was filled with cars. i always travel at night when driving great distances for that reason. mike . drugs booze speed teens jerks macho men bikers other fools these substances and people types -- in various combinations -- kill 44000 of u.s. citizens a year. its been like this for decades. but nothing substantive is ever done to reduce this carnage. because nobody cares. are you part of the problem --------- a deadly story we keep missing by peter j. woolley the washington post wednesday december 27 2006; a19 the non-story of 2006 was also the non-story of 2005. it is a non-story every year going back decades. yet the number of people who die in car crashes in the united states is staggering even if it is absent from the agenda of most public officials and largely ignored by the public. when all is said and done and the ball begins to drop on new years eve 44000 people give or take several hundred will have died in auto accidents this year. to put that number in perspective consider that o at the 2006 casualty rate of 800 soldiers per year the united states would have to be in iraq for more than 50 years to equal just one year of automobile deaths back home. o in any five-year period the total number of traffic deaths in the united states equals or exceeds the number of people who died in the horrific south asian tsunami in december 2004. u.s. traffic deaths amount to the equivalent of two tsunamis every 10 years. o according to the national safety council your chance of dying in an automobile crash is one in 84 over your lifetime. but your chances of winning the mega millions lottery are just one in 175 million. o if you laid out side by side 8-by-10 photos of all those killed in crashes this year the pictures would stretch more than five miles. o if you made a yearbook containing the photos of those killed this year putting 12 photos on each page it would have 3500 pages. if you wanted to limit your traffic-death yearbook to a manageable 400 pages youd either have to squeeze more than 100 photos onto each page or issue an eight-volume set. can you hear me now automobile deaths are the leading cause of death for children for teenagers and in fact for all people from age 3 to 33. yet this annual tragedy is not a cause celebre. opinion leaders largely ignore the ubiquitous massacre. no marches walkathons commemorative stamps or fundraising drives are organized. it is not brought up in the state of the union address. it is rarely the subject of public affairs shows. statistics arent updated daily in major papers or broadcasts. gruesome crashes are reported just one at a time each as if it might never happen again. little attention is paid to the aftermath safety measures taken or not taken the workings or non-workings of the justice system. these avoidable deaths as well as more than 2 million nonfatal dismemberments disfigurements and other injuries that go along with them have become part of the fabric of everyday life in the united states. elected officeholders naturally take the path of least resistance. they are well aware that significantly reducing deaths on the roads requires radical solutions in the form of regulation investment and enforcement. roads need to be made safer for example by extending guardrails and medians to every mile of busy highways. speeding and aggressive driving need to be much more rigorously controlled. trucks need to be separated from automobiles wherever possible. and cars need to be built slower and stronger. but every solution is readily opposed by someone manufacturers industrial unions truckers consumers taxpayers -- though all are potential victims themselves. the public is not to blame. it is hemmed in on every side by mind-numbing adve