He writes:

No exact word yet on prices, but in a press statement Ford says these types of features had previously been available on luxury cars costing twice as much. By making these features available on the new Fusion, Ford will be bypassing the Hyundai Sonata, Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry and starting [to] offer features only found on cars like mid-level Lexus and Mercedes sedans.

Ford explains the features:

• With a forward-facing camera, the Lane-Keeping System scans the road surface for lane markings and vibrates the steering wheel if the car is drifting out of lane. If the driver does not respond, the system “provides steering torque to nudge the car back into lane.”
• Also using a forward-facing camera, the Driver Alert System can detect a pattern of vehicle motion consistent with a drowsy driver. When that is the case, the system provides a series of alerts for the driver, among them, a coffee cup icon on the instrument cluster display. Ford notes that an AAA Foundation study found that 40% of Americans have admitted to falling asleep or nodding off while driving.
• Pull-Drift Compensation, which is built into electric power-assisted steering (EPAS), counters the effects of either steeply crowned roads or steady crosswinds. It knows when the car is changing direction even when the driver is not causing the change, then uses the EPAS system to correct the steering gradually.
• Using a radar sensor, Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Collision Warning “measures the distance and speed to the vehicle ahead.” And the same technology used by the car’s traction control system can slow the car and maintain a safe distance between it and the vehicle in front of it as long as the ACC is active. The system provides visual and audio alerts to warn the driver when the sensors  detect that the distance between the car and the vehicle in front of it is shrinking too fast and a collision is likely.
• Active Park Assist uses EPAS and ultrasonic sensors at the car’s corners to automatically steer the car into a parking space. The driver only needs to apply the accelerator and brake.
• The Blind Spot Information System with Cross-Traffic Alert uses radar sensors at the car’s rear corners to detect any vehicles in the driver’s blind spots when he or she is changing lanes or backing out of a parking space, and alerts the driver via a warning light in the mirror. The car’s back-up camera provides a view directly behind the rear bumper.

Ford’s statement says that the driver assist systems in the new Fusion are “foundational hardware” that will pave the way for future safety technology, including autonomous assisted driving in the long-term.

As Robert E. Calem notes in a TechNewsDaily article on Mother Nature Network:

Each of those technologies is already available in other Ford vehicles, and in ones offered by other automakers, such as Volvo, Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz. But the 2013 Fusion will be the only car in its market segment to offer all of these safety features (aside from blind-spot protection, which the Toyota Camry has).

Budget-conscious consumers can buy the 2013 Fusion without these features, Goreham points out: “Ford realizes these are not for everyone and wisely is making them optional to keep costs under control for drivers who just want a good practical car without the new technology.”

Here is a video that shows how the Lane-Keeping System works:

Image by Ford, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

The study, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), found that poorly maintained or underinflated tires were more likely to have problems in inclement weather. The researchers found that 11.2% of the vehicles studied had problems linked to tires when the weather was bad, as compared with only 3.9% in good weather.

Shepardson writes:

Dan Zielinski, senior vice president for public affairs for the Rubber Manufacturers Association, said the study reiterated the need to properly maintain and inflate tires.

When tires are not properly inflated, they don’t grip the roadway as well. Heat can build up, which can lead to a failure. [...]

Prior studies have shown that 28 percent of vehicles on the road have at least one tire underinflated by 25 percent or more.

Congress passed a law in 2000 mandating that all vehicles contain a tire-pressure monitoring system by 2008. The law requires the monitoring systems to alert drivers when any tire is 25% or more below its recommended inflation level and is driven for more than 20 minutes. As Shepardson explains, the system’s radio transmitter alerts the driver by sending a signal to a computer on the car that provides a warning signal on the dashboard.

Fox News writes that a previous NHTSA study found that while only 43% of vehicles on the road had properly inflated tires, that number jumped to 57% among vehicles equipped with the tire-monitoring systems. John Rastetter, head of testing for Tire Rack, told Fox News that underinflated tires do not just affect a car’s handling, but under stress, the stretching rubber of such tires pulls away from their reinforcing materials underneath, resulting in tire failure.

