38-Hour Willie Rally Completed, Powered Entirely By Willie Nelson BioFuel And Lots Of Cheetos

On Wednesday, Nik Bristow and Brian Pierce arrived in LA after successfully completing the course mapped by the Gumball Rally in a record 38 hours, 37 minutes, and 41 seconds. Dubbed “The Willie Run 2008″, Bristow and Pierce’s cross country trek was made in a VW Jetta TDI, powered entirely by Willie Nelson’s BioWillie brand biodiesel. “I know the trip sounds crazy, but it’s more important now than ever,” Bristow explained to Autopia before the trip, “We’re on the cusp of a very important election where oil and energy are universal top concerns, and biodiesel is one of the cleaner, more viable fuel alternatives out there. We need to get the word out.”

Initially, the guys had hoped to make the trip in 36 hours, but fuel miscalculations and their grand arrival during LA rush hour set them behind schedule. “We spent the last hour and a half in stop-and-go traffic,” Bristow told Wired.com, “It was a little anti-climactic after driving across the country.” Other than a brief stop in Phoenix to stock up on more BioWillie, however, Bristow and Pierce completed the trek non-stop as per their original goal, even going so far as to forward all of nature’s calls to a Stadium Pal condom catheter.

Next year, Bristow and Pierce hope to make it in under the 36-hr time limit, and are already preparing for Willie Run ‘09. “We’re gonna run it by Willie,” Bristow said, “We’ve gotta have the patron saint sign off on it, but we’ve had a ton of people say they want to take part.”

[News Source/Photo Cred: Autopia]

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How Dangerous is Driving with a Cell Phone? Less Than You Think

Suzanne just wrote about the new Minnesota ban on texting while driving, and that reminded me of economics paper I recently read.
Two University of California, Berkeley graduate student economists did what’s called a natural experiment about cell phone usage and auto accidents, which means they used observations in the real world instead of in a controlled laboratory. Saurabh Bargrava and Vikram Pathania came to the conclusion that the quick rise in cell phone usage in recent years is not matched by an increase in fatal or non-fatal car crashes. This goes against everything you’ve probably heard, but they back it up with some very awesome facts. And a 54 page economics paper.

Check it, yo:
…we document a 20-30% rise in cellular call volume during the time of the day– 9pm on weekdays– when cell phone providers systematically transition from “peak” to “off-peak” pricing. We then measure the resulting increase in fatal and non-fatal crashes during this period as compared to weekends and earlier periods which serve as controls. We find no evidence for a rise in crashes, and estimate small positive upper bounds for the effect size at 9pm (~1% for all crashes, and 2.4% for fatal crashes).

We confirm our results with three additional empirical approaches—we compare trends in cell phone ownership and crashes across areas of contiguous economic activity over time, investigate whether differences in urban versus rural crash rates mirror identified gaps in urban-rural cellular ownership, and finally estimate the impact of legislation banning driver cell phone use on crash rates. None of the additional analyses produces evidence for a positive link between cellular use and vehicle crashes.

This paper is probably the single most comprehensive cell phone and driving experiment paper I have ever read. And I’ve read 1.
Seriously though, this paper is damn thorough. Thorough and surprising.

the related press release

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NYC Council is One Step Closer to making Congestion Free Zone in Manhattan

The news has come out of AutoBlogGreen that the New York City Council has voted 30 to 20 to make part of Manhattan a congestion free driving area. Fees will be levied upon those who drive into Manhattan south of 60th Street, and even parking meters will be getting in on the increase. The next hurdle for the NYC Council will be getting the Senate to pass the bill “empowering” them to enforce the resolution.

As if the costs of being in the Big Apple were not enough, now the City Council will be looking to cash in on those doing business within its grasp to the tune of $491 million - potentially. The collection of those fees is said to be designated toward improving transit and presumably public transportation as a lot more foot traffic will be making its way into the Congestion Zone of Manhattan.

If anyone has a handle on fee structures it would certainly be the NYC Council as they have discovered a way to tack a fee on everything. Pretty soon your shoes may be taxed for increasing traffic South of 60th Street in Manhattan.

Get a Sneak Peek at the Daily Congestion Free Fee structure after the leap. (more…)

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