Brad Tuttle: End Of The Road For Speed Traps?

Low speed limits make roads less safe.        Politicians, driver advocacy groups and even the police are trying to outlaw speed traps, not only because they’re annoying, but because when speed limits are too low, roads become more — not less — dangerous. Most drivers understand the need for speed limits. And yet they loathe speed traps       ... MORE

John Ransom: Chevy Volt Heads For Fiery Crash

Another failure of central planning.        The good news for GM these days is that no one has been consumed in a fiery death due to engine compartment fires since the Chevy Volt was discovered to spontaneous combust after accidents shortly after production began. The bad news for the company is that while Chevy Volt sales in       ... MORE

Jack Lakey: Speed Traps Are About Revenue, Not Safety

Policing for profit: dragnets and fishing expeditions.  If radar enforcement is all about safety, as police say, why are they fishing for speeders on Allen Rd. in the middle of the night? Paula Morese describes the cop who pulled her over at 2 a.m. as an “entrapment officer,” one of three who were ambushing drivers where the speed limit drops   ... MORE

Washington Times: Driving Toward Bankruptcy

Crony capitalism is in the driver's seat. There aren’t many winners in the current economic climate. Most companies are struggling against the burdens of higher taxes, red tape and uncertainty, and there’s no opportunity to expand and prosper. Some companies, however, have found a shortcut through deep political connections to the Obama      ... MORE

Say No To Texting And Driving As A Primary Offense

by Marcella Robinson.    Texting and driving is dangerous and in many cases, deadly. The Virginia General Assembly recently passed a bill that would make texting and driving a primary offense, but a Charlottesville civil rights group wants you to know the law would be devastating to your Fourth-Amendment rights. A press release issued the Rutherford   ... MORE

Obama's Cap-And-Trade Scheme For Cars

by Rachael Slobodien.    Ever since the Senate rejected President Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme in 2009, his administration has been hard at work to find other ways to implement a radical, environmentalist agenda. Obama made these intentions clear at a press conference in 2010 when he explained, “Cap and trade was just one way of skinning   ... MORE

David Rosen: The Police Know Where You're Driving

Cameras focused on collecting license plate data.  Departments have already begun deploying Orwellian license-plate reading technologies across the country. A building at 55 Broadway, in lower Manhattan, is home to the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, the locus of the New York Police Department’s massive intelligence-gathering  ... MORE

There Is A Snitch Riding In Your Car With You

Black boxes in cars raise privacy concerns.   Many motorists don’t know it, but it’s likely that every time they get behind the wheel, there’s a snitch along for the ride. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday proposed long-delayed regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include event data recorders — better known as “black boxes” —   ... MORE

Supreme Court To Determine Legality Of Reselling

Testing the boundaries of copyright laws.    All eyes will be on Justice Elena Kagan on Monday, when the Supreme Court considers a copyright case that some fear could prevent people from reselling certain products they own such as the iPhone, as she may have the deciding vote. In a case that tests the boundaries of copyright law,    ... MORE

Peter Wilson: The Progressive War On Parking

Putting the squeeze on private transportation.      Mark your calendars: September 21 is international PARK(ing) Day, described as "annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into 'PARK(ing)' spaces."  Get it?  The place you "park" your car becomes a "park."  It's a      ... MORE

Washington Times: Saving Gas, Wasting Lives

Costly consequences of the new fuel-efficiency standards. President Obama’s latest fuel-efficiency decree means consumers will have to turn in their SUVs and pickup trucks for tiny, European-style city cars within the next few years. It’s also likely to produce another, more costly consequence: a lot more death on America’s roads. Last month,  ... MORE

John Ransom: Another Obama Billion Dollar Green Loser

Chevy Volt jolts taxpayers in a big way.       This is getting redundant. If you want investment losses for tax purposes, Barack Obama is your guy. Now, if the country could only figure out how to write off the five trillion dollars we’ve lost during his presidency. As the man said: A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon were talking about Barack ... MORE

Daniel Greenfield: Why You Will Never Buy A Car Again

Obama cars are coming. If you’ve been waiting around to buy a new car, better hurry up. If Obama gets his way, the only car you will be able to buy will be a small hybrid cube and will cost more than you can afford. The Obama administration has finalized new fuel economy rules that will require the fleet-wide average of new cars and trucks sold in ... MORE

Government-Subsided Automaker Recalls Hybrid Firetrap

by Becket Adams. Electric-car maker Fisker Automotive is recalling all of its $100,000 Karma sports sedans to fix cooling fans that can catch fire. The recall comes after Fisker and a private fire investigation firm finished probing an Aug. 10 fire in a Karma in Woodside, Calif. It was the second of its kind. The company said the probe found that the blaze started in   ... MORE

Kenneth P. Green: Subsidy-Powered Vehicles

Continuing the long history of failure.     Even with modern technology, electric cars are not capable of satisfying consumer desires. Policymakers should end their wasteful counter-market pursuit of vehicle electrification. Environmentalists have long wished for the electrification of passenger vehicles. As Professor Vaclav Smil points out in      ... MORE

Duncan Holmes: Five Steps To A Police State

Herded down the collectivist path.   Step 1. Take away people’s mobility Step 2. Control how much and how far people can travel. Walter Reuther once called the automobile a great invention, because he said it gave people a fifth freedom. (This was referring to Roosevelt’s famous four freedoms.) What he meant was simple.  It was called   ... MORE

Kinston Free Press: In Changing World, America Prevails

The lesson should be obvious. Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, said the other morning on the business show Squawkbox that in 10 years, the United States would be energy independent. On Friday, Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes Magazine, observed that "the seeds are being planted now" for America's economic revival, never mind our      ... MORE

Darlene Storm: Your Car May Used Against You In Court

There is a little black box spy hiding in your vehicle. When you are car shopping, how many times has a salesman pitched the 15 to 30 specific data elements constantly being collected by the car's black box as you drive? Probably never, but there's electronic data everywhere and that includes your car collecting digital evidence which might turn into the star witness ... MORE

Eric Peters: 'Your' Car Won't Be After 2015

After a certain point, it's not paranoia. The latest brick in the wall is the predictably named "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st Century Act," also known as Senate Bill 1813. (See here for the full text of the bill itself; the relevant section is 31406.) This legislation -- already passed by the Senate and likely to be passed by the House -- will impose a legal        ... MORE

Deroy Murdock: CAFE Standards Kill

In a crash, MPG is a small consolation. As Washington keeps yanking money from Americans’ wallets, car prices are set to rise beyond the reach of low-income drivers. And from there, things grow deadly. At fault is a regulatory regime called Corporate Average Fuel Economy, commonly called CAFE standards. Congress mandated these rules in 1975, during a   ... MORE