Emissions Testing – It’s the Law

When it comes to public safety it sometimes seems as though the government works at a snail’s pace. It’s the nature of the beast though, as regulations and laws take a long time to develop and even longer before the public starts to respect them. Nobody is ever really happy about having to change their habits but when it comes to driver safety no compromise is too insignificant.

When I started working my first job after college I drove this one road every day. It’s a long one, with smooth curves and some not too gentle hills, that winds its way down the valley before reaching the city. It’s rarely busy, except during rush hour, and then of course you’ve got a few bottlenecks. But even then, every road coming out of this city is backed up during rush hour.

There are only a few drawbacks to this drive: it can get a little scary in rough weather and it’s always got at least one cop hidden somewhere on it – so you can’t speed when it’s nice out.

One night I’m driving home with my girlfriend after a party and we get stopped by a roadside check. As we slowed to a stop, the officer leaned forward, in through the driver’s side window.

“How’re you kids doin’ tonight?” he said.

After asking us whether or not we’d had anything to drink (to which, thanks to good planning, I hadn’t) he began to examine the lower corner of my windshield. I realized he must be looking for the annual safety test sticker. I relaxed a bit with the knowledge that I had just gotten my safety test done the day before.

He stood up and asked, “Ever had your emissions test done, son?”

“My what?” I asked. He proceeded to explain to me what an emissions test was and how not having one was breaking the law.

“Public safety, you know?” he said as he ripped the yellow sheet of paper, worth hundreds of dollars, off his little metal notepad and handed it to me through the window.

Of course, I paid the ticket and got the test done. Fortunately, the car was up to standard and didn’t need anything replaced or repaired in order to get it back on the road. I was worried because I had heard that some of my buddies paid an arm and a leg just to make sure their car was safe to drive after they got their emissions test done.

The funny thing was I never got mad. How could I? The government was finally reacting to public demand for cars to be less harmful on the environment. They had succeeded in reducing pollution by making the air quality safer. It’s not something that most of us would do on our own: we don’t have the money to get a hybrid, and most guys my age wouldn’t be caught dead driving any of the newer compacts.

Now that I know about emissions testing and how often I need to get it done, I’ll avoid getting dinged with a fine in the future. Plus, I can sleep a little bit better knowing that I’m not contributing as much to pollution and helping improve the health of others all at the same time. It’s just one more example of how a driver’s knowledge about safety regulations can keep everyone much safer.

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The Thin White Line – Improving Car Safety One Piece of Paper at a Time

The North American car market is massive. There are over 170 million cars in use on our continent alone and, due to the dangers associated with these fast-moving, heavy steel objects, an equally vast network of safety mechanisms has been built to protect us all. Although some may not like it, this framework was designed alongside the ever-evolving car industry in an effort to keep consumers, technicians and pedestrians as far out of harm’s way as possible.

Just think about the number of safety inspections a car goes through on its way from the manufacturer to your driveway. On top of product development, including crash and road tests, the manufacturer will conduct at least some kind of quality assurance testing for safety before it gets sent to dealerships around the world. In order to even be released on the market it must meet national and regional policies regarding safety mechanisms, emissions limits, engine size, and a host of other subjects.

Once it’s on the market there are a wide range of consumer protection agencies, consumer review websites and magazines that do their own assessments. One of the things they look for is whether or not the manufacturer paid close attention to widely accepted safety standards. They also conduct their own tests for braking distance, collisions and rollovers.

Even in the hands of the driver there is an ever increasing list of laws that were created in an attempt to promote safety. Traffic laws, regular safety inspections, emissions testing, and the notorious “cell phone” bylaw that is cropping up in various municipalities across the continent are all designed to encourage drivers to be more safe.

Most people consider this complex web of laws and safety regulations to be cumbersome and unnecessary, but where would we be today if seatbelts weren’t mandatory? How many more fatalities or serious injuries would be recorded if there were no school zones or speed limits? Of course, one could argue that some laws impinge on personal freedoms, but the point is that driving safely isn’t something people do naturally. The laws exist to protect the broader population.

Also, by making safety a priority the government has encouraged industry to become more innovative when it comes to their own design. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently began studying whether to make collision warning systems and lane departure warning systems mandatory. Regardless of the outcome, it’s clear that the automotive industry is responding to our society’s rigorous position on safety: they are the ones developing these new solutions.

