IIHS: NEVs Aren't Safe (On Public Roads)

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) are not safe enough for public roads.  That's because they don't have to meet Federal automobile crash standards, and are very light.  In any meeting between an NEV and a real car, the occupants of the NEV have a good chance of being squashed.

IIHS demonstrates this quite graphically, here.

Anyone driving an NEV on public roads is only a little better off than riding a scooter.

Buick Regal Impressions

I was at the Birmingham art fair this weekend, where Buick had set up a small display with two 2011 Regals.

The Regal is a sharp looking car, with taught lines and a hint of curve. I thought they looked like a mix if Mazda and BMW.

Thankfully, no stupid faux portholes.

Inside the car I sat in was decidedly un-Buick with nice materials, tight seams, and no fake wood in sight.

My only complaints: my right leg was rubbing up against the center console (but I wasn't in a real driving position) and the center stack seemed to have about 50% more butons than it ought to. Buick should hide more of that stuff behind a touch screen. Maybe there is one and I was just sitting in the cheaper variant.

If the Regal drives as sharp as it looks and feels, then I think Buick will do all right.

Hacking Cars? Not So Fast

In a widely publicized paper, here, a pair of research teams were able to "hack" cars, to demonstrate that modern cars are not sufficiently secure.

Don't worry, you're not in danger, yet.

The key to hacking a car is that the vehicle communications bus, typically a mix of high and low speed CAN bus, is not encrypted.  By connecting to the OBD-II port with the right tools (such as a laptop with a CAN communications interface device), a determined hacker could monkey with key signals.  To do so, he would have to either reverse engineer or obtain from other sources the CAN messaging protocol.  Then, by reading in, modifying, and rebroadcasting key messages, he could indeed do bad things, like shut down the car.  For example, a hacker could broadcast an erroneous vehicle speed on the bus, causing the speedometer to display the wrong speed, and other systems to think the car is moving (or not) at a different speed than it actually is.  

However, the only practical way to do this is to attach a foreign device to the cars CAN bus.  So your car would have to be physically compromised, either by having the wiring modified, or by having some sort of dongle installed on the OBD-II port.  The ECUs that form the vehicle CAN network are not typically easy to reflash with unauthorized firmware, so "hijacking" an ECU or installing a car virus is not really feasible.  The ECUs I have worked with all have memory checksum functions, and VIN compare software, to verify that the ECU has valid software and is in the correct vehicle.  According to the research paper, the team was able to compromise a telematics module and run malicious code on it.

The paper does point out some holes in vehicle bus security, and there are some things which can be done in the shorter term to mitigate such a threat.  ECUs should have robust challenge/response sequences before accepting diagnostic and test commands, for example.  They should also have robust checks against invalid software, so that it is difficult or impossible for a hacker to flash a module with homegrown software.  

New Carnival Of Cars

A new auto blog on the block, Automedia, is hosting a Carnival Of Cars. Check it out here.

Grass Fed Kosher Beef!

I'm throwing this out there in case someone else is interested in the information.

The company that is supplying some Costco stores with kosher beef, Colorado Kosher, uses cattle that are grass-fed for the first part of their lives, then finished on a feed lot (e.g. grain) for the last 4 months or so. So they aren't 100% grass fed, but they are a combination. I got this information from the company, when I called to ask.

So, if you wanted to try the taste of grass-fed beef, and keep kosher, find out if you local Costco store stocks this brand.

Buy A Paper Poppy

Today, I went to a local market to buy some lunch supplies.  Out front was an old fellow in VFW gear, Chris, selling the wire and paper poppies.

I dropped a dollar in his milk jug, and thanked him for his service.  

On the way out, I stopped to ask him where he served.  "North Africa and Italy" he said, which made me pause--this guy was a WWII vet, probably about 90 years old.  I asked him what his job was in the army.  "Infantry--I carried a tommy gun, do you know what that is?".  Chris is short, about 5'6", with sharp blue eyes and a straight posture.  He has a firm handshake and a clear voice.  

"You must have seen so much, I can't even imagine what you went through", I said.  "I am reading Audy Murphy's memoir, and it is amazing what you guys survived".  

I hit a nerve.  Chris stuttered, and turned away from me, wiping his eyes. "Excuse me, I don't want you to see..." he said.  I was caught off guard, and felt ashamed for making an old man cry.  "There was a job we needed you guys to do... " I stammered "... and you did it."  He composed himself after a moment and turned back to me.  "We did it, what we had to".  I asked him about some of his experiences, based on Audy Murphy's book.

"I hear you guys were always hungry, sometimes really hungry" I offered, "that's not something we worry about much these days".  We were standing next to a vegetable display, piled high with tomatoes and cucumbers.

"There was this time once," he said, "when we were diggin in in Italy outside of..." (I missed the placename, rats) "...and one of the guys yells, 'Scallions!'.  Well, there was this pile of manure with scallions growing out of it.  We all dropped our shovels and ran over.  We plucked them out of the manure pile, brushed them off on our coats, and ate them."

"In this one town, we went through, and someone told us that we had to meet a local girl.  It turned out that she was from Brooklyn.  She had come back to Italy to visit her family, and they [the fascists] took her passport.  It was 1939, and after that, she was stuck there.  So she meets us, and she goes to the wall of her house, and takes a stone out.  Behind there is bunch of cheese, and sausages, she had hidden from the Germans.  She puts it down in front of us, we had a nice meal."

I asked him about the Germans, was it true that sometimes prisoners were not taken?  (In Murphy's book, there is a scene where the Germans tied a pair of captured American officers to the front of a tank, hoping to avoid fire.  The GIs hit the tank with an anti-tank gun anyway, killing their own men).  

"Not my company, but one that was to the right of us on the line, one of their patrols was captured by Germans.  The German officer killed 7 prisoners.  After that, well, there weren't any prisoners for the next several months."

"Later, in May, the Germans in Italy surrendered.  I was on guard by the side of the road outside of the village where my company had stopped.  A German jeep came up the road, with a couple of officers in it, holding a white flag.  If those guys had made a sudden move, I would have let them have it.  I told them to keep that white flag high, and showed them the road to the general, where they could surrender"

"I never kept that tommy gun on safe.  You had to be ready all the time. The whole time I was on the front."

I shook his hand, and held it for a moment.   "You should write this all down," I told him, "You should save your memories for your great grandchildren.  It's a treasure.  And it will keep your mind young."

"If I could get the money together,", he said, "I would go back to Italy.  The people are so wonderful, and the food is so fresh."

If you see an old guy selling poppies for the VFW, stop and say hello.  Thank him for his sacrifices, because chances are that he may have gone through hell to protect our way of life.  He may have lived in mud.  He may have been wounded, and watched his friends be blown to pieces.  He probably buried some of his friends in far away fields, the names of which we are forgetting.   Maybe buy a poppy, to help the old soldiers keep their memories fresh, and keep our history from fading.

Parents Magazine FAIL

Parents magazine has published its list of top family friendly vehicles for 2010.  But their screening criteria are full of fail.

"We've only included models equipped with antilock brakes and front, side, and side-curtain air bags. "

ABS?!?  

I can't recommend any vehicle which does not have ESC, particularly any vehicle with a tall profile such as most CUVs and SUVs.