As cell phone use has increased, vehicle-related fatalities have gone down both in raw numbers and more importantly in per miles driven. Driving is *safer* than ever, not more dangerous. Those are facts supported by data from NHTSA. http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/...

You can not say that it is "certainly not because people now use cell phones." The data could be interpreted to support the opposite conclusion but is in fact inconclusive.

Remember red-light cameras? One of the arguments is that they are good because even though there are more rear-end collisions at intersections with cameras, there are fewer side-impact collisions. This is acceptable because side-impact collisions are more dangerous. So total accidents is up, fatalities down. And that is a good thing when discussing life safety issues. Money is replaceable, people are not.

If cell phone use causes more actual accidents--remember we don't know, only that it increases the odds--but results in fewer fatalities then it would be *against* public policy to prohibit their use while driving.

Anything in a head line is being used by someone to advance their agenda, usually for power or profit. That's about the only reliably truth there is or ever was.

At the end of the day the public education campaign should be about how dangerous driving is no matter who you are, what you are doing, what type of vehicle you are in, etc. It's about convenience versus security and personal accountability. A little understanding of how to critically evaluate data and statistics would do a world of good. I'm always dumbfounded by how many people confidently drive as if two stripes of yellow paint will actually stop an opposing vehicle....

Hrm. The "collection of watching info" setting wasn't there in version 5.x of the software but it's there now after an update to 6.00.01.

It would seem that FEMA has clarified a distinction of "man-made" vs. "man-controlled" floods.

http://www.yankton.net/articles/2011/06/17/community/doc4dface08e4c1f621282576.txt

As for calls to move out of a floodplain, in general I agree. Assuming the consumer has perfect knowledge then this is a fair criticism. But flood policy in the US is not intended to prevent development within identified floodplains. In fact, if we did not want any development within the floodplain then there would be no NFIP, banks would do their own independent evaluation of risk exposure for a property, and real-estate disclosure forms would cover more than just the 100-year floodplain. But instead homeowners are not properly advised of the complexities of home ownership and the system is intentionally designed to keep it this way. I believe that people should be held accountable for their own decisions but this is premised on perfect access to information and sufficient educational opportunities. There are many forces that work against this, though, so how harsh to be on people that make poor decisions, or good decisions that later get trumped by Nature, is a tough call.

But the fact remains that the NFIP is a program designed to enable development within the floodplain in addition to an insurance model that theoretically paid for itself. (Of course it was noted years ago that the NFIP funds were nowhere near sufficient to adequately pay for the exposure covered by the policies it issued. Florida as an insurer of last resort was/is in the same boat; ultimately we the people back the policies.)

I think we all know that what is "right" and what is political reality are two different things. As an engineer & government official who has worked in this field for over 10 years I find much of it frustrating. It's all about balance, and in general I've found that a member of the public's thoughts on the subject tend to align with which side of that cut-off line they are on.

"PC LOAD LETTER" Office Space made it famous, but I've hated that damn thing a long time. And Paradox floored me by sending a terse and of course unhelpful message to waste a full sheet of paper, "Nothing to report." Thanks for that information; a blank page would have been as helpful and less wasteful.