Rastetter said drivers should check and fill their tires the first thing in the morning. “Topping off in the afternoon or evening can lead to a loss of up to 6 psi of pressure overnight from a 35 psi tire,” he said. He also advises drivers not to wait until tires look flat, as Fox News reports:

Most people have a hard time telling the difference between a full tire and one that’s 25 percent low, Rastetter says. By the time tires start to noticeably bulge they’re likely already more than 50 percent low.

Owners should also check their car’s manual for additional information, as pressure recommendations can vary for vehicles being used for towing and under other extreme conditions.

Car owners need to check the pressure in their spare tires, as well, he said, which “can drop from a standard pressure of around 60 psi to below 10 psi over time, possibly making them more dangerous than they are worth.”

The following video shows how to inflate your car’s tires:

Image by aturkus (Alan Turkus), used under its Creative Commons license.

The photographer writes: "Crossing a busy junction while texting is not recommended."

A New Jersey town has banned texting while jaywalking, after three pedestrians were killed while walking and more than 20 others were in accidents this year alone. The town, Fort Lee, which is across the Hudson River from Manhattan, has 35,000 people and is one of the most congested municipalities in Bergen County, according to “The Record: Walk this way” on NorthJersey.com.

Fort Lee Police Chief Thomas Ripoli told Rosa Golijan (and was quoted in her post yesterday on msnbc.com’s Technolog blog), that contrary to news reports, police are only targeting pedestrians who text (or listen to music on headphones) while jaywalking, not people who are otherwise texting while walking. In her post, “New Jersey town’s police chief: No, we didn’t ban texting while walking,” Golijian writes that Ripoli has been “fielding calls from all over the world” because reports about Fort Lee’s pedestrian safety campaign were “somehow taken out of context.” Ripoli told Golijian that people who are texting while jaywalking in Fort Lee are issued $54 jaywalking tickets.

In a Village Voice blog post, John Surico reports that at least two states have considered a similar ban. As he writes:

[Fort Lee's] move doesn’t seem to have any legal basis: the Huffington Post notes that, as of now, there is ‘no law on the books against dangerous walking’ in the Fort Lee community. But, now that Fort Lee has made a move that other states like Pennsylvania and Arkansas were considering, it’s unpredictable how serious this ‘dangerous walking’ thing could get.

As citizens of the 21st century, we must protect our right to walk into [mall fountains]. It’s our idiotic choice.

There are those who call for texting while walking — not only while jaywalking — to be banned everywhere. In the blog Observations for Scientific American, Gary Stix does, and paints a picture of a Manhattan pedestrian’s frustrations having to navigate the sidewalks and crosswalks when they are congested by so many texting pedestrians:

It would be nice if state governments went one step further and banned texting while walking. The law might require that anyone entering an emoticon into a smartphone would be required to stand (very still) within a foot of the sidewalk’s edge or cough up a $50 fine.

Going on foot from the Canal Street stop of the A train in lower Manhattan to the door of the huge former printing factory building where Nature Publishing Group has its offices has increasingly become a series of patterned avoidance maneuvers to skirt erratically moving objects immersed in text-crazed oblivion.

Mobile devices have succeeded in desensitizing a not insubstantial percentage of urban populations from their physical surroundings. How often have I experienced the desire to keep walking in a straight line and let the texter’s bowed head ram into my chest?

In his post, Stix talks about Google’s Project Glass, a prototype for a display that looks like a pair of glasses and puts a smartphone’s capabilities on a person’s face, technology that could make pedestrians even more prone to accidents. The Google Glasses, whose release date has not been announced, would work by sending text and images to “a small sliver of a display attached to the frames.”

Stix writes that some have said that advertisers would take advantage of this new venue: “… [C]ynics have also suggested that walking down the street [while wearing Google Glasses] might be akin to getting spammed with a flurry of special offers — a free small coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts or a two-for-one sale at the Gap — even while you’re trying to get across a major intersection with life and limb intact.”

As the article on NorthJersey.com notes, Fort Lee‘s approach may seem harsh, but it’s probably making the point. Someone who gets a ticket for jaywalking is unlikely to do it again.

