"For example, on multilane suburban roads at night, pedestrians in marked and unmarked crosswalks are almost invisible (until it is too late) to many drivers at more than 20 mph, yet these roads are often marked 35 mph and higher (and people often drive at 50 mph or more) for traffic flow purposes."

Urban road design should dictate that such crosswalks be adequately lit.

In any case, where pedestrians and cars mix the absolute maximum speed should be 30mph - above that the chances of pedestrian death increase rapidly from under 5% to 95%+ at 40mph.

Most countries have a simple law of "keep right(left) unless passing."

It's common sense and codified in most USA state driving rulebooks I've read.

In some countries, lane hogging will get you a fine and in others you'll face a dangerous driving charge.

Holding up traffic (slowpoking) can also result in a dangerous driving charge in some countries.

"Actually, studies have shown that raising speed limits can reduce speeds."

Experience does too. I lived in New Zealand when the 50mph speed limit was raised to 60mph. Within weeks the number of drivers travelling at 70-80mph went to nearly zero (partly because drivers who were previously driving at 30-40mph got off the road permanently).

The end result was a substantial drop in crash rates - "speed spread" is far more important than speed limit in a lot of cases and too many slow drivers results in other drives being on the wrong side of the road whilst passing - on 2lane blacktop most multiple vehicle crashes are closely associated with poor passing manouveres,

A speed limit set too low results in drivers ignoring it.

'You don't understand what a speed limit sign means, then. It isn't "this is the safest speed" or "this is the required speed", it is "this is the maximum speed". '

Absolutely correct.

In _most_ jurisdictions worldwide your legal speed limit is defined as the lower of the speed at which you can stop in the distance of visible road ahead (or half that distance if there's no centreline) OR the posted speed limit.

Yes, you can be done for travelling at excessive speed at 30mph on a 60mph road. I've been the passenger of a driver who got pinged for doing it in fog. He consulted a lawyer who told him that the cop was being nice and should have booked him on a dangerous driving charge.

"Three mph for equipment"

Do the math on the change of rolling circumference between new and worn out tyres. It usually works out between 3.25 and 3.65% for cars.

"Speedometers" give a reading based on wheel rotation speed. There's that much variation even if the speedometer is 100% accurate on new tyres.

EU speedometers are allowed to read up to 10% high, but there is _zero_ tolerance for giving a lower indicated than actual speed, so most makers err on the side of caution, allowing for slight variations in tyres fitted over the lifetime of the vehicle.

There are apps which upload photos to the cloud immediately, and do the same for video.

The first time cops run up against someone who does this, the "deleting the evidence" tactic is going to backfire spectacularly - in the UK it would come under "perverting the course of justice" and "destroying evidence".

Right now cops threaten photographers because they know that no evidence means they'll get away with it. This position is going to change dramatically in the next couple of years.

"oddly the biggest socialist program in the country, the freeway system, met little opposition as it meant pork for every state, so like you said, they liked it, so it wasn't socialism"

Freeways were and are framed as military highways. The people are only free to use them as long as the military don't want them.

Australia has been heavily corrupt for decades.

It's only since the navel-gazing that occured after the revelations of massive levels of governmental and police corruption (predominantly in Queensland) that occured in the early 1980s that Australians have had the temerity to try and deal with the problem - and every investigation in every state is uncovering greater or lesser levels of corruption in government and business circles.

It's said that sunlight makes the best disinfectant - for many years australian govt and business relied on being in control of the media to shut this kind of thing down, now they're finding that they can't stop someone shining a public spotlight on unsavoury practices - and this is a GOOD thing.

"alarming amounts of fissile materials go "missing" each year. Where's it going? Who's got it?"

Mostly it's at the bottom of the cooling ponds it was deposited in.

The problem is they can't simply be drained to find the missing bits and trawling around for it could result in moving rods into critical structures.

"hydro is great, but anything dammable is already dammed,"

Hydro releases significant quantities of greenhouse gasses - particularly methane - from all the drowned vegetation.

"You can never calculate exactly how many people die from coal emissions, so I used an estimate that would be in the neighborhood"

It's been documented that london smogs (coal based) killed around 5000 people per year back in the 1950s

It's been estimated that chinese smogs are killing at least 500,000 people per year.

Uranium has a bunch of problems associated with mining. Thorium is freely available as a waste product from a number of mining processes (most notably rare earth refining). Boiling/pressurised water-based reactors are intrinsically unsafe. Metal cooled plants are a fire hazard, as are graphite moderated setups like Chernobyl is (the remaining reactors are still working).

The engineers are dead on the money about radioactive releases from coal plants. You do NOT want to be downwind of one, no matter how much the smokestacks are scrubbed.

Solar and wind are (for the most part) subsidy grabbers.

"The problem with current reactor design is it is all based about getting huge amounts of power out in a short time"

No, the problem is that the entire cycle is based around producing plutonium. Electricity production was a side effect, which got scaled up.

Water/metal based Uranium plants are hugely inefficient (they use about 1% of the available energy in the fuel rods) and then the "waste" requires expensive reprocessing to get rid of the poisons and safely contain the plutonium (It's environmentally toxic, as well as bomb fuel).

I'll be a lot happier when MSR thorium cycles are working. Nuclear is the way forward, but technologies scaled up from bomb production and military submarines are not the way to go (MSR research in the USA was looking very promising right up to the day Nixon shut it down because it doesn't produce plutonium and it's ioronic that the chinese are set to commoditise the process.)

"coal is becomming uncompetitive in Germany."

_That_ has a lot to do with Germany buying in cheap nuclear power from France.

The german position has a lot to do with NIMBYism and not a lot to do with real risk.

"As you surely know, coal plants are huge polluters and pollution causes health issues, which in turn add up to early deaths, even if we ignore damage done to environment."

One datum:

Coal plants release as much radioactive material each year as several chernobyl-class events.

It's been said that if coal plants had to comply with the same standards as nuke plants, they'd all be shut down tomorrow.

"He picks and chooses what laws he'll enforce"

This has been the case in the USA for the last 100 years. Picking on the current POTUS because he happens to be black or a democrat or has big ears is disingenous at best.

The main reason we're hearing more about this stuff now isn't because it's happening more, it's because it's being reported more.