Some Car Facts

[Derrel]

I wanna' meet one of those 100 people who choked to death on a ballpoint pen last year!

Waiiiiit a second....on second thought, maybe not so much....

 

[smoke665]

How can you choke to death on a ball point pen? Wonder if they wear name tags

 

[Derrel]

How can you choke to death on a ball point pen? Wonder if they wear name tags
View attachment 140125

Yeah, I mean no s***...how in the HECK can a person choke to death on a ballpoint pen!!! That seems totally,totally weird!

 

[table1349]

Well there are 7.5 billion people currently living on the earth and only 100 people die a year from choking on a ball point pen. Now we know the bottom starting point of the intelligence bell curve.

 

[smoke665]

100 people die a year from choking on a ball point pen. Now we know the bottom starting point of intelligence bell curve.

Might be a necessary "thinning of the herd".

 

[table1349]

More useless facts.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula"

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

A 2" X 4" is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".

During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance.

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily (I knew it!).

Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple, and silver. What about "month?"

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan." There was never a recorded Wendy before.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow film down while shooting so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

An old law in Bellingham, Washington made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them.

 

[smoke665]

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a ma

Similar lines have been used by teenage boys throughout history

 

[limr]

How about we stick to the car discussion? The thread is not titled "Random facts."

 

[webestang64]

It's a fact!!! You would have to pry my car keys out of my dead cold hand before I give up my 4 automobiles.

 

[smoke665]

How about in 2011 of the 59,000 babies born outside of a hospital 6600 were in a vehicle. Try that in a smart car.

 

[smoke665]

Couldn't find any data on conception but based on the VW ad it must be a lot for them to promote it as a sales feature!

 

[runnah]

I wanna' meet one of those 100 people who choked to death on a ballpoint pen last year!

Waiiiiit a second....on second thought, maybe not so much....

Bring a shovel.

 

[KmH]

The current private car ownership model is unsustainable in the long term for a variety of reasons.

The current street and highway system is in serious need of repair and maintenance.
Current estimates are that the cost to bring our road & road bridge infrastructure up to snuff after years and years of deferred work is 2.6 TRILLION dollars.
One-third of road bridges are adjudicated as 'unsafe'.
Current the US road system is rated at only 16th best in the world because of it's crumbling infrastructure.
The 18.6 cent per gallon gasoline tax for road maintenance has not been raise since 1996 and today barely pays half of what is actually spent on road maintenance.
In other words the federal government heavily subsidizes the cost of using our cars.

The younger generation, known as Millennials, drives fewer miles and has less interest in car ownership that any generation since cars became the ubiquitous means of personal transportation.
Actually Americans as a whole are driving fewer miles and cars are more fuel efficient further reducing the amount of $$$$$s going into the gas tax fund.
More and more people are using ride sharing apps and services like Lyft and Uber indicating that the use of smart cell phones is likely to be a game changer.

Autonomous, self-driving cars are coming.
Some details still need to be worked out.
Car makers would like to see personal car ownership continue with cars being capable of both self driving and being driven by their human owners. Unfortunately, systems that rely on a human taking over in an emergency have shown repeatedly that humans don't react fast enough to take over successfully. Today, humans in total control of the vehicle don't pay sufficient attention. Expecting them to pay sufficient attention to detect and react to an emergency by taking over from a self-driving system int eh car is ludicrous. But that's the direction the major car makers are going with the development of systems they want to add to their cars.

However that fails to solve many of the current problems caused by personal car ownership.
Primary to that is the needless 35,000 or so deaths on the roads each year and the billions in associated costs.
Fully autonomous cars that cannot be 'taken over' by humans do solve most of the current problems.
Most of those 35,000 deaths and 2.5 million visits to an emergency room would disappear.

A self-driving car not personally owned would not set idle for 22 out of every 24 hours a day.
Self driving cars that spend the vast majority of their time taking people to and fro would need to be replaced more often than the 10 years average personally owned vehicles are now replaced. It may not be as bad for car makers as they think, if the opt to make self-driving cars, retain ownership of those cars, and bank the $$s people would pay to use them.

 

[smoke665]

The 18.6 cent per gallon gasoline tax for road maintenance has not been raise since 1996 and today barely pays half of what is actually spent on road maintenance.

The whole method of funding for roads is self defeating. While the federal tax hasn't been raised, the states have been merrily adding tax on, in some cases and areas by $.37/gal. And that's just gasoline, it's $.24/gal on diesel, plus as much as $.56/gal local and state in some areas. At the same time with fuel mileage going up and miles going down even with the higher taxes they can't keep up with maintenance on the roads. Judging by the condition of our federal interstates, I'd have to disagree with you about the Feds subsidizing anything, ignoring is more like it.

Fully autonomous cars that cannot be 'taken over' by humans do solve most of the current problems

While fully autonomous cars might prevent some accidents, I fail to see how they will solve all our problems. They still have to have roads to travel on. What about every single item you consume??? Still need trucks to deliver.

 

[KmH]

Yes. But those trucks don't necessarily need human drivers.
Indeed, the way we consume things now is what will drive the death of the privately owned car.

Trucks are more ripe for being converted to self driving than passenger cars are.
There are 3 million trucks (not pickups) in the US.
1.7 million of those are long haul trucks.
The long haul trucks will get converted to self-driving first. The big long haul companies are fed up with the humongous driver turnover they have. At some of the larger long haul trucking companies their driver turnover rate exceeds 100% per year.
But the trucking companies are likely to own the self-driving trucks they use.

UPS is working hard on it's OMNI software. The software looks at the packages scheduled to be on a local delivery truck the next day and then tells the driver what order to deliver the packages in. The software configures the drivers route to be as short as possible.
UPS eliminated making left hand turns several years ago.

Googles self-driving cars still have trouble with heavy rain and snow, but I'm pretty sure they will get that worked out before to long.