Posts Tagged → phone
Careless speeding & Poor traffic controls take another friend
We lost a most wonderful friend yesterday afternoon. One of the nicest people you could ever meet in your life, needlessly lost her life, while trying to cross North Front Street in Harrisburg.
Three factors caused Dr. Holly Engelman (55 YO) to be struck and immediately killed by a car: Careless driving, at speed far above what is posted (40 MPH transitioning to 35 MPH), in a marked crosswalk that lacks sufficient traffic controls to make drivers slow down and give the occasional pedestrian the right of way.
The driver whose car collided with Holly as she crossed within the crosswalk was young, driving way too damned fast, like almost everyone drives these days. And instead of seeing the adjoining lane blocked by a car waiting for Holly to make her way across Front Street, and taking note of it, her killer simply sped around it.
As Holly stepped past the stopped car, she was hit by the other car. While she was in the marked crosswalk.
Yes, this crosswalk at Vaughn and Front Street is marked on the pavement, and yes, it has signs on both sides, and yes, it has a flashing light and signs hanging over the crosswalk. But what it does not have is a couple rumble strips on both sides. Rumble strips, or speed bumps, can force drivers to slow down, by dint of the discomfort they cause when driven over at high speed. If designed to really slow a car down, they will immediately remove the tailpipe when hit at high speed.
Otherwise, these crosswalks are dangerous enticements, death traps that promise safety, but deliver death and injury.
I always drive the speed limit on Front Street. It is a residential street and also a low speed artery into and out of Harrisburg City. And yet, no matter where I enter Front Street, with however much lead time between me and approaching traffic, my doors are always blown off by passing vehicles that are going between fifty and sixty MPH. Some faster than this. Never fails, everyone is in a huge hurry to get into Harrisburg or out of it.
Plenty of tailgating, plenty of aggressive zooming up behind a vehicle that is already going the posted speed limit. As if Front Street is a race track, the Autobahn, a highway. But it is none of those things. Front Street runs along the scenic Susquehanna River, and right along the walking/ biking path above the river bank. Very little margin for error in this corridor, really no room for high speeds.
And yet, drivers speed there, and crash there, all the time.
There is no police presence on Front Street. Zero speed enforcement. None, ever. Not even at this one crosswalk.
Holly was a gentle, kind, beautiful person, with an uninhibited, attention-grabbing Woody Woodpecker laugh that made everyone around her laugh with her. Big time community volunteer, while also holding down a regular science job. She had a PhD in some polysyllabic hard science field that involved test tubes, lab rats, genes, big buildings, whatever, the whole gemish. Brilliant person, always positive to be around. Her two sons are good kids, smart in their own rights, and also hard working. Ditto her husband Andrew.
There is no replacing a Holly when something like this avoidable killing “accident” takes place. Holly was one of a kind, a super person of tiny stature who gave much more back to the community and society around her than her tiny size would indicate. She was one of the Princess of Patience’s best friends here in Harrisburg, and our home has been in mourning all day.
Folks, slow down in your vehicles. I do not understand why the hell so many people routinely drive like a bat out of hell in parking lots, or on residential streets, where people are around and where the margins for error are tiny. Nothing “pressing” in your life or mine is worth taking someone else’s life over. Driving fast in these enclosed spaces isn’t getting you anywhere any faster, but your risk factors are going through the roof.
And for those who will debate me on this, consider the young lady driver who killed our friend Holly. She likely faces the serious charge of manslaughter, in addition to reckless driving, etc etc. Her young life will never be the same, and will probably be much worse for a long period of time, simply because she was in too much of a hurry to slow down for Holly walking in the crosswalk.
In 2019, a young guy crashed into my truck’s rear, at pretty high speed, as I was stopped at a red light in Lewisburg. For about forty miles on our drive up Route 15, I had watched him staring at the dumb phone in his lap. He kept on slowing down as he became more absorbed in what he later told me was “the stupidest stuff.” And he would then suddenly speed up when he realized that other vehicles were passing him. He yo-yo’d like this for forty miles, and never once saw me waving to him, looking at him, trying to get his attention. He totaled his brand new Mustang, and hurt me.
Nothing on your social media feed is worth killing a Holly over, and if something on your phone really is so important, then pull off the road and give it your full attention. You, me, Holly, and the other person on your other end will all benefit.
Goodbye, dear Holly, sweet Holly, smart and humble and gentle Holly, mom Holly, doctor Holly, wife Holly, good friend Holly. We miss you very much.
UPDATE: Local news is covering this well. Here is a good example, and the reader comments are illuminating.
The scene of the crime. Killing a pedestrian here is no “accident.” It is negligent homicide, manslaughter.
How many signs and lights do drivers need? Apparently a lot
Another view. Northbound. People blasted through here while I tried to cross. Supposed to yield, a couple vehicles stopped, but most paid no mind
Is this the skid mark at the strike location?
Dr. Holly Engelman, on the left, as always
Where is the Manual Override lever?
A friend of mine has a beautiful home filled up with high technology gadgets. Everything in the house is automated, including opening and closing toilet seats, lights, music, the kitchen wine rack, you name it; if it can be programmed to happen or turn on or off when a person enters or exits the room or uses the potty, he has it set.
First time I encountered this was at a party. It was funny and entertaining. I would experience something newfangled and robotic, comment on it, compliment my friend for his ingenuity, and then retreat to the pool deck or his living room to talk with a human being.
Then a year later he generously hosted me as a guest for a weekend as I ran for state senate, while he and his family were away. Every time I stepped into the kitchen, lights would turn on, the fridge would light up, or automatically open if I approached it, same with the coffee maker, etc. When the shower was turned on, music started.
No matter what I wanted to do, or needed to do, or possibly indicated a desire to do, the automated electronics tried to anticipate me and do it for me. Even the toilet paper dispenser was set to go, maybe not enough, but it tried to provide. Everything but the final act was done by the toilet paper dispenser, but then the guest room toilet also had a bidet feature, which if you are into that, can work wonders if set on “fire hose high.”
After that weekend, I swore I would try to avoid automation as much as possible the rest of my life. It unnerved me, because almost as frequently as the robotics were correct, they were then incorrect, and then annoying. Put another way, the first hour of that is Golly! amusing. The second hour is provocative, as the human mind tries to find ways to work around the now-annoying robots. After that, one becomes tired of the novelty, and a bit alarmed by all of the automated activity that occurs no matter which room one enters into, and what one really wants.
And there is no manual override.
Several years ago I made the mistake of buying a newfangled clothes washing machine. Our old one died, and I had run out of fixes for it. I could not find its two-way electric motor, used, even on eBay, and so it went out into the world of recycling.
Looking for that old machine’s fierce old-fashioned tear-your-arm-off churn of the washing machines we all grew up with, I accepted the salesman’s representation that this new machine could do that, if I programmed it to do it. And Lordy but does it have buttons for programming! It even can link up with your smart phone and be run from that, if you download that manufacturer’s spyware app.
I figured that with all of these sophisticated buttons and options, the machine could probably be programmed to write Shakespeare sonnets, much less really, really clean our family’s clothing.
Nope.
Turns out that the machine has programming for a high efficiency absence of cleaning water set at cold, and shame-on-you low efficiency absence of cleaning water, set at tepid, with the same weak, flaccid, slow, low-energy half-turn of the cleaning rotor as happens with the high-efficiency choice. And the churny-rotor thingy is a superior action to the lift-and-flop motion the machine is set to do from the factory.
Any mistake in trying to run a wash and then stopping it requires the machine to drain out all of the wash water and then start all over again. Which is a waste of water, and whatever electricity it used, and is usually an unnecessary step.
With this new, expensive, high tech clothes washing machine, you are stuck with a set of poor or poorer choices in how to maybe clean your clothes. The machine was designed and programmed by people who care more about energy and water efficiency than actually cleaning clothes.
Note to clothes washer manufacturers: We consumers buy clothes washers because we want our clothes to get clean, however that is done, whatever it takes, at whatever amounts and temperatures of water are needed, and with whatever rotor churn power is needed to knock the caked dirt off of my work clothes. We don’t want high efficiency water and electrictity use for anything other than thoroughly cleaning our clothes. And if the high efficiency settings don’t clean clothes, as they usually do not, then we want a choice in setting the machine to really kick ass and do what clothes washers are supposed to do: Clean. Really, really, super clean. At whatever cost in water and electricity.
And no, there is no manual override for this fancy washing machine. You the consumer are given an incomplete set of choices, and by golly, that is what you will learn to like, whether it is likable or not.
Last but not least among the examples of modern thingies needing a manual override, we have the new car belonging to the Princess of Patience. It is a 2026 Toyota Rav4 hybrid, being number four in a progression of RAV4s the Princess of Patience has owned and relied upon, with great enjoyment.
Heh, well, this latest and greatest iteration of the tried and true and much favored RAV4 inspires our gentle, soft spoken, always well considered Princess of Patience to say things like “I hate this %*$#@! thing. I want to set it on fire and leave it on the side of the road!”
Now, what could inspire such a harsh reaction to something so wonderfully modern and reliable as her new car? In a word: Technological automation.
This damned RAV4 has more technology than a fighter jet, and more automation than the Toyota car factory that built it. The technology is overwhelming, unnecessary, superfluous, and impossible to control, unless one has a degree in computer programming. The little turny knobs we used for the past seventy years for selecting radio stations and interior temperatures worked, ya know. Simple solution, hard to break, easy to tune. Not the new car technology! It is all touch screen, which is hard to see, inelegant, and clumsy.
This RAV4 tries to grab and pull into its computer motherboard every electronic gadget and phone that passes within fifty feet of it, then downloading and storing everything digital on said gadget and phone (to then download to Toyota so the car company can then sell and monetize our most personal information). This car also has every kind of Nanny pseudo-safety feature automatically built in that a weenie sheltered mama’s boy could ever dream up.
The car beeps and chimes and dings if you swerve one inch into the road dividing line. It will also automatically swerve away from any car or dividing line it believes you have mistakenly turned towards, even if you are swerving to avoid a deer standing in the middle of the road, but end up hitting the deer instead, because of the car’s automated correction system.
Ditto for coming anywhere near another vehicle while driving or parking. Last week my left wrist was nearly broken because of the force it hit the steering wheel with, as the car automatically and harshly jammed on the brakes to “save” us from hitting the rear end of a car that was turning into an alley in a congested urban area. We were plenty far enough away from the other car’s bumper, but to the RAV4, we nearly died, and it saved us.
Whoever programmed this car’s automated sensors and driving instructions obviously never drove in Brooklyn, New York, where urban combat driving is the norm and clearances between moving and parked vehicles and with buildings and humans are all measured in tenths of inches. To everyone’s satisfaction. But not to this car!
If I were to try to drive this 2026 RAV4 in a place like Brooklyn, I would leave a trail of destruction and mayhem behind me, on account of the automated driving and “safe reaction” nanny settings programmed into the car. The car would swerve to avoid one perceived obstacle, and then take out two grandmas, a stroller, and a partridge in a pear tree in one full swoop, just to stop me from maybe hitting something. All while the damned thing scans my eyeballs and my brain for what music I might possibly want to listen to at that second.
Folks, there is just too damned much technology and automation and useless gee-whiz gizmos in everything we use. It is all working against us, against our interests, our choices, against our humanity. It is a reflection not of us and our choices, but of the weak and highly risk-averse fairies who program these things before we start using them. And there is no manual override for any of it.
Not everything analog is bad, and hardly everything digital is good. The deeper we go into digital everything, the more we want some of that old analog world back. It was easier, more user friendly, did more with less, easier to maintain, lasted longer and broke a lot lot less than the digital crap.
You want a tamper resistant and theft-proof vehicle, that does what you tell it to do, when you want it? Get a manual stick shift. That is what I want in my next pickup truck, if only to be able to regularly give Third Gear to The Man.
Obama Wire-Tapped Trump Part 2
If past president Barack Hussein Obama did not wiretap Donald Trump (Obama did not deny doing it but rather clumsily dodged the question), then what have the “Russia investigation” and secret-but- disclosed transcripts of President Trump phone calls been about? Where did they come from?
The fake Russia connection claim and fake investigation demand are a result of Obama illegally wiretapping Candidate Trump, and getting caught by President Trump.
No evidence of Trump benefiting from Russia, but tons of official big bucks relationship between Putin and Clinton, like the sale of huge quantities of Uranium to Russia and the insane Iran-Russia-empowerment deal. Those never merited investigation before, apparently. And the same political party still wants no one looking into those Clinton influence peddling deals on the taxpayer dime.
Trump wasn’t wiretapped, you say?
Well we know he was “investigated.” What do investigations involve? Wiretapping? You bet!
And what are these supposedly secure and secret phone call transcripts between Trump and other international leaders being released to the press from government sources?
Where did these transcripts come from? Probably from people left over from the Obama administration using their official positions for partisan gain. The same as they did while illegally wiretapping Candidate Trump and calling it an “investigation.”
The partisan yelling and screaming about Trump and Russia is just a noisy diversion from the increasing recognition that Obamagate is worse by far than Watergate, that Mister Wonderful Obama was in fact an illegal Spy.
The continuing demands for an endless investigation into Trump and Russia is just a smokescreen, an obfuscation designed to make Trump look bad and draw away attention from the truly bad fact that our former president Obama was in fact, much worse than Nixon. Obama makes Nixon look like an incompetent rookie.
May be the first time that an ex president goes to jail. But hey, Obama knew the risks and he decided to illegally spy on his party’s nemesis anyhow. Now the time has come to pay the price.