Cars

Tony Dutzik is senior policy analyst with Frontier Group, a non-profit public policy think tank.

Barack Obama has been as supportive of transit, biking, and walking as any president, but one of his most transformative actions may not have been any law or funding measure so much as simply getting elected. There's a compelling case to be made that Obama's election in 2008 led to significant changes in how people commute in the greater D.C. area.

Here's the big news of the day: Autonomous cars are making a big splash at the Consumer Electronics Show right now. Audi is testing its self-driving cars on Nevada roads. Google's already done it in California. Toyota and Lexus are getting ready too.

We really have to give Jeff Speck credit. In his new book, Walkable City, he amasses a wealth of evidence that skillfully reveals just how absurd American attitudes toward transportation and cities have become. We interviewed Speck about his book last month, and we can't help returning to it to highlight this little factoid. If it isn't the ultimate sign of everything that's wrong with American transportation policy, well, we'd like to see what is.

Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a new rule requiring automakers to install event data recorders, known as EDRs or black boxes, in all light passenger vehicles. While the rule would expand the number of vehicles equipped to record critical information in the moments preceding a crash, that alone won't aid investigations of traffic deaths or strengthen cases against reckless drivers. For black boxes to help get to the bottom of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, changes to local crash investigation procedures and to EDR technology itself need to happen as well.

Ford has spent the last few years fretting about how to reach out to Gen Y. The car company made news earlier this year when it re-designed its 2015 Mustang to appeal to buyers born between 1980 and 1999. (Apparently Gen Y just screams "shark-nosed grille and round headlights" to Ford.)

Hybrid drivers: Nice try, but your wheels aren't really saving the planet.

But after some unorthodox punishment, handed down by a local judge, we're guessing 32-year-old Shena Hardin won't try that trick again. Hardin has been ordered to stand at an intersection two mornings next week wearing a sign that says, "Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus."