Headlines & Coming Up – Week of 2.12.18 | iDSC031

Headlines & Coming Up – Week of 2.12.18 Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion in the world – for the 6th straight year!  The news is coming from INRIX’s annual Global Traffic Scorecard.  And Orange County is making the report with Dana Point delivering the worst weekend beach-bound traffic congestion in the United States.  And SpaceX successfully launches its first interstellar road trip while sister company The Boring Company sells out of flamethrowers but might not be able to deliver them in California.   Welcome to iDriveSoCal the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States – Southern California. I’m Tom Smith.  Here’s what’s happening in mobility news: The city of Los Angeles claims the worst traffic on the planet for the sixth straight year! The honor was given by INRIX a global company that specializes in connected car services and transportation analytics. The company’s annual Global Traffic Scorecard measures data from over 13-hundred cities across 38-countries. It found drivers, in and around LA, spent 102-hours in traffic congestion during peak time periods last year. There was a tie for second with Moscow and New York drivers spending 91-hours in traffic congestion, followed by Sao Paulo Brazil with 86-hours and San Francisco with 79-hours. And that same INRIX report included another unwelcome stat for Southern California drivers – this one for our friends in Orange County. Dana Point was listed as last year’s worst traffic congestion in the United States for getting to the beach on the weekends! Turns out 21-percent of the time spent heading to the surf and sand is enjoyed in gridlock down there.  And gridlock is no problem for Starman cruising through the solar system. This after SpaceX’s successful launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket. In case you missed it Starman was the astronaut suit-wearing mannequin Elon Musk put in the driver’s seat of his red Tesla roadster. That’s the car and driver which were the Falcon Heavy’s payload. And if that wasn’t fascinating and cool enough, Musk also managed to set-up cameras and post images of Starman’s journey on Instagram. And that brings us to another story about Elon Musk having fun with the media through frat-house-like-antics by way of his companies. In his quest to end gridlock down here on earth, his transportation-tunnel-digging Boring Company has successfully sold 20-thousand Flamethrowers at 500-hundred-bucks a pop. That’s right flame-throwers. While the financial transactions are reportedly real and have raised a cool 10-million; there are some questioning whether a flamethrower will actually be delivered as advertised. Nevertheless some individuals and agencies aren’t comfortable with the idea of flamethrower sales by mail. Musk tweeted that some customs agencies have indicated they wouldn’t allow something called a “flamethrower” to be shipped. Musk officially changed the name of the product to “Not-a-flame-thrower.” So that obstacle is apparently circumvented. This other obstacle, I hope, is a joke and if it’s not then look no further for reasons why some politicians get zero accomplished. It’s reported that California Assemblymen Miguel Santiago plans to introduce legislation banning the sale of flamethrowers in the state of California. Dude, we gots all sorts of problems that your time would be far better spent on.