Slippery sidewalks keep emergency rooms busy

Ice and snow is a dangerous combination out on the roads, sidewalks and parking lots. Local emergency rooms say they're seeing more patients coming in after falling on the ice.

"It's been iciest on the sidewalks for me I walked down 3rd Ave and that was pretty bad," said Jeremy Sutton.

The emergency room at Mayo Clinic Health System-Eau Claire has been busy this week.

“People just slipping on the ice falling on their butts hitting their heads its very common this time of year,” said Dr. Sue Cullinan with Mayo Clinic Health System.

Cullinan says most patients she sees after a fall come in with a broken ankle, hip or a nasty bump on the head. She says falls can be life-threatening for people on blood thinners. Cullinan says two of the most dangerous places to slip and fall are on the stairs or stepping out of your car.

“Usually people aren't looking and aren’t careful stepping on to a curb or getting out of their car so they slip before they know it’s icy; so thinking ahead, looking down, taking short shuffling steps and expecting ice where ever you go is the best thing you can do,” said Cullinan.

There was a time when manual transmissions always outperformed automatics on the track, but you won’t find a clutch on today’s F1 supercars anymore. Those have been replaced by semi-automatic paddle shifters mounted to the steering column. Even on the street-legal consumer side, acceleration is a shifting landscape. While six-speed manuals such as the Lingenfelter Chevy Corvette and Dodge Viper Hennessey Venom still hold the top 0 to 60 mph times, today’s automatics are increasingly accelerating faster and getting better fuel economy than their manual counterparts in what amounts to a significant changing of the guard.

In the automotive world – as in computing, Jeopardy!, and sometimes even chess – technology is outperforming humans.

With much talk about driverless car technology lately, that begs a number of questions. One example: Vehicle fuel efficiency, hybrids, and electric vehicles are central to a transforming, cleaner, greener transportation system; What will driverless cars mean for fossil fuel consumption in the transportation sector? At RMI, we’re very interested in the answers to this question.

Individual driverless cars come with important opportunities for increased efficiency. Groups of driverless cars likewise have the potential for even greater collective efficiencies, for example through shared reduced drag. And driverless vehicles seamlessly connected to smart infrastructure offer even greater promise still.

In the context of driverless cars, drafting becomes platooning, a grouped “train” of autonomous,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. connected cars following a lead car. The SARTRE project—fully operational today and potentially ready for consumer deployment within 10 years—is the latest iteration of a concept that first gained popularity in the 1990s.The USB flash drives wholesale is our flagship product. By traveling within 13 feet of one another,They manufacture custom rubber and silicone bracelet and bracelets. the platooned vehicles reap great efficiency gains. A 1995 PATH (Partners for Advanced Transportation TecHnology) study showed fuel use reductions up to 20 percent at this distance; even greater reductions are possible with larger platoons and/or tighter spacing between vehicles.

Now here’s where driverless cars, hypermiling, and speed all potentially intersect. The National Highway Maximum Speed Law of 1974, motivated by the 1970s oil crisis, gave us the 55 mph speed limit, targeted at keeping U.S. drivers at peak fuel efficiency. In 1995, the law was abolished and speed limits now vary widely state by state, though 55 mph remains common on many of the nation’s highways. But what if driverless cars—by being able to safely maintain much closer following distances in platoons than human drivers—could actually increase the speed of peak efficiency? We’d get places faster while still using less fuel.

The opportunities bound up in driverless cars are many. They’re highly compatible with car-sharing programs (more on that in a future post). They have implications for public transportation systems (ditto). If you’re feeling drowsy on a long-haul drive or at the end of a tough day at work, a driverless car could let you sit back and relax, or even take the wheel if it senses you’re driving erratically; ditto if you find you’ve unexpectedly had too much to drink—rather than call a taxi, a driverless car could take you home. By feeding information into (and obtaining info from) a shared database akin to the smartphone app Pothole Alert, they could avoid road hazards or even notify the local highway department or department of public works to road repair and maintenance needs.

But let’s return to the fuel consumption issue. Driverless cars connected to the traffic light system could communicate with an upcoming light and have it stay green or change to green, so that you could maintain cruising speed and optimal fuel efficiency (not to mention avoiding an unnecessary delay at the light). And of course there’s the familiar issue of parking, especially in urban environments where it accounts for 30 percent of all traffic. Autonomous cars and a smart parking system could allocate parking spaces to the nearest vehicles in need of a spot,You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. and vehicles could navigate to those spots directly and quickly, reducing the fuel consumption, emissions, and time associated with searching for a spot.

There are pitfalls to be wary of, however. One giant elephant in the driverless car room is vehicle miles traveled (VMT). It’s tempting to believe that driverless cars will reduce VMTs through various efficiencies,Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. but the opposite could also happen. In a highly autonomous vehicle future, we may do far more with our cars than we currently can—think of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond calling his BMW 750 via cell phone in Tomorrow Never Dies, or David Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight and his autonomous car, KITT, each chasing down different suspects in Knight Rider.

What if our driverless cars of the future have a valet mode that allows them to park themselves, becoming not just driverless but also passengerless? What if they run errands for us, such as picking up lunch or dry cleaning or the kids at soccer practice? What if driverless cars—and the efficiencies and flexibility they offer—actually incentivize us to drive more? This “rebound effect” could increase VMT and fuel consumption, eating into the potential energy savings we’d otherwise expect from highly efficient autonomous vehicles. We must be prepared to address these undesirable yet entirely possible outcomes.