Transportation

This warm, warm summer has prompted vacationers to seek the cool as well as new (and old) attractions. Even the First Family is exploring new vistas. Could they include the *Chelsea Clinton's wedding on July 31st?

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History presents an online exhibit, America On the Move. The Transportation Before 1876 section explores "the ways that improved American transportation networks that helped create new links within the country.   See how the nation’s growing numbers of steamships, roads, canals, and railroads — including the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 — created skeins of connection in the nation. Take a look at a map of America in 1876 — the country’s centennial year — and see how the transportation systems had developed into an increasingly national network."

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NPR Radio's All Things Considered broadcast an overview of what is being done nowadays to help seniors adapt to coping with aging in relation to their driving skills. Since the transcript is not available presently, we're excerpting a part of the program:

"Are you sitting too far forward when you drive, to make up for getting a little shorter?" or "Are you not using a seat belt, because it's tough to reach back that far?"

And, she says, older drivers often need help positioning their rearview mirrors.

"The way mirrors are recommended to be positioned now are dramatically different than the way all of us learned to drive because the roads are so much more complicated," Rogers says. "There's much more traffic than [when] we were young drivers. We really want to have mirrors that are pulled out."

Tattling On Bad Drivers

While these are programs to help older drivers continue driving, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' grand driver program is about getting older drivers — and other impaired drivers — to stop driving.

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Rose Mula writes: I definitely was not going to waste any time on a test drive. I bolted out the door and got as far as the curb, where I tripped over a small obstacle. It was the microcar. Charlie was holding its door open. He insisted I get in behind the wheel. No easy feat. I felt as though I were going for a ride in Apollo Thirteen. Read More...

Rose Mula writes, "They've invented a car that parallel parks itself, but when will they give us one that will drive itself so I can concentrate on my cell phone calls, answer my laptop email, and eat my sandwich  …  without worrying that a cop is going to pull me over." Read More...