In 2002, police in the city of Detroit gave out a total of 126,007 traffic tickets. Last year, the number of tickets grew to over 245,000 - a 94% jump. The increase was even larger in small towns like Plymouth which saw the number of tickets go up from 440 to 2,500 — up 480 percent — over the same amount of time. According to Detroit area police the reason for the increase is dwindling property tax revenue. That lack of property tax revenue has forced local governments in Michigan to use average citizen drivers to fill the coffers. You might call it a new, “random driving tax.”

“When I first started in this job thirty years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement,” Utica Police Chief Michael Reaves told the Detroit News. “But if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues. That’s just the reality nowadays.”

It has increasingly become more common for speed limits to be set for political reasons rather than for safety reasons. But local officials that try to manipulate driving behavior by setting speed limits artificially low may be encouraging drivers to disregard speed limits altogether, a U.S. researcher reported on this week.

More than 1/3rd of the 988 people surveyed believed it was safe to drive 20 mph over the posted speed limit, and 43 percent thought it was safe to drive up to 10 mph over, said Fred Mannering of the Department of Civil Engineering and Economics and Indiana’s Purdue University.

Mannering attributes this lack of respect for speed limits to the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that set speed limits to 55 mph on all interstate highways, even though those roads are designed for 70 mile an hour speeds. “Once you start going down the road of posting speed limits below where they should be, then there’s a general disrespect,” Mannering said. “Now I think a lot of people set the speed limits saying, ‘It’s safe to go 45 — let’s set the speed limit at 35′”

Every year, the New Oxford American Dictionary makes a major announcement, it officially crowns the new Word Of The Year. I can imagine the entire New Oxford staff excitedly gathered around the editors desk with paper streamers and noisemakers ready to hear this years winner. It’s a big deal in the dictionary scene, or at least that’s how I imagine it. This year’s word: Hypermiling

This past year we had the summer of $4 dollar gas. American drivers were totally flabbergasted at the pumps. Americans are used to driving around 6,000 pound SUVs, and now those people were paying for gas with a roll of hundred dollar bills. People re-arranged their schedules and lifestyles to better suit their gas mileage. Barack Obama even suggested his convoy keep their tires properly inflated while on the campaign trail. It was a shocking experience, and that shock will forever be remembered in our dictionaries.

Back in 2001, the IIAS, Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, funded a report on the benefits of red-light cameras, commonly referred to as the Oxnard report (you can read the study here). It was the first study to claim red-light cameras decrease accidents, and it has since been cited by hundreds of cities as the reason for the adoption of their red-light camera systems. But some people questioned the validity of that study, and three researchers from the University of South Florida; Barbara Orban, Etienne Pracht and John T. Large; recently attempted to replicate the studies findings… and they discovered the numbers just didn’t add up.

“The regression analysis of Retting and Kyrychenko [the authors of the Oxnard study] does not support their conclusion that red light cameras reduced total or injury crashes,” the University of South Florida team wrote in the American Journal of Public Health last month.

I’ve always been fascinated by ants and social insects. Just yesterday, I ordered E.O. Wilson’s The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. We can learn a great deal about decentralization, complex systems, and our own society from social insects.

One recent line of research shows that ants are better at managing congestion than humans, and actually help each other move around their colony much more efficiently that we thought. Traffic and traffic jams have baffled scientists for ages. Congestion often appears and then disappears on the same road without any obvious reasons. But ants have a way of avoiding that congestion before it even starts.

In Fort Lauderdale, FL, 46-year-old Brian Nelson was stopped on Oakland Park Boulevard last Tuesday night and cited for violating Florida Statute 316.271, excessive use of the horn. Celebrating Barack Obama’s presidential victory, Nelson had been jubilantly beeping his horn every few blocks on the North Federal Highway until Officer Raymond Martucci pulled him over. Receiving a ticket as well as a $90 fine, Nelson was so incensed by Officer Martucci’s audacity that not only did he e-mail Mayor Jim Naugle’s office, but he also put in a phone call to the police department’s internal affairs unit, complaining about the “unfair targeting.” On Thursday, police spokesman Sgt. Frank Sousa acknowledged that “The incident is being reviewed by the agency…He [Nelson] has the same due process rights as any other citizen and can appeal the ticket in court.”

Off the record, independent legal analysts advise Nelson to delay any further action until President-elect Obama has formally taken office so that in addition to stripping Ofc. Martucci of his badge, Nelson may also receive a $90 government handout.

Toronto native Marcelo da Luz pulled in to Victoria today, after completing a 9,400 mile trip across Canada in his solar car. His 140 day journey beat the previous Guiness record holders (set in 2004) by 50 miles. Although his record hasn’t yet been recognized by Guiness, da Luz says he’s planning to continue traveling as long as he can afford to do so.

“I can only go for as long as I have support,” he says. “It’s a mix between Forrest Gump and Field of Dreams — if you build it they will come and life is like a box chocolates.”

Da Luz started in Toronto and passed through 44 cities and across Canada twice. His car, called the “Power of One” or Xof1, is a single-seat solar vehicle that cost $500,000 dollars to build. The vehicle cost about half a million dollars to build, can travel 124 miles on a single charge and has a top speed of about 75 mph.

MCN has reported that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) wants to ban motorcycles from UK roads. The ACPO’s recommendation was published in a report by the Transport Committee on Road Safety.

The ACPO memo calls for the creation of no-motorcycle zones and points to power caps. It states: “There is a need for radical thinking in respect of motorcycles, including consideration of engine capability and the creation of protection zones where all motorcycles other than those specifically permitted would be prohibited.”

Ironically, the association based its call for a ban on the false claim that production motorcycles are available with top speeds of over 200mph. In fact not a single production motorcycle has ever broken the 200mph barrier.

Photo by Starmer

A survey conducted by England’s Department for Transport polled a series of random motorists to determine exactly how much junk they had in their trunk. Answers ran the gamut from the logical to the downright bizarre, the most notable of the latter being a 13ft trampoline, a complete stag’s skull (with antlers still intact), and unopened Christmas presents dating back two years.

The ultimate goal of the survey was to inform motorists of the potential fuel-efficiency one thorough cleaning of their vehicle’s interior could provide. Said Tim Anderson of the Energy Saving Trust “…A spring clean of your boot will make your car lighter, meaning you need less fuel, saving money and CO2 emissions.”

With most consumers favoring smaller foreign cars and the US auto industry seemingly headed for the toilet, there is still one demographic that Detroit has a solid hold on… Retirees. Buyers over 65 are the last hope for the good old American car. In some dealerships, upwards of 85 percent of all Buick buyers are 55 and older. That’s an ominous sign for the future of American autos.

The over-65ers look at brands like Buick, Lincoln and Cadillac as status symbols. Those brands have what advertisers call the “Mind Share” in that demographic. Retirees remember a time when the only people driving those cars were celebrities and other high profile members of society; now they want in to that high-profile group of Cadillac drivers. Plus, older folks like familiarity, they know these brands, they’ve heard them their whole life.

Check out the list of the top ten cars most popular with retirees: