Panos for Progress: Thoughts and Selections

Provided input to several questions for  WalletHub's advisory article  on Teen Drivers which was also covered by several radio stations as well as NewsWeek  and MSN . What tips do you have for parents of teen drivers? There is no rush for teenagers to drive. If they do not show sufficient maturity at home and at school, placing them on the road in the driver’s seat, unsupervised, is an accident waiting to happen. In states with graduated licensing schemes, this risk is reduced. Strongly recommended is a hands-on safety course such as Street Survival, Driver’s Edge and similar programs. Search “teenager safety driving school” to find programs in your vicinity. I am a Street Survival instructor and my teenager took the Saturday full day course twice. Teenagers finish the day with several tools for dealing with emergency situations while driving, and more humbled about their (inflated) driving abilities. What is the biggest risk that teen drivers face? The crash risk of teen...

Strange finding, but it comes from a paper in a well regarded, peer reviewed journal. Do EV cause more at-fault crashes? The answer based on data from The Netherlands (only) is yes. See:  Are electric vehicles riskier? A comparative study of driving behaviour and insurance claims for internal combustion engine, hybrid and electric vehicles ( Alternate link ) Research Paper Highlights Electric and hybrid drivers exhibit different behaviours than traditional vehicles. Electric vehicles record higher at-fault claims than traditional vehicles. Hybrids do not display a statistically significant increase in claim likelihood. Electric vehicles are 6.7% more expensive to repair than traditional vehicles.

  The September 7, 2024 issue of the Economist has this provocative title on its cover page.  Strong words but they back their statement up with substantial research: They used data from 7.5m crashes in 14 States for ten years (2013-2023. They found that "for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest." Vehicles have been getting heftier over time, but a big culprit are pickup trucks, large SUvs and EVs. For example, ehe Ford F-150 Lightning weighs ~40% more than its gasoline version. EPA figures show that the average new car in the US weights 4,4000 lbs compared to 3,300 lbs in EU and 2,600 lbs in Japan. "Individually, it is rational for people to buy bigger cars. As Tony Soprano once said to his son A.J. when discussing SUVs, So you want to be the sucker in a regular car who gets decapitated? Yet the sum of those decisions is much more lethal roads, as well as...