Random Perspectives

I keep saying that cops consider themselves above the laws they are there to uphold and this is another example.

No matter what the cameras say, some drivers are refusing to pay dozens of $40 speeding fines. Who? Police officers.

In Maryland, during the last eight months of 2007, Montgomery County's new speed cameras recorded 224 cases in which police vehicles were recorded travelling more than 15 kilometres an hour over the speed limit, according to department records.

Supervisors dismissed 76 of those citations after determining the officers were responding to calls or had valid reasons to break the speed limit.

But that left 148 who didn't have that excuse, most of those citations haven't been paid, said police Lt. Paul Starks.

The police union says officers shouldn't pay because the citations are issued to the owner of a vehicle, in this case the county, and not to the driver.

Police Chief Thomas Manger doesn't buy that argument.

"We are not above the law," Manger said. "It is imperative that the police department hold itself to the same standards that we're holding the public to."

On a different note; This story from M.I.T.

MIT tackles urban gridlock with foldable car idea. Guest post by Allyn Fisher-Ilan

Wouldn't it be nice to drive a car into town without worrying about finding a parking space?

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised just such a vehicle, a futuristic "City Car" that could even drive itself.

Once at your destination, the vehicle's computers would, at the press of a button, look for a parking spot behind others like itself, then fold roughly in half so you could stack it there as you would a shopping cart.

"We have reinvented urban mobility," said Bill Mitchell, a professor in architecture and director of the project at an MIT think tank in Cambridge, just outside Boston.

The vehicle hasn't yet been built. But a miniature mock-up version has gone on display at a campus museum, and there are plans to build a full-scale model this spring.

The dozen or so engineers and architects on Mitchell's team are confident their computer-generated work is on target.

They feel their golf cart-sized vehicle could provide a novel solution to the chronic traffic congestion afflicting cities across the United States, Europe and Asia -- not to mention pollution and energy use, since it would run on a rechargeable battery, the researchers say.

On the drawing board, their two-seater is roughly half the size of a typical compact automobile and a little smaller than the Smart car made by Daimler's Mercedes-Benz.

"It's a virtual computer on wheels," said Franco Vairani, designer of the vehicle's foldable frame, which he predicts will shrink the car to as little as an eighth the space needed to park the average car. While parked, it would hook up to an electricity grid for recharging, he added.

Hundreds could be stacked around a city and "you would just go and swipe your (credit) card and take the first one available and drive away," Vairani said, seated by his computerized drawing board.

People wouldn't have to worry about where to park their cars in town and automobiles would take up less urban space, leaving more room for parks and walkways, he added.

Peter Schmitt, a team engineer, says the car would have independently powered robotic wheels and be controlled using a computerized drive-by-wire system with a button or joystick.

Mitchell said he would like to bring the car to the manufacturing stage within the next three to four years.

But a key consultant for the project, Christopher Borroni-Bird, director of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at U.S. automaker General Motors Corp, said he doesn't think City Car is quite ready yet for the road.

"What we have is a very intriguing concept," Borroni-Bird told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It is certainly a very promising idea, but I don't want to say it is ready for production ... there's still a lot of work yet to take it from concept to production."

These are models of the car and in the front you can see how they fold up and then stack up!

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com