Posted on 11/27/2001 1:09:29 PM PST by expose
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:38:39 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Starting next year, drivers of relatively new cars could see those little "check engine" lights illuminating the dashboard turn into an expensive nightmare, thanks to a new system of emissions-control mandates the Environmental Protection Agency is set to unleash on the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
This paragraph says it all.
I live in a county in GA where emissions testing is mandatory. I don't know how many times I've been behind "bug sprayers" from exempt counties driving here. These people claim to own property in the exempt counties in order to keep these old geezer polluters.
There'll always be a way to beat the new system, too. What a crock.
bump to .45man
That'd stop all the hot air their blowing up our *ss*s.
My wife has a 1994 Buick Park Avenue with the 3800 pushrod engine, the last test results from MARTA in Nashville reveal the levels of measured pollutants to be:
HC (% of unburned hydrocarbons) 3; CO (% Carbon Monoxide) 0.00; CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) 14.8.
The "Check Engine" light tests each time the engine is cranked and has never come on while driving. The car has 106,000 miles and has never had any engine repair beyond sparkplugs and a water pump.
In California, no car can pass emissions testing if any of the observable components are defeated, broken or missing, regardless of the tailpipe probe reading.
Idiots know no bounds.
That's been ten years ago already & since then I've lived in rural areas where these tests have yet to be mandated; with *yet* the operative word?
I'll enjoy my relative motoring freedom while I can; & hopefully by the time they get around to me?
I'll have assumed room temperature.
...nawwww; I suppose that'd be too merciful hoping for that.
The new standards unveiled Monday by acting Gov. Jane Swift
also will limit mercury emissions and require deep cuts in emissions
of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, and smog-causing
nitrogen oxide....."
Yeah, we're really plagued with heavy smog, here in Massachewshits.
They don't tell you why all the evergreens are turning brown
alongside the highways, in parking lots, or wherever gasoline
engine exhaust accumulates. Any suggestion that it might be
due to the anti-pollutant additives, or anti-pollutant devices that
cause the gas to burn hotter, are expelled as nonsense. The fact
that the trees withstood years and years, until the new legislation
took effect, fall to deafened ears.
Yup, what we need are more regulations. Oh, yes... and regulatory
fees, licensing and fines..
Hmm. I wonder where that money goes, huh Joey K?
Eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and let States decide which of their archaic rules they want to continue enforcing, while eliminating the rest. Plain and simple...and the savings to the average taxpayer may just be enough to allow them the extra money required to buy a new, cleaner call...PROBLEM SOLVED!!
FReegards...MUD
I paid less then 13,000 for four of these cars over the last four years.
I carry antique insurance on two of them. I dive them for half the year.
I can drive them where and when I want only small a mileage limit.(Which I never come near.)
The insurance costs me 192.00 a year with full coverage on collision. no deductible.
If I could afford a new car guess what? I wouldn't buy one. The property tax alone would be well over 1,000 a year.
By Julia Scheeres
2:00 a.m. Nov. 21, 2001 PST
When James Glave arrived at Oakland International Airport and went to retrieve the rental car he had reserved over the Internet, he was dismayed to learn that the agency not only required his driver's license and payment information, but also his thumbprint.
The New Mexico-based magazine editor said he found out about the requirement when he walked up to the Dollar Rent A Car counter and noticed a display featuring a drawing of a big thumb making the A-OK sign with the words "Thumbs Up!" printed on it.
The display explained that thumbprints were being collected from customers as part of an effort to reduce fraud and theft, Glave said.
When he refused to fork over his digit, the employee refused to rent him a car.
Glave, a former reporter and editor at Wired News, had unwittingly walked into Dollar's biometric experiment, which is being conducted at the agency's outposts in 13 airports across the country.
"It's all about asset control," Jim Senese, Dollar's vice president of quality assurance, said.
The vehicle rental industry is plagued by theft and credit card fraud, which often go hand in hand: Fake or stolen IDs and credit cards are used to rent vehicles, which are never returned.
U-Haul has been thumbprinting clients in areas with high theft rates since the early 90s, said company spokeswoman Jennifer Flachman, who added that the prints are destroyed at the customer's request when the equipment is returned.
At Dollar, the rental agreement forms -- and thumbprints -- are stored at the company's corporate headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for seven years before they are trashed.
Senese said the system would benefit customers by keeping rental prices down. The month-long pilot program, which concludes Dec. 1, has successfully reduced fraud and theft at the test locations, Senese said. He refused to divulge the particulars of the test, which had been scheduled for rollout this month before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Deterrence is a key feature of the system, he said.
"If someone has a bad intention, they're going to go somewhere else," Senese said. "It's kind of like being the one store in the mall that drug-tests new applicants -- people won't try to get work there if they have a drug problem."
He was surprised to learn of Glave's reaction to the program, saying that thousands of Dollar customers have been thumbprinted in past weeks and the company has received few complaints.
Privacy advocates say that the burgeoning use of biometric data -- including face and finger scans -- by government and corporations is poorly regulated and worry that information could be used to track and monitor citizens.
"It's important not to be blindsided by these things," said Lauren Weinstein, the moderator of the Privacy Forum.
In the climate of fear following the Sept. 11 attack, the public has been more willing to forfeit privacy for the promise of greater security, without considering the long-term consequences, Weinstein said.
"How would you feel if you went to the grocery store, and you went to sign a check and they demanded a thumbprint?" Weinstein said. "Ten years from now they'll be demanding your DNA."
The Dollar pilot program has been rolled out in the following airports: Philadelphia International, Ronald Reagan Washington National, Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, Chicago Midway, Detroit Metro, Baltimore/Washington International, Dallas Love Field, William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, San Diego International, Los Angeles International, San Francisco International, Denver International and Oakland International.
"I don't think companies have any role collecting biometric data," Glave said. "It takes us into a surveillance society that is profoundly disturbing. What's next? Am I going to have to be fingerprinted when I check into a hotel in case I trash my room?"
"The only print of mine Dollar is going to get is the front side of my middle finger," Glave said.
These are just the stages for the mark of the beast to be further set in place. But it is done in phases first.
Bump.
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