Here is some documentary footage of a woman who stumbles into a mall fountain while texting:

Image by Stuart Grout, used under its Creative Commons license.

Enterprise rental car that killed Raechel and Jacquie Houck.

Enterprise Holdings Inc. is holding up legislation that would protect consumers who rent vehicles. The car rental company opposes a bill that would ban companies from renting or selling recalled vehicles until the safety defects in question have been repaired.

Jim Puzzanghera writes in the Los Angeles Times that Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), introduced the bill, The Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act, last year after the death of two women in a rental car accident.

As he reports:

Raechel Houck, 24, and her sister Jacqueline, 20, rented a Chrysler PT Cruiser from Enterprise in 2004, a month after the company had been notified of a recall for the vehicle because power steering fluid could leak and ignite under the hood.

The Houcks died in a fiery crash. Last year, an Alameda County Superior Court jury ordered Enterprise to pay $15 million to their parents.

Last Monday, Boxer said she wrote to the four leading car rental companies — Hertz Corp., Avis Budget Group Inc., Enterprise Holdings Inc., and Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. — asking them to voluntarily agree to “this basic commitment to protect consumers,” as Puzzanghera writes.

Hertz already has a policy consistent with the pledge Boxer asked the companies to sign. The pledge says: “Effective immediately, our company is making a permanent commitment to not rent out or sell any vehicles under safety recall until the defect has been remedied.”

Richard Broome, a Hertz spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that Hertz has had a policy since at least 1989 not to rent or sell cars facing recall until they are repaired, and has an agreement with Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS), an advocacy group, on federal legislation similar to the Boxer-Schumer bill. “Our hope is the entire industry will come on board because we think this is in our industry’s interests as well as consumers’ interest,” he said.

As Bill Lambrecht reports in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article appearing in the Chicago Tribune:

Until earlier this year, privately held Enterprise, which owns the National and Alamo rental companies, had insisted that any legislation was unnecessary.

But in February, Enterprise relented after becoming the target of an Internet protest pressing the company to support a regulatory bill in Congress. As of this week, more than 160,000 people had signed the Enterprise Rent-a-Car petition at Change.org. [...]

The company [now] says it has joined with all major rental firms — except Hertz Corp. — in supporting legislation that would, for the first time, give the government authority over rental company policies for recalled autos. [...]

Enterprise contends that the legislation it wants is ‘pretty similar’ to a version drafted by consumer groups and — with limited exceptions — would prohibit renting or selling recalled vehicles.

Lambrecht writes that Pamela Gilbert, chief negotiator for the consumer groups supporting the bill, said she is most disturbed at a proposal from Enterprise and its allies that would allow unrepaired, recalled vehicles to be rented if consumers were notified of the defect. She described that provision as a significant change from recall systems for any products.

Enterprise said it would rent a recalled vehicle “to avoid turning away customers who show up at their locations when their desired vehicle is subject to a recall which the manufacturer deems appropriate for disclosure rather than grounding.”

The likely next step, according to Gilbert, is fighting out the issue in Congress. Gilbert, a former executive director of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, expects a Senate hearing on the matter soon, but, as Lambrecht notes, the likelihood of the bill being approved with the current polarized Congress is small.

Puzzanghera writes that some car rental companies say they should not be forced to take recalled vehicles out of circulation, because consumers who own the same vehicles are allowed to drive them. But Rosemary Shahan, the founder of CARS, said the situations are not the same:

‘If it’s your car, you might ground it. You might decide you’re only going to drive it when you absolutely have to,’ Shahan said. ‘That’s very different from when you go rent a car from a reputable company. We don’t think you should have to worry that they’re knowingly putting you in an unsafe car.’

Image by Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

Nevada has become the first state to legalize the testing of self-driving cars on public roads, and the license goes to Google, the first company to file an application to test its autonomous system in the state. The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) website, which made the announcement on Monday, proudly says, “It is the first license issued in the United States under new laws and regulations that put Nevada at the forefront of autonomous vehicle development. Other auto manufacturers have indicated their desire to test and develop autonomous technology in Nevada in the future.”

