Steve Eldridge, The Examiner
2007-08-20 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

In the wake of the Interstate 35W Bridge collapse in Minneapolis, there has been a lot of attention focused on bridge safety. A number of states, including Virginia and Maryland, have made public which bridges were of similar design, and some have even posted which bridges have problems. But a number of states are keeping that information very close to the vest.

Texas, for example, will not post any information about its bridges for fear of litigation. The San Antonio Express News cites officials who say a federal law prohibiting bridge inspection reports from use in court litigation strictly limits release of such information by the state to the public.

There is also a state law in Texas that prohibits release of the information if “they identify the technical details of particular vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to an act of terrorism.”

This is an interesting twist and is yet another example of the public being kept in the dark under the guise of those three magic words: act of terrorism. It seems to me that the public should know whether a certain piece of infrastructure, be it a tunnel, a bridge, a length of rail track or what have you, is unsafe. That way, the taxpayers who paid to build these things could make decisions about whether they wanted to use them.

If there was an option to go around a bridge that was failing or to not use a tunnel that might collapse, the public should be able to decide and should have that information. I doubt the terrorists would only target a bridge where some of the bolts supporting girders were failing, and I suspect they would instead go after the structure that would have the most impact. We need to stop hiding behind this blind fear as a way of keeping the public in the dark.

GPS use not so widespread

The entire world is using Global Positioning System information, right? Portable devices like Garmin or TomTom are on the dashboard of every car, truck or SUV, guiding drivers from Leesburg to addresses in Camp Springs. The only ones that don’t are those who have the devices built into the dashboard, right? Not really.

An independent survey by Harris Interactive says only 17 percent of adults use GPS devices. This despite a slight reduction in the cost of most portable devices. Even still, at a cost of $250 to $800, it’s hard for most people who drive to the same places day in and day out to justify the expense. In-dash units still add roughly $2,000 to the price of a new car, although many come bundled with other services.

The Harris Interactive survey found that some of the extras that companies had added to basic GPS devices, such as the ability to load data cards and run digital slide show presentations or to play music, were not valued very highly.

Users of this technology just want the things to work well and to get them where they want to go, and 64 percent of them said they were either extremely or very satisfied.

I think these devices remain a bit of a luxury for most of us. For salespeople, real estate agents and others who need to go to different locations on a daily basis, they are invaluable as well as potential tax write-offs.