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GMC,Automotive History,Truck,SUV
Continue reading Junkyard Gem: 1985 GMC Suburban K1500
Junkyard Gem: 1985 GMC Suburban K1500 originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 21 Jul 2024 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
DETROIT — A horrific crash that killed six high school girls in Oklahoma two years ago has the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board urging parents to warn teenagers about the risk of driving after using marijuana.
Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy made the appeal to parents Thursday as her agency released the final report on the March 22, 2022 collision between a tiny Chevrolet Spark hatchback and a gravel-hauling semi in the small town of Tishomingo.
The board, after an investigation by its staff, determined that the crash was caused by the 16-year-old driver slowing for an intersection, then accelerating through a stop sign because she likely was impaired by recent marijuana use and was distracted by having five teen passengers in the car, the NTSB report said.
In an interview, Homendy also said the cannabis problem isn’t limited to teens. As more states have legalized recreational marijuana, teens and adults tend to underestimate the risks of driving under its influence.
“There’s a perception that in states where it’s legal that it’s safe and legal to drive impaired on marijuana,” she said.
In its report on the crash, the NTSB cited studies showing that marijuana decreases motor coordination, slows reaction time and impairs judgment of time and distance, all critical functions for driving.
Currently it’s legal for people 21 and older to use marijuana recreationally in 24 states plus Washington, D.C., according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Oklahoma doesn’t allow recreational use, but like most states, it’s legal for medical purposes. Driving while impaired by marijuana is illegal in all states and Washington, D.C.
The NTSB, which investigates transportation-related crashes but has no regulatory power, put out a safety alert Thursday urging parents to talk to young drivers about how marijuana can impair driving, and how they can make responsible choices to avoid driving while impaired or riding with impaired drivers.
Homendy said states that have legalized marijuana are behind in making sure people know that it’s illegal to drive under its influence. Over half of Americans live in a state where recreational cannabis use is legal, she said.
“Unfortunately, I think state laws that are legalizing recreational and medicinal use of marijuana have really come before thoughts or action on what are they going to do about traffic safety,” Homendy said. “They are far ahead on legalizing it, but very behind when it comes to traffic safety.”
States, she said, need to collect more data on how legalizing marijuana has affected traffic safety, and they need to start enforcing laws against driving while impaired by cannabis.
“Enforcement has got to be there in order to deter,” she said.
One study on crashes in Washington state, which has legalized recreational marijuana use, showed that more drivers involved in fatal crashes tested positive for marijuana after it became legal, the NTSB said.
In Tishomingo, about 100 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, six high school girls got into the car designed to carry four for a lunch break, the NTSB report said.
At an intersection, the driver slowed to 1 mile per hour, but accelerated and didn’t come to a complete stop for a sign. Instead, she sped up and turned left in front of the gravel truck. The truck driver braked and steered to avoid the Spark, but hit the driver’s side at just under 50 mph (80 kilometers per hour). All six teens died of multiple blunt force injuries.
Tests on blood taken from the driver’s body found a THC concentration of 95.9 nanograms per milliliter, the NTSB said. If such a level of THC, the main chemical component of marijuana, were found in a living person, it would indicate “a high likelihood that the person had used cannabis very recently, and therefore was likely still experiencing acute impairing cannabis effects,” the report said.
But the NTSB cautioned that body-cavity blood samples can sometimes be contaminated by other body fluids or by THC from other tissues, including the lungs, that may contain high concentrations.
In addition, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol found vaping mouthpieces and cannabis buds in the car at the scene of the crash, the report said.
The NTSB recommended in the report that the Oklahoma State Department of Education develop a drug and alcohol abuse curriculum for local school districts that tells students about the risk of cannabis-impaired driving. At present, only Massachusetts and Rhode Island have such course requirements, the NTSB said.
The agency also wants the Governors Highway Safety Association, a group of state highway safety officers, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of State Boards of Education to inform members about the Tishomingo crash and the need for cannabis information in school and driver education coursework.
The safety association said in a statement that cannabis-impaired driving is a growing safety concern, and state highway safety offices are focused on eliminating all impaired driving.
