You need to get out more!!! Maybe sign up for Netflix and get unlimited movies for under $10 a month (free first month) OK, OK, new tack... Thanks for the compliment? I can't help myself... too many years working as engineer and or scientist. I even "see" my pool shots as elastic collisions in Newtonian physics with conservation of momentum depicted in my mind via vector analysis and still chaos rears its ornamental head and makes things interesting.Originally Posted by jimbrown
What are the odds that someone with two computers would lose the boot drive in each within a few weeks of each other? Answer: 100% since it happened to me. That and I've been staying pretty busy. For some reason my eyeballs sprung open this morning at 0330 and trying to get back to sleep was futile so... with a promise to take a nap later I got up and wandered to the computer.
Smart cars are a whole lot smarter in Europe running on diesel and competing for road space with other light weight vehicles (and the odd truck or big Benz.) In the USA once out of the 35 MPH (or less) zone and up to highway speeds you are about as safe as a motorcycle (murder cycle.)
I suspect Smart cars suffer one of the safety problems of motorcycles where other drivers judge your rate of closure by retinal image size and rate of change of retinal image size. This leads to the perception that the small vehicle (motorcycle, Smart car) is farther away going slower than it really is. This is why drivers trained by observing full sized cars and trucks often misjudge approaching cycles and tiny cars and pull out in front of them thinking them to be farther away and going slower. OOPS, BANG, so sorry Mrs motorcyclist widow I didn't realize he was that close going that fast.
Basis for above: depth perception via paralactic angle (how much your eyes cross to both focus on an object as measured by your eye turning muscles is noneffective beyond 25 to 40 feet (many of us can't judge distance even 25 feet with just normal 3D vision.) So how do we judge distances much greater than 40 feet like oncoming cars while you wait to pull out from a side street? Over time with experience you learn (typically subconsciously) the relationship between retinal image size of a car and the rate of change of retinal image size vs the time it takes to get to you from a known or fairly well judged/guessed distance away (a city block or x number of telephone poles or...) So then along comes a smaller "target" and your experience and training tells you it is farther away and going slower than it really is and you pull out and get T-boned by a motorcycle or Smart car.
Again as in previous post... the lighter weight vehicle experiences more G force than the heavier vehicle so the occupants of the smaller vehicle are typically more prone to injury. This works according to the ratio of the masses (weights) of the respective vehicles where the safety advantage goes to the heavier vehicle assuming similar passenger restraints, air bags, etc.
That said,our car is an '04 Prius that is full of airbags front, side, and rear. We also have two diesel pickups in 3/4 and 1 ton sizes plus my street legal VW powered dune/beach buggy which isn't driven on the highway very much (mostly off road.) I worry the least in our one ton Dodge diesel dually with service body. The thing is a tank! (and gets less than 1/4 the mileage of the Prius)
Pat
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