Prius owner gets 79 mpg

With gas prices still rising, it was surprising to see in an article in the San Jose Mercury news about a Prius owner who goes to extreme measures to get the most mileage out of his car. The article talks about how the owner of the gasoline-electric hybrid Prius puts special tires, tapes plastic and cardboard over the engine, blocks the the grill with foam rubber, drives without shoes and hacks into the his car's computer to maximize distance with minimum gasoline. Another surprise in the story is that there's another person who has gotten her car to get 116 mpg. According to the article the Prius already gets 55 mile to the gallon. Reading these kind of stories makes a person know that there's alternatives to these high prices of gasoline.

No cell phone usage for teens as they drive

There's an article in the San Jose Mercury news that's titled "California lawmakers tell teen drivers to get off their cell phone." The article talks about a new bill in the works that would ban teen drivers from using their cell phones while they are driving. Staring July 2008, all drivers are required to use hands free devices while they are driving. In Reading the fact sheet of Senate Bill 33: Teen Driver Cell Phone safety, The California Highway Patrol reports that "cell phone use is the number one source of distracted-driver related accidents in the state" which makes sense that a law needed to be created to stop such accidents. The fact sheet also points out that "teen drivers are four times more distracted than adult drivers by cell phone use," which explains why sixteen-year-olds have a crash rate at almost ten times more than drivers of ages between thirty and fifty nine (National Highway traffic Safety Administration, 2001). The fines that violators will get is twenty dollars the first time and fifty dollars every time after that and the offense would not count against the offenders driving record.
Overall this bill makes sense because it will allow the teenagers to pay attention to the road and not their cell phones. It's bad enough holding your cell phone as you drive but there's people that are actually texting as they drive, how crazy is that. The fines should be a little steeper than what they are being set at. The fines should not stay at fifty dollars after the first time but keep increasing to make the offender understand that it's going to get really expensive to keep violating the law.
It's a good thing I read this article because I was under the impression that the new law was going to start this coming July and was in the process of looking for a hands free device. Now I have a little bit more time to purchase a hands free device but for my own safety and the safety of others I should not procrastinate in the purchase of a hands free device.

Baseball Ticket Prices

The Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants have started their 2007 Baseball season. I'm a big fan of both teams because they are bay area teams. I was looking at the teams website for ticket prices and there's a little bit of difference in prices. The A's prices range from eight dollars to thirty two dollars on a weekend and from nine dollars to forty four dollars on a weekday. On Wednesday you can get Oakland A's tickets for as low as two dollars. The San Francisco Giants ticket prices were quite a bit higher. The Giants prices range were from ten dollars to fifty four dollars on a weekday and twenty dollars to seventy dollars on a weekend. I know that the Giants ballpark is a lot nicer but for two dollars I'd rather go see the A's on a Wednesday.