“We have to start communicating well ahead of time, to kids, that driving, having ingested or smoked or inhaled marijuana is impairing, and it’s a risk to them and a risk to others,” Homendy said.
Distracted driving might make for entertaining dashcam videos on social media, but it has increasingly become a deadly problem on America’s roads. Bader Scott Injury Lawyers’ recent study found that distracted driving kills thousands of people each year, but some states see much higher numbers than others.
New Mexico was the worst state in the study, with a final score of 100, and almost 40% of its fatal crashes were caused by distracted driving. The ten worst states for distracted driving include:
Bader Scott calculated its overall score by examining other factors, including total crash deaths, fatalities by distracted drivers, deaths per 100,000 residents, and distracted drivers per 100,000 licensed drivers. New Mexico took the “top” spot in a few categories, including distracted drivers per 100,000 licensed drivers.
Some states performed much better in the study, with one scoring a zero overall. Rhode Island ranked as the best state for distracted driving, earning the lowest overall score. The ten best states include:
The law firm looked at data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), and Census Bureau Population figures. It’s important to note that while the distracted driving rankings apply to the 2024 calendar year, Bader Scott’s data from the NHTSA and FHA came from 2022. Overall scores were calculated based on three key indicators: distracted driving fatality percentage (30% weight), number of people killed per 100,000 residents by distracted drivers (35%), and the number of distracted drivers involved per 100,000 licensed drivers in fatal crashes (35%). Those weighted scores drove the final calculations, and states were ranked based on the overall number.
Complaining about the roads and weather have become pastimes for many people in America, but some drivers have a legitimate reason for all the bellyaching. Home Solutions’ recent study focused on road safety, calculating the percentage of rough roads, annual miles driven, and fatal injuries across all 50 states. The rough road numbers won’t be surprising for people who live in the worst states, but they’re eye-opening for everyone else.
Rhode Island had the roughest roads in the country, with 15.3 percent scoring above 220 on the International Roughness Index (IRI), which is a generally accepted measure of road quality in America. The top ten states with the roughest roads include:
The math behind the IRI calculations is beyond what we’ll get into here, but Rhode Island’s drivers likely don’t need equations to figure out that their state’s roads need some help. That said, many states fell below the one percent mark for rough roads, showing that the issue is largely related to the amount of money and time spent on care and maintenance.
Alabama had the fewest rough roads, at 0.4%, while Wyoming was close behind at 0.6%. Minnesota, Nevada, and Georgia round out the top five, with all coming in below 0.8%. At the same time, Wyoming had the deadliest roads in the study, so it’s not all roses for The Cowboy State.
Wyoming had a whopping 57 road deaths per 100,000 drivers, placing it high atop the list of deadliest states. In comparison, Rhode Island, with its bumpy roads, only saw 8.5 deaths per 100,000. Massachusetts wasn’t much worse, with just 9.5 deaths, though California was significantly higher, at 20.2 deaths per 100,000 drivers.
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Continue reading GMC Sierra EV AT4, Chevy Silverado EV Trail Boss caught in spy photos
GMC Sierra EV AT4, Chevy Silverado EV Trail Boss caught in spy photos originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 9 Jul 2024 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Green,GMC,Truck,Electric
Continue reading 2025 GMC Sierra EV rumored to offer a smaller 170-kWh pack as standard
2025 GMC Sierra EV rumored to offer a smaller 170-kWh pack as standard originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 5 Jul 2024 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Many of us will remember the days when you could stop at a gas station, throw in $5 of 87 octane, and hit the road for miles without worry. Those days are over and have been for quite some time, as Energy.gov’s recent Fact of the Week showed that automakers have recommended premium fuel for most light-duty vehicles since 2018.
More than half of all light-duty vehicles come with a premium fuel recommendation, a significant increase from the 6.5 percent of vehicles needing premium back in 1985. That growth is due in part to automakers’ move to smaller turbocharged engines and higher compression requiring higher octane.