As Mark Hachman writes in PC Magazine:

In February, Nevada approved the procedure for licensing self-driving cars. Other states, including Google’s home state of California, have pushed ahead to develop their own licensing programs, but no state other than Nevada has approved the process, let alone begun licensing the self-driving cars.

Google’s Nevada test fleet consists of at least eight vehicles: six Toyota Priuses, an Audi TT, and a Lexus RX450h, Cy Ryan writes in the Las Vegas Sun. Google and DMV officials tested the vehicles along freeways, state highways, and neighborhoods both in Carson City and the Las Vegas Strip, Hachman reports.

As this blog reported on July 2, 2011:

Google is a pioneer of driverless car technology and has been testing automated Toyota Priuses and Audi TTs in California, which has no laws prohibiting such vehicles.

According to Delen Goldberg, writing in the Las Vegas Sun:
Mountain View, Calif.,-based Google logged 140,000 miles of test drives in California but chose to come to Nevada to push for legislation because of the state’s physical landscape and business climate.

What the car sees.

The self-driving cars navigate streets, highways, and even winding mountain roads by using GPS, radar, lasers, cameras, and artificial intelligence. Their sensors maintain a consistent, safe distance between cars, and the cars maintain a steady driving speed. As Ryan notes, the system lets a human sitting behind the wheel take control by stepping on the brake or turning the wheel.

John Bacon writes in USA TODAY that Nevada requires a human to sit behind the wheel of a self-driving car, and another one to sit in the passenger seat during testing. Bacon quotes Tom Jacobs, a spokesman for the Nevada DVM, as saying that other companies are tinkering with autonomous technology and “Google has a lot of competition.” Cadillac is testing a self-driving system, as Jared Newman writes for TIME magazine’s Techland blog.

According to the DMV press release:

The license plates displayed on the test vehicle will have a red background and feature an infinity symbol on the left side.

‘I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future.” Department Director Bruce Breslow said. ‘The unique red plate will be easily recognized by the public and law enforcement and will be used only for licensed autonomous test vehicles. When there comes a time that vehicle manufactures market autonomous vehicles to the public, that infinity symbol will appear on a green license plate.’

Nevada's autonomous vehicle license plate.

Proponents say the cars will save gas, time, and lives because their computers will do the work of humans, who often drive while drowsy, distracted, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, as this blog wrote on July 2, 2011. In fact, auto insurance companies may now be worried about a loss of revenues because auto safety technologies — including self-driving cars — are expected to dramatically reduce the number of car accidents in the U.S. within the next decade, as this blog reported on Thursday.

Images by Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

A new report says the auto insurance industry might lose a lot of revenue because of various auto safety technologies that could virtually eliminate car accidents within the next decade. As Stephanie K. Jones writes in the Insurance Journal article titled, “Future Vision: Will Driving Become Too Safe to Insure?,” the report, released on Tuesday, envisions a possible “massive drop off in auto insurance premium for U.S. property/casualty insurance companies.”

Jones writes that according to the report — “A Scenario: The End of Auto Insurance. What Happens When There Are (Almost) No Accidents,” by Celent, a global consulting and research firm — private passenger and commercial auto premiums comprised 39% of the total for property/casualty insurers in 2011. And in a possible scenario proposed by Celent, the auto insurance portion could drop to 13% in the next decade. “Auto physical damage would drop from 14 percent of total 2012 industry premium to 10 percent by the end of the first five years and then to 3 percent in the second half of the decade,” Jones writes.

Anthony O’Donnell writes for Insurance & Technology:

If a world with almost no auto accidents seems counterintuitive, that’s largely because the technologies driving such a scenario — telematics, collision avoidance, automated traffic law enforcement, and, to a lesser extent robot cars — have tended to be considered separately in the public discussion, according to Donald Light, senior analyst, Celent, the author of the report.

‘If you Google any one of these technologies you’ll get an enormous number of hits but you won’t see the impact on auto insurance,’ Light comments. ‘This report connects the dots.’

