Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Criminals can steal your car’s key fob’s signal and use that to steal your car. This is causing insurance rates to go up. Some kids do this because Tik Tok teaches them how to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sTqw0Vfg-A
“The law demands a motorist come to a complete stop at a stop sign, no matter if any cars are coming. Traffic lights can offer an advantage: Some use magnets to detect traffic loads, but others run on timers, switching to red even if there’s no traffic going the other way. In either case, traffic lights can malfunction, turning into a de facto stop sign the same way a broken escalator becomes an expensive staircase. Besides, frequently stopping, starting, and idling wastes time, wastes gas, and puts unnecessary wear and tear on your brakes.
But at a roundabout, motorists keep driving through the intersection so long as it’s safe to do so. This sounds risky, but since everyone slows down a little bit and every car is constantly turning, roundabouts significantly lower the risk of high-speed impacts. “The net result of lower speeds and reduced conflicts at roundabouts is an environment where crashes that cause injury or fatality are substantially reduced,” according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.
Further, roundabouts are perhaps the least infantilizing form of traffic control. Red lights are just crossing guards for adults, and stop signs require you to wait your turn even if you’re the only one waiting. Roundabouts are more efficient because they let drivers rely on themselves, not an inert piece of infrastructure.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/14/swindon-united-kingdom/
“With a series of short-sighted tariff maneuvers, the president has effectively told Toyota (and other Japanese carmakers) that it should do more of its manufacturing in Japan and stop trying to create jobs in America.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal with Japan that will include a 15 percent tariff on Japanese goods, including imported cars. The details of the deal remain somewhat vague, but that’s a significant discount compared to the 25 percent tariff the administration has imposed on cars imported from everywhere else.
The reduced tariffs for Japanese cars are significant because of how that provision interacts with the Trump administration’s other trade policies that are aimed at making it more expensive to manufacture cars in the United States. The president has imposed a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum (both of which are essential for automakers) and has slapped a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts. Those tariffs are already dinging the profits of American carmakers—General Motors reportedly lost more than $1 billion in the second quarter of the year—and auto industry experts say they will raise prices, reduce demand for new cars, and generally make American cars less globally competitive.
In short, the Trump administration is offering an incentive to import finished cars from Japan, while making it more expensive to buy the stuff you need to build cars in America.
…
Ultimately, the problem here is not the specific tariff rates the Trump administration is seeking to charge on steel, car parts, or cars imported from Japan or Mexico. (Those rates are likely to change anyway, if the past few months of the trade war are any indication.)
No, the real problem here is the Trump administration’s belief that it can use tariffs to shape the global trading system toward contradicting goals with no tradeoffs or distortions. In reality, each new tariff move causes both. The market responds to incentives, and right now, the Trump administration is creating a set of incentives that will raise costs for American manufacturers while driving investors overseas.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/25/trumps-tariffs-and-japan-deal-could-encourage-toyota-to-move-manufacturing-jobs-out-of-america/
The Japanese trade deal is actually bad for U.S. car companies. Cars manufactured in Japan will have a 15% tariff on them, but cars made in Mexico by U.S. companies will have a 25% tariff, giving U.S. companies a disadvantage. They could move that back to the U.S., but the move itself is costly, and the cost to make the cars in the U.S. is even costlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfxC6hCMlmI
“No vehicle is currently anywhere close to meeting these standards: According to data from the Energy Department, motorcycles come closest, at just shy of 45 miles per gallon, while cars average less than 25 miles per gallon. But the standards are fleet-wide, meaning the average for all of an automaker’s output needs to fall below the minimum. In practice, this means manufacturers must rely heavily on low- or zero-emission vehicles, like battery-powered electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, to get on the right side of the average.
…
The Senate version of the “big, beautiful bill” sets both of these dollar amounts at “$0.00,” effectively rendering it moot: Automakers making cars that don’t adhere to CAFE standards will still technically be in violation of the law, but they would face no reprisal.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/02/under-the-big-beautiful-bill-car-companies-wont-be-fined-for-failing-to-hit-arbitrary-fuel-efficiency-goals/
“Trump signed a resolution on Thursday that blocks California’s first-in-the-nation rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
The state quickly announced it was challenging the move in court”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-sign-measure-blocking-californias-160449512.html
U.S. roads are more dangerous for pedestrians than roads of other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m99ecBUmcU
“Reuters reported this week that as a result of Trump’s tariffs, Ford Motor Co. will raise prices on three of its models by as much as $2,000 apiece. Days earlier, the company said it expected the tariffs to reduce annual earnings by $1.5 billion, even after making efforts to avoid U.S. import duties.
Rivian, which makes luxury electric vehicles from a single plant in Illinois, also announced this week that it expected to deliver fewer vehicles and spend more money this year as a result of the tariffs.
Then on Thursday, The New York Times reported that Toyota “predicted a $1.3 billion hit from President Trump’s tariffs in April and May alone.”
In a March executive order, Trump slapped a tariff of 25 percent on all imported automobiles, as well as automotive parts like engines, transmissions, and electrical components. The only exception was for those covered under the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), in which case the tariff only applied to the portion of the vehicle’s value not “attributable to parts wholly obtained, produced entirely, or substantially transformed in the United States.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/08/trumps-tariffs-are-already-raising-car-prices-and-hurting-automakers/
China’s electric car industry was built on a battery developed in the U.S., but the U.S. didn’t consistently support electric vehicles, and China did, so the Chinese built a massive industry off of it instead of the Americans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvcwM977D0
“Slovakia has a population of just 5.4 million, yet it is one of Europe’s leading car manufacturers, heavily reliant on auto production and exports to the U.S. Home to five major car manufacturers and more than 350 local suppliers, Slovakia is not only the second-largest E.U. exporter of vehicles to the U.S., but also the biggest car producer per capita in the world.
Slovakia manufactures and exports higher-end SUVs from brands like Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, Range Rover, and—starting in 2026—Volvo. With SUVs accounting for 46 percent of total annual auto sales in the U.S., the tariffs are likely to hurt models that are especially popular among American consumers.
According to the National Bank of Slovakia, the Slovak economy “would decrease cumulatively by nearly 3 percent” due to the new tariffs, and “would also mean the loss of 20,000 jobs.” The bank projects that Slovakia’s economy will “suffer the most in 2026, when its growth would barely stay above zero” and that by 2027, the automotive tariffs alone could reduce gross domestic product by 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points. The bank’s governor referred to the prospects of a 25 percent car tariff impact as a “small Armageddon.””
https://reason.com/2025/04/10/trumps-car-tariffs-could-drive-slovakia-into-russias-arms/