Rather than trying to buck against the “system” drivers and car owners that understand the regulations and the paperwork, they are actually able to benefit more than those who don’t. The evolution of communications technology over the past decade is also now lending itself to this bureaucracy, making the entire safety framework much more effective and user-friendly.

The “thin white line” enforced by traffic cops, mechanics, industry regulators, and the government at large is actually a very effective system for ensuring that drivers are more cautious about how they use their vehicles. Often, it’s the paperwork, the laws, and the regulations that make driving so much safer for everyone involved.

You Are Here The Thin White Line – Improving Car Safety One Piece of Paper at a Time

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Hydrogen Power as an Alternative to the Hybrid

Manufacturers can’t afford to sit back and admire all the impressive work that has been done in making hybrids commercially viable and having people now wanting to buy them. They are now grappling with alternatives to the conventional gasoline engine that works in tandem with the electric component of a hybrid engine.

Biofuels:

Hybrid vehicles such as Ford’s 2007 Escape Hybrid E85 use biofuels to power its internal combustion engine. Ethanol blending is widely used in the United States, Sweden and Brazil as an alternative to petrol, however its environmental credentials have been called in to question with its cultivation being cited as a direct cause of deforestation. There are those who argue strongly that the cultivation of bio-fuels takes up land that could otherwise be used to feed people.

Liquefied Petroleum Gas:

While it has been around for some time as an alternative to petrol its long-term viability in light of global warming has been called in to question. It is non-toxic, non-corrosive, free of tetra-ethyl lead and burns more cleanly than petrol but there is evidence that at low engine loads there is a significant increase in carbon emissions.

Pure Electric Cars:

These would eliminate the need to find a source of power for the combustion engine, but they require powerful batteries and the magnet material is prohibitively expensive given the current market in rare earth substances.

In light of these obstacles, hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (HFEVs) such as the Honda FCX Clarity are providing a focus of attention. Hydrogen is able to be used in cars in two ways: as a source of combustible heat and as a source of electrons for an electric motor. Despite the abundance of hydrogen and its non-polluting properties when burned, the first of these options has never really been a practical option because of the fear of explosion by the highly flammable gas, plus the difficulty of carrying large amounts of fuel and the lack of a re-fuelling network. Consequently, hydrogen fuel cells are being looked at as a way of creating electricity that can be fed into an electric motor to drive a car.

It was reported that since the Honda FCX Clarity was first unveiled in November 2007, there were nearly 80,000 people who expressed an interest in owning one. Production costs of early models were prohibitive as they were in the region of $1million. Since then, Honda has been able to cut its production costs to a more reasonable $120,000 per vehicle. The car is still only available for lease in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

If you want one you’ll need to get to Southern California as that is the state where there are “fast-fill” hydrogen stations. These highly innovative cars can be leased for US$600 a month which includes accident coverage, maintenance, hydrogen fuel and roadside assistance, which assuming you choose to drive the car out of California you’ll need quite a lot. Currently the rate of expansion of hydrogen stations is painfully slow, which is obviously holding back the further development and uptake of the FCX as an alternative form of transport.

In one way the FCX project has got the feel of being a corporate experiment; granted, an interesting and fairly crucial one, even glamorous some might say. It’s no coincidence that by heading for California, they’ve picked one of the global hubs of innovation. If a place can nurture ideas from companies like Apple and Google, then getting the hydrogen fuel-cell car going should be a foregone conclusion for Honda. There is a captive market in California with people only too ready to show their allegiance to this next generation of motor-car.

Honda believes that it could start mass-producing vehicles of this type by 2018, which is difficult to imagine given the challenges to overcome in relation to refueling stations. There is also an issue with the hydrogen being sourced from natural gas through a process of “steaming-out.” In response to this, Honda could do with making a greater play out of the claims that the FCX Clarity is on a par in terms of CO2 efficiency with a battery car using electricity generated from burning natural gas, and much better than the same car using electricity from other states, (54% of which are generated by burning coal).

All of which brings the issue back to our starting point. The reason for the revolution in hybrid vehicles is as a response to the chronic energy crisis faced in many countries and the realization that car ownership is a desire shared by millions of people. Car manufacturers now realize that this is their raison d’être, and as a result have poured heaps of money into the development of this new technology.

You Are Here Hydrogen Power as an Alternative to the Hybrid­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Written by Mark Evans
Edited by Stanley Butler
Illustrations by Julianne Harnish
Video Engineering by Aaron Peters
Video Production by IMEX Marketing

Executive Producers
International Tuition Services Ltd
Spheri Dot CA Incorporated

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