The report finds that four technological trends lead the way to a future with far fewer car crashes, including: telematics, collision avoidance, automated traffic law enforcement, and self-driving cars. Except for the robo-cars, these technologies are available now, although, as Jones points out, not widely used.

Jones writes that the report describes telematics as the “creation and use of data regarding driving behavior that is stored in an onboard device and made available to insurance companies and other entities.”

Collision avoidance auto technologies are built into new cars and designed to warn drivers of impending danger on the road, and in some cases take control of a vehicle to avoid an accident.

Automated traffic law enforcement refers to such technologies as red-light cameras and speeding violation cameras that take photos of drivers who are violating traffic laws and send tickets to the vehicles’ owners.

And robot-cars are the self-driving vehicles like Google’s that are being tested in California and now also in Nevada (see our blog post tomorrow for an update on that story).

O’Donnell writes that report author Donald Light is not saying exactly what will happen, but is looking out for the auto insurance industry:

Light stresses that the report considers a scenario rather than a prediction, but insists that insurers must begin to seriously consider the possibilities the scenario implies.

‘This is the way things will move,’ he asserts. ‘The question is how far and how fast.’

Image by Celent, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

As Joan Lowy writes for Associated Press in The Washington Post, “Summer is the deadliest time of year for teen drivers and their passengers. An average of 422 teens die monthly in traffic crashes during summer compared to an average of 363 teen deaths during the non-summer months.”

The study shows that a 16- or 17-year-old driver’s risk of death per mile driven increases 44% when there is one passenger younger than 21 and no older passengers, Lowy reports. The risk doubles when there are two passengers under 21, and it quadruples when there are three or more under-21 passengers. However, the risk of a teen driver dying in a crash decreases by 62% when there is a passenger 35 or older.

In The New York Times blog Wheels, Tanya Mohn writes that researchers conducted the study using crash data from 2007 through 2010, from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the National Household Travel Survey, both administered by the Transportation Department.

In The Washington Post, Lowy notes:

Researchers have long known that the presence of other teens is distracting to novice drivers, but most previous studies on the issue are more than a decade old and don’t reflect changes in state driving laws that began in the mid-1990s. Since then, every state has adopted a ‘graduated licensing’ law that places some restrictions on teen drivers. The laws vary, but typically they restrict teens from driving with any passengers under age 21, or just one young passenger, and bar nighttime driving.

A goal of the AAA report, J. Peter Kissinger, president and chief executive of the foundation, told Wheels, was to draw attention to the importance of passenger restrictions and parental involvement. Passenger restrictions are critical for auto safety and a key element in graduated driver licensing laws, he said. Wheels notes that 25 states have graduated driver licensing laws that allow no more than one passenger during the first six months that a teenager has a license.

In Colorado, the law says the following to licensed drivers under 18:

• While you still have your permit, you can only drive with a driving instructor, parent/legal guardian or a licensed adult 21 years of age or older

The first year:

• For the first six months of your license, only passengers 21 and over
• For the second six months, only one passenger under 21
• Siblings and passengers with medical emergencies excepted
• Only one passenger in the front seat at any time
• All passengers must wear seatbelts.
• Texting or talking on a cell phone while driving is against the law for drivers under age 18 in Colorado. Emergency calls to police are the exception.

But just because states have graduated licensing laws “doesn’t mean everyone is obeying them,” Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices, told the Associated Press.

Lowy quotes Adkins:

‘Graduated licensing laws are really good, but we rely on the parents to be the ones enforcing them,’ he said. Police can cite teen drivers for violating license restrictions if they pull them over for other reasons, but it’s difficult for officers to stop drivers with teen passengers just because they look young, he said.

The AAA Foundation’s Kissinger told Wheels that these risks are “extremely preventable.” He recommends that parents protect their teens by: becoming more active in enforcing restrictions, spending more time with them when teens are driving, and providing a variety of driving experiences both before and after the teens receive their driver’s licenses. The foundation additionally recommends that families sign a parent-teenager driving agreement that outlines the terms of driving, and it asks parents to set passenger limits, even if their state does not.

