Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

lite.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 770 posts

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#751

Post by dnautics »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #652
imgabe wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve had this vote several times. The people of DC overwhelmingly vote to be a state.

so then I guess that should shut down the Maryland suggestion. No idea why it would be brought up as a possible solution for democratic representation when it goes against the wishes of the people seeking representation.

No, the people don't get to vote on which solution gives them representation. Because if you could just "vote to be a state" why does that stop at DC? Why not the three houses next to mine and me vote to be a state? Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states - dilution of voting power.

To give your idea credence, though: probably it would be fair to let arbitrary groups of people vote for statehood without congressional approval if, hypothetically, there were a flat user fee to be a state, say, $50 billion/yr. Can't pay it? Sorry you get demoted to territory, your senators are booted, and your representatives become delegates, unless you merge with another state.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#752

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dnautics wrote: post #751
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so then I guess that should shut down the Maryland suggestion. No idea why it would be brought up as a possible solution for democratic representation when it goes against the wishes of the people seeking representation.

No, the people don't get to vote on which solution gives them representation. Because if you could just "vote to be a state" why does that stop at DC? Why not the three houses next to mine and me vote to be a state? Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states - dilution of voting power. To give your idea credence, though: probably it would be fair to let arbitrary gro…

>Because if you could just "vote to be a state" why does that stop at DC? Why not the three houses next to mine and me vote to be a state?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_the_Union

Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1:

    New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
So it seems unlikely that you would be able to become a state by voting on it yourself.

The Northwest ordinance sets the minimum population size of a state to be 6000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance therefore I doubt your household has the requisite number of people living in it, even if you combine with the households of two or three of your neighbors, to succeed.

>Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states

I did not say that they should become a state automatically when they voted for it, but rather that they should not be forced to become a part of Maryland if that is against their wishes. The obviously still need to follow the process required to become a state.

>To give your idea credence,

My idea should be quite easy to understand, and it was not the one you outlined here.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#753

Post by Spare_account »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #746
Spare_account wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've drifted off topic, and started giving advice about "vehicle broken down on active highway" which isn't the scenario being discussed. Yes, getting off the highway makes sense if you are in a disabled vehicle on an active highway, assuming there is something solid to shield you from the vehicles/debris that goes flying when your car is hit. No, getting out of your car in a winter storm when all traffic is halted…

Getting out of your car on an active highway is actually much more likely to kill you than staying in it - you instantly go from a big, strong noticeable metal cage (hopefully with flashing lights on) to a small, soft, very fragile person. People who don't see a car on the shoulder also don't see a person walking. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/stopped-vehicle-crashes-res...

This advice may be unique to the United States.

UK: It’s usually safest to get out of your car (using the doors facing away from passing traffic) and wait behind a barrier. https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/what-to-do-moto...

France: Any passengers should get out of the car on the side away from traffic and take shelter behind safety rails at the side of the road, if there are any. https://www.thelocal.fr/20210820/breakdowns-crashes-and-poli...

I'm interested in this part from your link:

>However, more than half the deaths and almost 1 in 5 serious injuries occur when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian who is leaving, working on, or returning to a stopped vehicle.

Is a breakdown of the different groups available?

• Leaving

• Working on

• Returning to

I agree that groups 2 and 3 are to be strongly encouraged against.

Group 1, choosing to leave your vehicle and stand off the road, behind solid infrastructure, is actively reducing their risk, albeit at the tradeoff of being briefly exposed to traffic.

I wouldn't recommend anyone exit a vehicle into fast moving traffic. For my comment above, I condsidered adding "if a suitable break in the traffic appears", but I decided it was overly wordy and to some extent self-evident.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#754

Post by flavius29663 »

justapassenger wrote: post #465
flavius29663 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of DC was that it won't be in any state. That was the sole reasoning for creating those 100 square miles. Maryland could take back it's half like Virginia did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocess... , but creating a state out of a piece of land specifically designated as non-state doesn't make sense.

That’s not a reasonable argument for any position. Just because few hundred years ago something was designed differently isn’t a reason not to change it.

my argument was not that it was done 200 years ago, hence it should stay. My argument was the initial reasoning was to have a neutral ground, which is as valid today as it was 200 years ago.

As a counter-example, the European Parliament is being moved EVERY MONTH between Bruxelles and Strassbourg, because France wanted to have the capitol on their ground at least partially. A neutral city built from scratch at the border would have made more sense in the 1990s just like 200 years ago.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#755

Post by perl4ever »

bagels wrote: post #487
perl4ever wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Rough metric is you get 1 hour of engine idle per gallon. Some cars do better than that. I have a non-plug in hybrid, that gets almost 50 mpg consistently; I've got to experiment and extrapolate to see if it's much better. I would like to believe so. I recently learned of the existence of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_heater and wonder how efficient they are. These seem to be mostly outdated, but I guess t…

Can you even idle all hybrids? Doesn't the engine shutoff when stopped? Maybe it will turn on if the coolant temperature drops?

