The trouble with SUVs…

Article from the Washington Monthly (via www.aldaily.com) reviewing Keith Bradsher’s book High and Mighty: SUVs.

“…most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing — a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs. The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars — 8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don’t handle well, so drivers can’t respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or “trips” by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require them to be. “

Read the full article here

Francis Fukuyama on the democratic power of IT

“The newer information technologies are profoundly democratizing, because they don’t reward economies of scale. They work best in decentralized, non-controlled societies. They’re anti-authoritarian, because authoritarians control societies by their ability to control access to information. So if people can get information on their own simply by dialing up a computer, then we have ways of getting around hierarchies. The internet helps to spread power out rather than concentrating it.”

From a transcript of the Closer to Truth TV show.