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Big Break for ‘Pay-As-You-Drive’ Auto Insurance as California Moves to Adopt; Should Save Oil, Lives, $$
Bill Paul, Energy Tech Stocks
As Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Canada explained it to EnergyTechStocks.com almost a year ago, “pay-as-you-drive” (PAYD) automobile insurance has the potential to be a kind of miracle drug, able to significantly reduce the amount of oil America uses, the amount of money Americans pay for automobile insurance, and last but not least, the number of lives lost in traffic accidents.
Litman, one of PAYD’s chief proponents, explained that with PAYD, drivers’ insurance rates are calculated based on the exact number of miles driven. The less one drives, the less one pays for car insurance. He estimated that by providing a financial incentive to drive less, total mileage (and with it motor fuel consumption) could be cut by about 10% per year, and auto-related fatalities by about 10% to 15%, or as many as 5,000 lives per year.
(10 September 2008)
Mapping a Connected World
Ethan Zuckerman, WorldChanging
I’m fascinated by container ships. They’re my favorite metaphor for a connected world. When I visit port cities, I often try to drag friends with me to watch cranes load and unload stacks of interchangeable red, blue and grey boxes. For some reason, they’re often less enthusiastic than I am about sitting in a parked car in a bad part of town, watching the mundane aspects of global trade take place through a chain-link fence, one metal box at a time. (Then again, there are people who don’t find watching the blinking lights in a large datacenter fascinating either. I guess it takes all kinds.)
So, needless to say, I’m looking forward to the BBC’s new project, “The Box“. The folks at the Beeb have started a project with shipping line NYK designed to allow readers to track the movements of a single container over the course of a year.
… One of the goals of the BBC project is likely to help viewers visualize the complex networks that characterize our global world. It’s not hard to find examples of objects that seem to defy logic, but make perfect sense in a globalized world – Fiji water, for instance. But it’s harder to find good visualizations of the networks that underpin the connections between our different nations and economies. If we could map the travels of every container for a year, we’d likely learn a great deal about what countries are tightly connected to one another, about who exports to whom, when and how often.
… I’m searching for more maps that help visualize the connections between countries and cultures in a globalized world.
(10 September 2008)
Sydney bus system heading for a crash
Linton Besser, Sydney Morning Herald
BUSES have quietly plied their way around the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney without too much trouble for the past two decades. But that is set to change drastically if petrol prices continue to rise, according to an alarming new report by the University of Sydney.
In a worst-case scenario, where the price of petrol soars by $1 per litre each year to 2017, the number of people trying to climb aboard a Forest Coach Lines bus between St Ives and the city would climb 1600 per cent.
Instead of carrying about 1500 commuters in the morning peak each day, the buses would have to transport more than 24,000 – an almost impossible task.
(15 September 2008)