That's the point.

Mine does shut off, if the vehicle isn't moving and the interior temperature matches the climate control setting.

So I would think/hope it could use a fraction of the fuel by running intermittently.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#756

Post by rayiner »

kasey_junk wrote: post #727
tptacek wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to "plan" the work places and residential places. They are what they are. Your transit plan needs to serve the commercial and residential areas that already exist, not a hypothetical ideal. It isn't easy in Ireland, Germany, or Spain to reorganize an entire metro area by fiat, either.

It might not be easy but big swaths of US cities did exactly this in living memory. Many of them as active parts of building the highway system.

Not really. Cities like New York and Chicago built some downtown freeways, but jobs are still clustered in the downtown core. They're still very different from cities like Atlanta and Dallas that rapidly expanded in the mid-20th century around the highway system. The same for suburbs that grew up around traditional cities during the highway era. Loudoun, a booming part of Northern Virginia, was mostly farmland and exurbs even when we moved to the area in 1989. You're not going to make Loudoun look like New York any more than you can make New York look like Loudoun.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#757

Post by nanidin »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #696
nanidin wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery packs are usually marketed with their capacity in milliamp-hours. I thought the 15-20k mAh made it pretty clear that we were taking about a 15000-20000 mAh battery pack.

They are, but SI prefixes are always combined, not used together. 15k mAh is just wrong. The correct way to write it is 15Ah.

I believe the k in “15k” is a suffix and thus not beholden to the rules of SI prefixes. In this case it is used as shorthand for “thousand”, and this usage is prevalent even in countries where SI units are not commonly used.

Insisting on changing 15k mAh to 15 Ah is the same as insisting on changing 15000 mAh to 15 Ah - which seems to be a matter of personal preference more than anything.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#758

Post by alphabettsy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #172
alphabettsy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard of exhaust pipes getting clogged with snow, the gas coming out is hot. I’d be surprised if this has ever happened unintentionally. If what you mean is that the exhaust can linger too long or be redirected in ways that aren’t ideal then yea.

If you're trapped for a day in a inches-per-hour snowstorm, you're not going to be able to run the engine the whole time. You may also be in a snowbank, with wind causing drifts to build up. It definitely happens. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/carbon-monoxide-poi... > In New Jersey, 23-year-old Sashalynn Rosa, of Passaic, and her 1-year-old son, Messiah Bonilla, died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitt…

Pedantic, but you said clogged. And you’re right, which is why I acknowledged the possibility of exactly the situation in those stories.

These deaths were avoidable, and of course some thing that EV’s don’t have to deal with.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#759

Post by 0_____0 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #601
0_____0 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 miles in 2 hours? That's a brisk walk!

Except (unless they've built new paths since I last checked) you can't realistically walk to the airport either. The only non-limited-access highway entrance is on the north side of the airport, so unless GP lives in Ashburn, you'll have to walk around the airport first (and if you're east, that means finding a decent crossing for Route 28...). Then you have such pedestrian friendly places as this[1]. 1: https://www.…

My reply was a comment on the average rate of travel, not a suggestion to walk to the airport.

I have considered cycling to the airport in my area before, and basically run into the same issue you raise.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#760

Post by kasey_junk »

rayiner wrote: post #756
kasey_junk wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be easy but big swaths of US cities did exactly this in living memory. Many of them as active parts of building the highway system.

Not really. Cities like New York and Chicago built some downtown freeways, but jobs are still clustered in the downtown core. They're still very different from cities like Atlanta and Dallas that rapidly expanded in the mid-20th century around the highway system. The same for suburbs that grew up around traditional cities during the highway era. Loudoun, a booming part of Northern Virginia, was mostly farmland and ex…

Chicago put the major north/south and east/west highways where they are to make areas more clearly delineated between residential and commercial.

They did this for a variety of reasons some noble (grand visions of urban renewal based on cars instead of public transit) and some odious (breaking up non-machine voting wards, enforcing de facto redlining post the Supreme Court decisions, etc). They were able to make sections of the city, specifically the near south and south west places you commuted through instead of to. Similar things were done with tearing out el tracks, trolleys and the removal of commuter rail from further south neighborhoods that had been alternate business districts to the loop. These were conscious urban planning decisions to reinforce the pattern of outward/in commutes.

American Pharoah is a not particularly good biography of Richard Daley that happens to include a good book on Chicago urban planning in the late 40s to late 60s era.

Post reply on HN