Leaded Gas for Cars Impossible to Buy Globally

small car

After decades of effort by environmentalists leaded gasoline for use in automobiles is impossible to buy anywhere on the planet. Last month Algeria ended sales for leaded gasoline which marked the end of the dangerous fuel for consumers according to the UN Environment Programme. All gas burning is bad for people and the planet, but leaded gasoline use was the worst.

The next step in getting rid of leaded gasoline is to ban it’s use in airplanes.

Petroleum containing tetraethyllead, a form of lead, was first sold almost 100 years ago to increase engine performance. It was widely used for decades until researchers discovered that it could cause heart disease, strokes and brain damage.

UNEP cited studies suggesting that leaded gas caused measurable intellectual impairment in children and millions of premature deaths.

Most rich nations started phasing out the fuel in the 1980s, but it was still widely used in low- and middle-income countries until 2002, when the UN launched a global campaign to abolish it.

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Britain Bans Fossil Fuel Cars Starting in 2030

The United Kingdom is taking a step towards a green future by announcing that diesel and gas powered cars won’t be allowed in the country starting in 2030. Older cars will still be allowed, but three will be a ban on any new cars sales that aren’t friendlier to the environment. With any luck, the “need” for cars throughout the country will decrease due to increase transit and better urban design,

Let’s hope that more countries follow the lead of the UK and ban theses pollution machines!

“Now is the time to plan for a green recovery with high-skilled jobs that give people the satisfaction of knowing they are helping to make the country cleaner, greener and more beautiful,” Johnson said in a column published in the Financial Times on Tuesday.

Britain last year became the first G7 country to set in law a net zero emission target by 2050, which will require wholesale changes in the way Britons travel, use energy and eat.

The new date for a ban on new petrol and diesel cars is five years earlier than the 2035 pledge made by Johnson in February.

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Thanks to Dan!

How to Prevent Drivers Smashing into Buildings

This is a fun video exploring how we currently design streets for cars and how the Netherlands dealt with drivers. It’s sadly common that drivers steer their vehicles into buildings (maybe the buildings need to wear reflectors like cyclists?) throughout North America, despite the billions spent on roadways. Thankfully there are solutions to make streets safer for all users, as outlined in the video above.

You would think that cars regularly crashing into buildings would signal a problem to most people, but a lot of Americans and Canadians just accept it as normal. This is extremely rare in the Netherlands, and it’s due to safer street design that has come from a very different approach to road safety.

Bicycle Dutch modernization of 1960s street design:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q57sa…

Netherlands house crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edhg2…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRoPW…

Speeding driver through intersection by Toronto Drivers Exposed:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putyl…

Gezicht in de Carnegiedreef te Utrecht: Photographed by P. van der Linden, 1969 https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeldma…

Various news articles: https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comm…https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/part-of-pa… https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront… https://twitter.com/vcazan/status/872…https://twitter.com/PCPappy/status/91… https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/03/1… https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/no-injurie…https://globalnews.ca/news/4111368/ot… https://windsorstar.com/news/local-ne… https://twitter.com/London_Traffic/st…https://www.therecord.com/news-story/… https://sydenhamcurrent.ca/2018/01/15…https://globalnews.ca/news/6680079/ca… https://www.saltwire.com/news/local/c…https://blackburnnews.com/london/lond… https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/v…https://www.theobserver.ca/2017/06/20… https://www.bramptonguardian.com/news…https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-s… https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-s…https://globalnews.ca/news/6608052/va… https://www.cp24.com/news/three-trans…https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/02/1… https://www.cp24.com/news/police-inve… https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/08/2…https://www.cp24.com/news/intoxicated… https://www.cp24.com/news/two-in-cust…https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019… https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/01/0… https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/01/2…https://www.cp24.com/news/driver-soug… https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront…https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016… https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/v… https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/10/0…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UznLo… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHrqP…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kZ4Y… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxFut…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhMZs… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMsvv…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFRxT… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqAfn…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb1ep… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdYFh…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7quO… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ0m4…

Various images:https://i.redd.it/4z3ul1w3e3l31.png https://i.imgur.com/Ne6fh.jpg https://i.redd.it/41eitus294b31.jpg

Make Cities Slow Again

Bad urban design makes for poor living conditions and when cars are involved it can mean lethal conditions. As people know all to well, the last century’s bizarre love of the automobile has given us a lot of issues that we need to deal with today. Some solutions are really complex (like climate change) while others can be solved easily through simple design tweaks. One fast and easy way to save lives is to lower the speed limits on cars. Another simple solution is to stop designing our streets to allow cars to travel at high speeds. Cars kill, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Many people fear that slowing the speed limit in urban areas will dramatically increase journey time. However, average road speeds in cities are more determined by the frequency of intersections than speed limits.
A safer speed limit can achieve more uniform speeds and reduce dangerous midblock acceleration, while adding little to overall journey times. Research from Grenoble, France has shown that a speed limit of 30 kmph (18.64 mph) rather than 50 kmph (31 mph) only added 18 seconds of travel time between intersections 1 km (.62 miles) apart. Lower speed limits may even reduce congestion in some cases, as they reduce the likelihood of bottlenecks. This has been observed in Sao Paulo, where lowering the speed limit on major arterials reduced congestion by 10 percent during the first month of implementation, while fatalities also dropped significantly.

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Better Urban Design can Stop Drivers from Killing People

Intersection

More people live and work in cities than ever before in the history of humanity, as a result the transportation pressures on these urban centres as equally increased. In North America, the last century focused on making cities for cars instead of for people and as more population density increases in cities the urban design can’t keep pace. Making cities for cars has led to a really problematic situation. We know the future of cities is in human-scale design instead of car-scale design and the transition has been hard. In the USA cyclist fatalities have increased by 25% and pedestrian deaths by 45% since 2010.

The solution for safer cities exists and places are already implementing better design practices. You can make an impact today by getting rid of your car or just driving less.

Strategies vary from one city to another. Boston, for example, has reduced the city speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 mph. Washington, D.C. is improving 36 intersections that pose threats to pedestrians and enacting more bicycle-friendly policies. These cities still have far to go, but they are moving in the right direction.

There are many more options. Manufacturers can make vehicles less threatening to pedestrians and bicyclists by reducing the height of front bumpers. And cities can make streets safer with a combination of speed limit reductions, traffic calming measures, “road diets” for neighborhoods that limit traffic speed and volume, and better education for all road users.

Initiatives to create more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly infrastructure should also be sensitive to social and class differencesthat may shape local priorities. And advocates contend that shifting to autonomous vehicles could make streets safer, although the verdict is still out on this claim.

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