While it’s still possible to buy a car that doesn’t require high-test fuel, the number of available models has fallen pretty consistently over the past two decades. Vehicles requiring midgrade gas weren’t broken out of the numbers until 2011, but the category has represented a tiny number of available models since.
Octane ratings measure a fuel’s ability to stop “pinging” or “knocking.” While there are outliers, such as racing fuel, most gas stations in the United States offer three octane ratings that range from 87 for regular fuel to 93-94 octane for premium. The higher the octane rating, the more capable the fuel is of resisting knocking at higher compression levels, allowing automakers to extract more power from smaller, more fuel-efficient turbocharged engines.
While it’s always a good idea to follow your vehicle manufacturer’s recommendations, there may be times when premium fuel is unavailable. Newer vehicles’ advanced engine control systems can often adjust operations to accommodate lower-octane fuels, but they may suffer a fuel economy or power hit along the way. At the same time, using premium fuel in a vehicle not designed to take advantage of it can yield little to no benefit and costs way more in the process.
Drunk driving is a problem for everyone, causing almost a third of all traffic fatalities and ruining thousands of lives each year. The problem is much worse in some states, however, as a new study from the Simmrin Law Group showed that South Carolina had the highest rate of drunk driving-related deaths in 2022.
The firm’s study found that southern states are the worst for drunk driving, taking four of the “top 10” spots in the ranking. It assigned an overall score out of a possible 100 points based on total traffic fatalities, the number of alcohol-impaired fatalities, the percentage of drunk drivers, and more.
In South Carolina, a whopping 43% percent of traffic fatalities are due to drunk driving, much higher than the national average of 32%, and 8.82 people per 100,000 residents were killed in drunk-driving crashes. Second-place Texas saw 42% of fatal crashes caused by drunk drivers.
More than 13,500 people were killed by drunk drivers in 2022, but some states contributed much less to that total. Utah had the lowest percentage of drunk driving-related fatalities, at 22%. New Jersey, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York were the next-best in the rankings. Simmrim Law Group said that the Northeast states likely had fewer drunk driving deaths due to more accessible public transportation and stricter drunk driving laws.
Though interestingly, none of the states ranking worst on the list have particularly lenient DUI laws. Arizona is considered to have some of the strictest laws in the country, with a first offense costing the driver 10 days in jail and fines of at least $1,250. They also must install an ignition interlock device and submit to drug/alcohol counseling. Drivers caught with a blood alcohol content of 0.15 or higher have to do 30 days in jail and pay $2,500 for a first offense.
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Continue reading 2025 Buick Envista Review: Looks expensive, isn’t. A hidden gem
2025 Buick Envista Review: Looks expensive, isn’t. A hidden gem originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 24 Jul 2024 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Insurance rates are increasing, but vehicle owners aren’t sitting still waiting for the situation to change. A new study from LexisNexis showed that more people are shopping around for car insurance, switching companies to save money and get better coverage options.
The study showed that more than 40 percent of insured drivers had shopped for a new policy in 2023, up almost 5 percent from the year before. Insurers spent less on advertising, which could have played a role, but the main driving force is that people want to save money, and they are not hesitant to make a move when they find something better.
This situation presents some challenges for insurance companies, even the ones that are taking on more customers than they lose. There are more multi-generational households as families move in together to save money. That has driven up the number of drivers on each policy while reducing the number of new policies. Beyond the potential lost revenue, insurers could miss risk factors for people in multi-driver households.
Because of that shopping around, insurers have seen a drop in their customer renewal rates, with the average renewals dropping from 83 percent to 80 percent. Many of the customers making moves between coverage options are those with clean driving records and low-risk drivers, leaving insurers with “the rest” of the driving population that costs more to insure. LexisNexis pointed out that insurers need to focus on pricing and satisfaction for the lower-risk vehicle owners to avoid ending up with a pool of expensive-to-insure drivers.
If you’re considering changing insurance companies, doing plenty of research up front would be wise. Consider your current deductible, coverage limits, and benefits before making a move. If you save a few dollars on insurance premiums but end up with a larger deductible or fewer coverage options, you won’t have saved anything if you get in a wreck.