I’m having way too much fun observing signage.
Category Archives: Transportation
New Vehicle Crash Test; Ouch
A new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test is making me wince. If you watch the “small overlap test” video above, you can see most of the airbags doing absolutely no good because of the physics of the collision. I like my head. I like it to not bounce off car parts. Another thought …
Mobile Behavior
The thing that amazes me the most, if you watch this closely, is how blase everyone is about the close encounters. 3-Way Street from ronconcocacola on Vimeo.
I Learn my Job Every Day
If you had asked me yesterday, “Bill, can you prevent pedestrians from crossing a bridge during construction?” my answer would have been “Sure.” And I would have been wrong wrong wrong: From the 2009 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD): 04. If the TTC [Temporary Traffic Control] zone affects the movement of pedestrians, adequate …
Atlanta Metro Area Accessibility
We who live and work in the Atlanta metropolitan region had an object lesson in what happens when a major snowstorm hits a southern city: shutdown. You might assume that this has implications for accessibility. You would be right. The Storm The snow that hit us on Sunday night put five inches on the ground …
New Notebook
I use notebooks at work. I subscribe to the philosophy that if you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen. Since 2000, I’ve been using National Brand 5×5 Quad Paper with Eye Ease® paper. I love these notebooks and have taken a decade to go through the box that I bought way back then. We …
Electoral Selections: Georgia 2010
Without preamble, here are the ways I’m going this election season, and why: Georgia State Constitutional Amendment #1: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to make Georgia more economically competitive by authorizing legislation to uphold reasonable competitive agreements?” I will vote NO NO NO. This could also be stated, “Shall the Constitution …
TIGER Grants
The list for TIGER discretionary transportation grants by the FHWA has been released. I don’t have a link to point to at the moment because all I’ve got is a PDF in my email, but I’ll put it up here as soon as I do. What I know is that GA didn’t get a single …
Fun New Interchange Designs
I’m working with CORSIM this week. It is a microsimulation traffic modeling software that can tell you from a stochastic standpoint how well the traffic is going to move on your proposed roadway after certain improvements are installed. One of the outputs of this software is a simulation that let’s you watch the cars run …
Metric (SI) vs. English (Imperial)
Jim the Cro-ster over at Physics is Phunnner than Phlatulance remarked today on the metric vs. english dichotomy of U.S. society and its implications for daily use. I agree with his main thrust, that in order for something to be useful, it must be used. i.e., to really grok a measurement, like the meter or …