The IIHS: When a New Study is Not New and Not a Study—NMA E-Newsletter #535
By Gary Biller, NMA President Every two or three years, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) splashes the media with a recycled report of how many deaths have occurred due to raised speed limits. And reporters dutifully echo it as gospel because sensational headlines like, “Speed limit increases are tied to 37,000 deaths over […]
Why Speed Limiters Are NOT About Safety, But More About Control
By Florida Member Stephen Donaldson Life Member, Stephen Donaldson has held various volunteer positions (including Florida State Activist) with the National Motorists Association. He currently serves as a member of the NMA Foundation Board. He wrote a version of this post as a letter-to-the-editor. Say NO to speed limiters! The speed limiters that will soon […]
What You Should Know About Car Recalls
Cars are safer and better built than they’ve ever been, but manufacturers are also issuing more recalls on cars than ever before. In the age of lawsuits and social media, automakers are doing the most they can to take ownership of issues, but when you receive a letter from your car’s manufacturer notifying you of […]
Vision Zero Invasion of the Car Itself: NMA E-Newsletter #532
In three years, all new cars and light-trucks purchased in EU countries will be required to include standard price-increasing features that will change how motorists drive. Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection voted in February to approve a range of new vehicle safety standards initially proposed by the European […]
The Next Ten Years: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #520
We wanted to do something special for Issue #520 because it marks ten years of uninterrupted weekly NMA e-newsletters that, we hope, have provided entertaining (if not thought-provoking) perspectives. To carry on that tradition, NMA and NMA Foundation directors were asked to provide mini essays for the occasion. No one likes homework but they tackled […]
Will Autonomous Cars Cause the Centralization of the Auto Industry?
From guest writer Tom Butcher Autonomous technology will utterly transform our relationship to cars and travel in the coming years. I think we can all agree on that. Driverless cars are on the way and are set for testing on public roads in the UK by 2021, China by 2025 and Russia by the end […]
73 Percent of Americans Don’t Recognize this Basic Car Warning Symbol
Cars have been an integral part of American culture since Ford released the Model T in 1908. Millions of Americans rely on their cars every day to get to work, run errands, and take the kids to school or practice. And with the need for interconnectivity at an all-time high, cars are just as valuable […]
Perils of the Part-Time Driver
Big Brother has been riding shotgun for years, but he’s never been able to actually watch what we do in our cars. That’s about to change. He’ll soon be able to tell whether we’re sleeping or texting or doing other things unrelated to driving. Which isn’t the bad part. BMW just publicly revealed their new […]
Boston’s “Vision Zero” Exposed: Lowering the speed limit increases speeding ticket revenue by 47%: NMA E-Newsletter #506
From guest writer Joe Cadillic of the MassPrivatel Blog All across the country, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is hard at work convincing cities to lower their speed limits to 25 MPH. The national effort to lower speed limits in cities is a fundamental tenet of a movement known as “Vision Zero.” To date, the National Highway […]
Why Don’t We Trust Self-Driving Cars?
Self-driving cars promise a future of fewer accidents, less congestion and maybe even lower transportation costs. Yet for many Americans, the idea of driving alongside cars that are 100 percent computer-operated belongs in a science fiction movie. Could a vehicle really move from point A to point B efficiently, safely and with the same ability […]