Annals of Motordom – 17

An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance

FUN THEORY – Speed-Camera Lottery

Speed over the limit, you pay; drive under the limt, you might win.

Kevin Richardson won Volkswagen’s The Fun Theory, a contest for ideas to make obeying speed-limits fun.  His entry is in use in Stockholm, Sweden.

Thanks to Joe Lousa.

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APOCALYPSE THEN

Who doesn’t enjoy a little diasaster-mongering now and then, especially when it’s about the Decline of Empire – American, in this case.  Alfred W. McCoy, the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, presents four scenarios in Salon for collapse of America by 2025. 

One, of course, concerns oil.  The year is 2025:

…. Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China’s new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman…..

With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse announcements, the “Carter Doctrine,” by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025. All the elements that long assured the United States limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that region — logistics, exchange rates, and naval power — evaporate. At this point, the U.S. can still cover only an insignificant 12 percent of its energy needs from its nascent alternative energy industry, and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy consumption.

The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane, sending prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into freefall, and rendering non-competitive whatever American exports remained. With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American economy is paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged withdrawal from their overseas bases.

Within a few years, the U.S. is functionally bankrupt and the clock is ticking toward midnight on the American Century.

Lots more here.

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DRIVE LESS, READ MORE

SB Godfrey posted a response in the previous Annals on the decline of auto sales in Europe and North America.  The link is worth bringing forward to the front page – from Advertising Age.

The share of automobile miles driven by people aged 21 to 30 in the U.S. fell to 13.7% in 2009 from 18.3% in 2001 and 20.8% in 1995, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey released earlier this year.

Mr. Draves, president of Lern, a consulting firm which focuses mainly on higher education, and co-author of “Nine Shift,” maintains that the digital age is reshaping the U.S. and world early in this century, much like the automobile reshaped American life early in the last century.

The environment is the reason Gen Y-ers most often give for wanting to drive less, Mr. Draves said. But he sees the fundamental economic transformation wrought by the internet …  Time becomes really valuable to them,” he said. “You can work on a train. You can’t work in a car. And the difference is two to three hours a day, or about 25% of one’s productive time.”

I gotta agree. Travel time is too valuable to actually waste, um, driving.  I even begrudge the lost time reading when I cycle to work.