“Laws do not prevent teen passengers from getting in a car with novice drivers, just as they do not prevent them from getting into cars with drivers who had been drinking,” Kissinger said.

You can download a copy of the “Teen Driver Risk in Relation to Age and Number of Passengers” report here.

Image by AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

In a Drive 2 Life press release, David Reich, of The National Road Safety Foundation, says: “Rebecca’s idea was chosen because it clearly communicates a very simple yet important message that all young people and everyone who drives must understand.”

As the press release notes:

The ad, shot from the driver’s point-of-view, shows in an exaggerated way a variety of things that take the driver’s hands and eyes off the road. The driver is shown trying to steer with her elbows while holding a soda and fries, sending an email, checking a map, texting and making a call using an old rotary dial phone placed on the steering wheel. The screen fades to white as we hear the sound of tires squealing and a crash. A message appears that reminds drivers to keep ‘hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.’

Myron Kukla quotes Rapin in his article in MLive: “I was really surprised they picked mine.” Rapin told Kukla that she is considering a career in photography and graphic design when she graduates. Scholastic magazine will profile Rapin and the making of her winning PSA in its upcoming classroom magazines, which are used by more than 800,000 students and more than 50,000 teachers.

The press release quotes U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who said auto accidents are the number one killer of teens, with more than 5,000 young people dying every year and tens of thousands injured:

‘Every tragic crash caused by distracted driving is 100 percent preventable,’ he said. ‘If we’re serious about changing people’s behavior behind the wheel, then we need motivated young people like Rebecca to get involved and spread the word on film, at school, and in their community.’

In addition to Rapin’s winning PSA, the contest awarded a $500 prize to each of four runners-up. The two in the category for students in 6-8 grades are: Conor Joyce, 13, a 7th-grader at Hartford Middle School in White River Junction, VT, and Christopher Litrenta, 11, a 6th-grader at Neshannock Middle School in New Castle, PA.

And the two in the category for students in 8-12 grades are: Michelle Tansey, 18, a senior at Bishop Denis O’Connell School in Arlington, VA; and Stephanie Miller, 18, a senior at Careerline Tech Center in Holland, MI (the same school that grand-prize winner Rapin attends).

Here is the winning PSA:

Image by The National Road Safety Foundation, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

In honor of May being National Bike Month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and AAA have joined forces in “Roll Model,” a bicycle safety campaign. As NHTSA’s “Roll Model” site notes, “May is Bicycle Safety Month, but bike safety must be observed every day!”

The “Roll Model” page, which features animated bike wheels as the “O”s in the logo words ROLL and MODEL, explains what being a “Roll” model means:

•    Riding and Driving Focused — never distracted
•    Riding and Driving Prepared — always expect the unexpected
•    Putting Safety First — we never know when a crash will occur, regardless of skill level or age; always wear a bicycle helmet when on a bicycle and a seat belt when in a car
•    Following the Rules of the Road — a bicyclist is considered a vehicle on the road with all the rights on the roadway and responsibilities of motorized traffic
•    Sharing the Road — both vehicle drivers (motorist and bicyclist) should look out for one another and show mutual respect

In Colorado, the city of Grand Junction, and Grand Valley Bikes — its program partner — have been making good use of a $38,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program, as Grand Valley Bikes (GVB) relates in an article in The Daily Sentinel.

SRTS funds comprehensive projects to encourage District 51 elementary students to walk and bike safely to school. In one part of the project, GVB instructors teach road-safe walking and biking skills, which students practice in a “bicycle rodeo course” with multicolored cones, sidewalk chalk, helmets, and a fleet of bikes.

“The City of Grand Junction is committed to accommodating all modes of transportation and believes programs that encourage children to walk and bike safely to school contribute to achieving our goal of ‘Becoming the Most Livable Community West of the Rockies,’” says Kathy Portner, Neighborhood Services Manager for the City of Grand Junction, and liaison to the SRTS program.

A May 2 “Talk of the Nation” broadcast on National Public Radio reports that the number of students who walk or ride their bikes to school dropped from 48% in 1969 to just 13% in 2009.  In the broadcast, titled “What’s Lost When Kids Don’t Ride Bikes To School,” the show’s hosts talk with David Darlington, a writer for Bicycling magazine.

