Flex-Fuel fleet remains shrouded in secrecy

Kimberly Kindy, reporting for the San Jose Mercury News and the Sacramento bureau of MediaNews, adds more on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempts to create a fleet of environmentally friendly vehicles, which earned him international recognition but also handed a single-source contract to General Motors, a longtime political supporter. The latest story describes how the governor's administration has repeatedly refused to release documents that reveal the level of its involvement in crafting this fleet. In July, Kindy reported that the "green" cars still burn normal gasoline because they have no access to the cleaner ethanol blend, E85.

In the wake of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Patrick Garmoe of the Duluth News Tribune reported on how age has affected bridges in the St. Louis County area of Minnesota. As the costs of repairing the bridges increased, 11 bridges in St. Louis County have been rated "fracture-critical" and at risk of collapse.
The News Tribune also reported on guidelines drafted by the county for determining when a bridge should be closed.

Paul Nussbaum and Dylan Purcell of The Philadelphia Inquirer report that nearly 60 bridges in the Philadelphia area are rated structurally "deficient" with traffic on those bridges ranging from 25,000 to 160,000 vehicles daily. Six thousand bridges are rated "deficient" in Pennsylvania, the greatest number in the nation. Included in their report is an interactive map of bridges in the Philadelphia area with details about each.

Rick Romell of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analyzed federal records and reviewed hundreds of pages of documents to find that JDC Logistics Inc., a Franklin, Wis., firm has been among the most heavily fined trucking companies in the country. Logbook falsification by truckers at the 589-driver firm was so widespread, federal auditors discovered last August, that the company was slapped with a $92,000 fine. That followed a $63,000 fine in 2004 for many of the same problems.

The Columbus Dispatch examined each of the 35 bridges over the Ohio River connecting Ohio to neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia. Reporter Randy Ludlow discovered that seven are rated as structurally deficient. That group includes three of the four bridges owned by the Ohio Department of Transportation. The investigation revealed that highway officials have plans to close one bridge when the temperature drops to 5 below zero. The steel of the old bridge becomes so brittle in bitter cold that engineers fear it could fracture, raising the possibility of the span toppling.

Following the collapse of an I-35 bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, journalists turned to the National Bridge Inventory database, available from IRE and NICAR, to check the bridge's inspection history. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press. and The Star Tribune reported that inspection data from 2005 showed that the Minnesota Department of Transportation deemed the bridge "structurally deficient." The Pioneer Press also noted a federal report's finding that Minnesota ranked high in overall bridge safety with 3 percent of its bridges rated deficient in 2006.

Sarah Okeson of Florida Today looked into a new law that sets up enhanced penalty zones in which drivers who speed get higher fines.
Reviewing more than 1 million crashes in Florida from 2002 to 2005, she found that the speed zones aren't located in areas with the highest rates of speed-related crashes. The state officials in charge of the program didn't calculate the rates for speed-related crashes using numbers for how much traffic was on the roads. The law set up the zones in counties where the bill's top supporters lived.

In a time of rising gas prices, Eric Morath of The Detroit News brings some good news: increased inspections have reduced likelihood of consumers being cheated at the pump. In 2006, there were more inspections of Michigan pumps than the previous three years combined, leading to detection of 1,358 faulty meters and $250,000 in fines.

A year-long investigation by Myron Levin and Alan C. Miller of the Los Angeles Times reveals that practices of U-Haul International, the nation's largest provider of rental trailers, are compromising safety on the road. The three-part series explores how U-Haul policies increase likelihood of accidents; spotty maintenance practices; and how, when sued, U-Haul has a history of losing or spoiling evidence.

While alcohol-related accidents and deaths may receive more attention, speed-related accidents kill more people — about 10 each week — in North Carolina, according to a The News & Observer report by Pat Stith, Mandy Locke and David Raynor."But while state legislators and court officials have gotten tough on drunken drivers, they have eased up on speeders." Database editor Raynor analyzed 3.4 million speeding cases from the state court system, plus a decade of highway patrol citations and state motor vehicle data.