The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed that, since July 2021, 392 car crashes in the United States ocurred while vehicles were using advanced driver-assistance systems. Of these, 273, about 70 percent, were Tesla vehicles running its Autopilot software. During the same period, Honda reported 90 crashes and Subaru reported 10 crashes.
More:
“Teslas running Autopilot involved in 273 crashes reported since last year,” Faiz Siddiqui, Rachel Lerman, and Jeremy B. Merrill, Washington Post
“NHTSA: ‘Self-driving’ cars were linked to 392 crashes in 10 months,” J. Fingas, Engadget
When it became clear that the Boeing 737 had reached the end of its lifecyle and couldn’t compete with newer Airbus A320, the company’s aerospace engineers wanted to design a new model from scratch to maximize performance and safety. Corporation executives, focused on costs and shareholder profits, insisted that they tarted up the old 737 and called it the “737 MAX.” Worse, Boeing facilities, once centralized in Seattle, were now scattered around the country, so designers, engineers, and test pilots couldn’t communicate as readily.
When the “new” 737 MAX planes began falling out of the sky, Boeing executives quickly blamed the failures on “pilot error,” not their own disasterous decisions.
More:
“Boeing knew doomed 737-MAX plane was ‘pig with lipstick’ but still let it fly,” Gavin Newsham, NY Post
“How Shareholder Capitalism Crashed a Plane (Two, Actually),” Moe Tkacik, New York Magazine
“Boeing built an unsafe plane, and blamed the pilots when it crashed,” Peter Robison, Business Live
University of Colorado researchers surveyed residents of a mountain country housing subdivision about wildfire risk to their homes. Professionals rated 61 percent of households as high fire risks, while 22 percent of residents did. 70 percent of residents said their houses were at low or moderate wildfire risk, while experts said only 19 percent of housewere. 50 percent said they had 100 feet of defensible space around their homes, but only 17 percent did.
Boeing has stopped production of 737 Max 8 jets until FAA regulators say they’re safe to fly. Two of those planes crashed, killing 346 people, after FAA regulators originally took Boeing’s assurances that the planes were good to go. De-regulation kills.
More:
“Boeing suspends production of 737 Max model involved in fatal crashes,” Dominic Rushe, The Guardian
Related:
“How Did the F.A.A. Allow the Boeing 737 Max to Fly?” John Cassidy, The New Yorker
Forest policy, climate change, and real estate development combine to create deadly fires.
“Today’s monster fires result largely from three human forces: taxpayer-funded fire suppression that has made the forest a tinderbox; policies that encourage construction in places that are clearly prone to burning; and climate change, which has worsened everything.”
“Society masks the costs of building on the edges of the forest, a zone that planners call the “wildland-urban interface,” or the WUI. With its vast forests and penchant for sprawl, California is the epicenter of WUI wildfire damage. Between 2000 and 2013, fire destroyed more buildings in California’s WUI than in all similar areas in the United States combined, and more than 75 percent of all buildings destroyed by fire in California were in the WUI, according to a University of Wisconsin–Madison study.”
— “Burn. Build. Repeat: Why Our Wildfire Policy Is So Deadly.” Jeffrey Ball, Mother Jones
“Smokey Bear, the U.S. Forest Service’s symbol of fire prevention, turns 75 on Friday. Smokey is the longest-running public service ad campaign, first appearing on a poster on Aug. 9, 1944.”
— “Careful With Those Birthday Candles, Smokey: Beloved Bear Turns 75,” Brian Naylor, NPR News
A fire at New York’s Trump Tower killed a resident and injured six firemen last Saturday evening. The victim of the fatal 4-alarm blaze, art dealer Todd Brassner, had lived in his 50th-floor apartment since 1996. Donald Trump’s triplex residence is on floors 66 to 68 — it’s really not so lofty, since the numbering skips floors 6 through 13.
In a tweet, President Trump praised the responding firefighters and bragged about his “well-built building.” Maybe, but it’s a building without sprinklers on residential floors. Mr. Trump fought proposed regulations which would have mandated them in residential units built before 1999. We do not know if the Trump penthouse was retrofitted with sprinklers when it was later remodeled.
More:
“Trump once fought legislation requiring sprinklers in NYC buildings,” Nicole Hensley, NY Daily News
“Trump bragged that his tower withstood a fire — but has been silent about the man who died in it,” Amy B Wang, Washington Post
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