Month: December 2008

Speed in fact, does not kill.

No humans were killed or injured while making this photograph, while travelling in excess of the posted speed limit.

How often do you hear that old saw “speed kills” or “speed is the leading cause of car crashes” etc? The nannies all want us to slow down, “for our own safety.” As an example: about a year ago my home state of Washington lowered the speed limit on a long, straight section of I-5 I drive almost every day, from 70 down to 60 MPH. They did this in response to several horrific incidents where drivers crossed the median and went head-on into the opposite lanes. Every time one of these accidents happened there would be a State Patrol spokesperson on TV, or in the paper claiming that speed was the cause. So they added more speed patrols, handed out more speeding tickets, and eventually lowered the limit.

I never bought the idea that speed had ANYTHING to do with any of these accidents. Inattentive drivers was likely the cause in my mind. Inattentive, distracted, and poorly trained drivers. Talking on telephones. Watching DVDs(!) Talking on telephones. Spilling coffee. Talking on telephones. Did I mention talking on telephones? The State Patrolmen never did. All they ever talk about is speed.

Well, The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a comprehensive study, the first one in almost 30 years, seeking to understand the ACTUAL causes of car accidents. Guess what came out on top? Speeding? Nope. 41.3% of accidents are caused by driver errors which have nothing to do with speed. Not seeing hazards (20.9%), being distracted by something inside the car (10.6%), being distracted by something outside the car (3.7%), and just plain old inattention (3.6%), Unknown error being the remaining 2.5%)

So where did the KILLER SPEED end up?

Single digits: 8.4% were “too fast for conditions” which means that some percentage of those were UNDER the posted speed limit. Another 4.9% were “too fast for curve” which means that some percentage of those were UNDER the posted speed limit. By the way, the combination of falling asleep at the wheel and having a heart attack while driving added up to 5.5% so Speed seems pretty benign and remote compared to yakking on your cell phone, or just plain old not paying attention!

But of course lack of attention ads NO REVENUE to state and local coffers through fines.

At no point does this study heap any serious blame on speed, and speed alone. So next time some moron tells you that driving fast is dangerous, ask them to prove it.

You can read the whole study here.

A tale of two photos.

I have the “HowGOESit” desktop widget for OS X. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites.

They just hang out up there, sending data down here. You can grab their output off the Internet – usually mere minutes after it is taken. Is that cool or what? We really do live in amazing times. I often look at the latest GOES image for where ever I happen to be, which 99% of the time is here in Washington. Not long after I posted about “December in Seattle” the weather decided to prove me wrong by going spectacularly clear. The above image was taken the DAY OF my timelapse movie… you can see western Washington blanketed by low clouds. The Cascade volcanoes stand a bit above, or in the case of Mt. Rainier, WAY above the clouds. (See Paul, the sun always is shining here… it just doesn’t make it all the way to the ground!) The Cascade Crest in Oregon is clearly delineated by the clouds as well. Very cool.

Then two days later, we get this:

Oh well, the weather can prove me wrong, but it just can’t shut me up. 😉

Exhaustion & Energy.

Highway Hypnosis!

Last night I almost fell asleep at the wheel.

It is hard to believe because “endurance driving” is something I love… something of a hobby. Nothing to me is more pleasurable than hopping behind the wheel and reeling off 300-700 miles at a clip. Last night though, I started nodding off around 200 miles into the route. Thankfully I realized this, right as a sign loomed out of the darkness, as if speaking DIRECTLY to me: “Tired? Rest area ¾ mile.” I slapped myself on the left cheek (face you filthy-minded reader!) and made that short distance, pulled into a parking space, reclined my seat, and literally in an instant fell into a deep restful sleep lasting several hours.

Ironically I’ve been personally & professionally in something of a state of … well… not quite sleep but certainly in slumber. An event yesterday shook me awake from it and sent me on my way. What “my way” will be is uncertain actually, but is not relevant to this bit of story.

