I freaking love The Sharper Image! It's like Toys R Us, except for grown men! Every electronic gadget known to mankind can be found in a Sharper Image store - and I swear, as soon as I have a few thousand extra bucks laying around, I'm gonna get one of those massage chairs!
So, somehow I got on the mailing list for The Sharper Image. This morning when I opened my in box, there was a Sharper Image promo mailing... except this one didn't talk about gadgets nor massage chairs nor anything you'd expect. Instead, the subject line said: Driving With Phone Worse Than DUI!
Open the message and there are all sorta blue tooth and hands free cell phone headsets and ear pieces. Is that true? That talking on a cell phone is worse than driving drunk?
The answer is both yes and no. Inattention is the #1 cause for MVAs (Motor Vehicle Accident) in the U.S. Cell phones, text messages, eating, drinking (non-alcoholic), smoking, changing the radio, reading, talking to others in the car - these all add up to create the biggest cause for crashes in the country.
However, DUI is the biggest killer. While there are more crashes caused due to inattention, impaired driving is definitely more dangerous for one's health. Some 15K individuals are killed every year in America due to impaired driving.
In the case of The Sharper Image... does it matter? Nah, not at all. The Sharper Image may have just helped to save lives. Trying to get people to stop talking on cell phones while driving is going to fall on deaf ears. At least Sharper Image is helping folks have safer ways of doing so.
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The requirement that we need to pay attention while driving is itself no longer technologically necessary. Cars can and should drive themselves. Industry has been working on ideas for 50 years or more but no real progress has been made because of political and corporate organizational issues.
Further, we have a lot of legacy constraints which follow from the idea that we might get hit by other cars or hit fixed obstacles and we have the need to traverse roads in poor condition. These constraints result in heavy vehicles which waste energy.
The energy/climate crisis presents us with a new and historically unique opportunity to replace our current infrastructure with a more modern and much safer one.
I have been working on a new transportation idea that I'd love to talk with you about.
I believe that we can save 20,000 lives per year if we do this and eventually nearly all the lives lost due to traffic accidents (including pedestrians). We can also save 60% to 80% of our energy usage. I believe we could do this within 20 years and that the development and rollout of this infrastructure would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
I have a lot of business and technology experience and have started many companies and taken one public in previous lives so I have some idea of the scope of effort required and the obstacles which have prevented ideas like this from taking hold previously.
My current and recent efforts are not profit motivated and my work is for non-profits. Reply via email if you are interested.
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