On the broadcast, Darlington mentions how Safe Routes to School is trying to solve the problem of biking and traffic. The group, which is federally funded and has local chapters across the country, says on its website: “At its heart, the SRTS Program empowers communities to make walking and bicycling to school a safe and routine activity once again.”

Darlington says:

The unfortunate thing right now — Safe Routes to School is funded — has been funded since 2005 by the transportation bill, which expired in 2009. It’s been in the news a lot lately because it’s been extended nine times temporarily. And the latest one happened on March 31st. It’s now due again to be extended on July 1st. And with the situation that we have in Congress right now, it’s deadlocked. It’s actually passed the Senate. There is still — it still maintains funding for traffic enhancements and Safe Routes to School. But in the House of Representatives, it’s stalled for the usual reasons.

Darlington also told listeners that Arthur Wendel, at the Centers for Disease Control, is in charge of the “Healthy Community Design Initiative,” whose job is to try and help redesign communities to be more prone to active transportation. Bike riding, Darlington said, is one of the prime ways to solve problems like childhood obesity. “The latest figure,” he said, “is that 17 percent of American kids now are obese, which is three times as high as it was in 1980.”

Image by NHTSA, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

As Kristen Wyatt reports in an Associated Press article on DailyCamera.com: “The ban started as the nation’s toughest — including even after-school bake sales and concession-stand treats — but it has been weakened to preserve fundraisers such as cookie sales and to give schools more time to comply.”

According to Ilya Rahkovsky, Diet, Safety, and Health Economics Branch, Economic Research Service (ERS), in a May 1 post on USDA blog:

In recent years, the public health community has agreed that consumers ought to eat as little trans fats as possible because consuming them increases a person’s risk of heart disease. That message has been repeatedly conveyed to consumers from many different sources: USDA, other Federal agencies, the New York City Board of Health, nutrition professionals, consumer advocacy groups, and the media. [...]

For many years, food manufacturers had strong financial incentives to use trans fats in their products. Trans fats are formed when plant-based fats are hydrogenated. This process raises the melting point of plant-based fats, allowing them to be used in products such as margarines, snack foods, and baked goods in place of animal-based fats, like butter. The partially hydrogenated fats prolong shelf life, and they are cheaper than animal-based fats.

Rahkovsky writes that he and his ERS colleagues looked at the trans fat content of new and reformulated products introduced from 2005 to 2010 and found that many companies changed their products by reducing or eliminating trans fats. ERS found that the five product categories with the highest trans fat contents were: bakery products, prepared meals, desserts, snacks; and the category of processed fish, meat, and egg products.

Although Colorado has the lowest obesity rate of all U.S. states, the 2012 KidsCount report by the Colorado Children’s Campaign said one in four of its children are overweight, writes Joe Hanel in The Durango Herald. Wikipedia notes that studies have linked trans fats to many health problems in addition to cardiovascular disease, among them: Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes type II, liver dysfunction, and depression.

A website called BanTransFats.com, which has been lobbying for bans since 2003, writes:

When we started this website in April 2003, trans fats were not even on the national radar screen. It was easy to maintain a trans fat website in those days, because so little was happening.

Since that time, our campaign has resulted in tremendous success. Trans fat content in the national food supply has diminished dramatically. There is so much news about trans fat that it is impossible to track it.

According to Wikipedia, Tiburon, California, became the first trans-fat-free city in 2005 (with an all-voluntary ban by restaurants). New York City then banned trans fats in restaurants. That was followed by Philadelphia instituting a partial ban. And in 2008, the California legislature passed a statewide partial ban on trans fat, signed by the Governor. Wikipedia writes that trans fats are banned in Switzerland, and in Denmark, where “It is hypothesized that the Danish government’s efforts to decrease trans fat intake from 6g to 1g per day over 20 years is related to a 50% decrease in deaths from ischemic heart disease.”

Image by Mykl Roventine, used under its Creative Commons license.