Stories. Stories are very important to our species. I found this quote while reading a bedtime story, Crow & Weasel by Barry Lopez to my sons when they were young; and it struck me as vitally important, lodging itself into my brain since that evening more than a decade ago…

“I would ask you to remember only this one thing, the stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good storytellers. Never forget these obligations.” -Badger

Sometimes we do need stories more than food to stay alive. Last night however, I just needed a few hours rest to stay alive, and I found it at the Indian John Hill Rest Area on I-90. After I awoke and resumed my journey the events of the prior day exploded in my head. I realized that this is what caused my fatigue. My mind was reeling with galaxies of new information, new insight, new opportunities, and new ways of seeing things. I was thinking, NOT driving. Driving to me is a Zen-like activity. Complete concentration with minimal thought, only action. I become hyper-aware and my mind becomes blank… an input processor whose sole task is to absorb the environment around it – and my body becomes an output device at the whim of my mind. My drive last night was different because I could not empty my mind and drive. It was tumbling in somersaults through a new-found universe I had just discovered right under my nose, and applying all those thoughts and concepts to my future. It refilled my “gumption tank” but prevented me from performing the task at hand, namely safely driving home. My body surrendered to my brain there on Indian John Hill and I slept like a baby, despite the December chill.

Gumption Tank. That is a phrase I’m borrowing from another great story. Namely Robert Pirsig‘s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, one of the finest stories I have ever read. It is an honest inquiry into values, thought, and life. Pirsig’s story literally goes out beyond the edges, covering a lot of ground, some familiar enough to be mundane, other territory that lies beyond the edge of the map of our minds… where monsters lie. At several points in his story he speaks of motivation (gumption), and things that sap our motivations (gumption traps). As I drove across the dry scrublands of eastern Washington yesterday I recognized all the little gumption traps that I had fallen into, or attached themselves to me over the past few years… and when I awoke in the chill predawn on Indian Jim Hill I had climbed out of, or cast them all off. No matter what life has in store for me over the next few years, at least I have some gumption back.

Man, does it feel good.

Car Photo of the Day, and seeing the future!

OK, everyone here should know exactly what sort of car this is, so no guessing games needed. It is a pretty picture though, so I’m sharing it. I like the composition, placement of objects, and the pattern of reflections on the car which are so incongruous with the brutal nature of the beastly machine itself. Feel free to discuss the aesthetics, or lack thereof, amongst yourselves.

On that theme: I have a few life-related balls in the air at the moment** and likely will not have much time for writing over the next week or so. (I do have a couple of drafts queued up though)… BUT expect a stream of “just pretty pic” CPotD’s in the near future. I may toss in a couple of wildcard bizarro cars that some readers have sent me to fill the gap and keep you guys engaged. If you see a car you sent me you are prohibited from guessing! 😉

**Once the dust settles I'll pull back the curtain and reveal the Wizard of Oz's mechanicals, just be patient.

Capturing Seattle in December

Early December in the Pacific Northwest is an odd phenomenon. Not quite winter, but not quite autumn anymore. Darkness is the rule, with both ends of your commute driven with your headlights on. By late December it seems that we’ve lost the sun altogether. It is as if the sun sort of skirts the southern horizon, perpetually obscured by clouds, darkness reigning from mid-afternoon until mid-morning, with a lingering dusk at high noon. This is because of our northern latitude. An odd irony of Seattle is that it is tucked away in the upper northwest corner of the USA … so far that we live north of the vast majority of Canadians. Yep, my friend Shaun in Guelph, Ontario lives hundreds of miles SOUTH of me, as do most everyone in the rest of Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. The rest of Canada (except those Oiler fans) live within a slap shot of me, in terms of Latitude. The warm wet blanket of the Pacific Ocean keeps us mild and moist however, with snow a rarity and temperatures at about ideal datacenter range or a little below.

I set up my little camera, pointed out my office window looking North-Northwest yesterday a little after I started work, with iStopMotion grabbing a frame once a minute. Around mid-day I had to swap batteries, but then I left it running after I bailed out of the office around 5:30. The batteries died at some point later in the evening… I have no idea what time.

I shot and edited this in 16:9 HD. Tossed a little Sigur Rós soundtrack on it this morning in iMovie and present it now for your enjoyment… or horror if you’re one of those oddballs that prefer sunny beaches.

A little more detail about this (added Thursday, December 4, 2008): The skyscrapers of downtown Seattle are visible pretty much dead-center, slightly obscured by trees. My wide-angle lens makes downtown appear much farther away than it really is here. Yes, you can see the camera lens reflected in the window just to left of center. You can see the hands of the author banging away un-artfully at the keyboard between sundown and my departure from the office at about 5:20ish PM. I left the setup running, which it did until the batteries in the camera died around 10ish PM. The whole thing starts around 10 am so this is roughly a 12 hours timelapse. I actually went through two sets of 2 AA batteries. The camera shift a little ways into the film (~0:29) is where the first battery swap happened. I had to remove the camera from the tripod to do the swap and forgot to set up continuity markers to get it back into the right position! Watching someone learn a craft is never pleasant, but I stay as transparent as possible.