From the latest National Geographic cover story on malaria:
"Some scientists estimate that one out of every two people who have ever lived have died of malaria."
From the Times:
"Last year, UPS cut 28 million miles from truck routes - saving roughly three million gallons of fuel - in good part by mapping routes that minimize left turns."
- Log in to post comments
More like this
There were a mess of interesting items in the New York Times Magazine annual "Ideas" issue last December 9, but I keep thinking of this one every time a) I wait to make a left-hand turn or b) see a UPS truck. Short v: Avoid left turns and save ...
Here's the whole thing:
Left-Hand-Turn…
The Wall Street Journal editorial board is infamous for their reckless disregard of the evidence for global warming. They've just published an op-ed by Pete Du Pont which manages to get pretty well every single factual claim wrong. As with most of these things, correcting every single false claim…
While the latest New York Times Magazine paints a portrait of the relatively small slice of the US population that takes long-distance train rides, a recent Brookings Institution report notes that millions of shorter-distance riders have made Amtrak the fastest-growing mode of travel in the US. In…
One of the tabs I opened last week and didn't have time to get to was this Clastic Detritus post about what it takes to get science stories in the media, which is (quoting Michael Lemonick):
I get it that a stories involving science need a little something extra to make it in a magazine like Time…
How does minimizing left turns save miles? I understand that it saves time and fuel, but not how it saves miles.
Good question, Fermi. I wondered too. It would seem that the difference in distance, if any, depends primarily on the actual route and configuration of streets along the way. But it also occurs to me that turning right saves the driver from having to cross two lanes. If the centerline of the vehicle characterizes its path, and there are two, 12-ft. lanes per street, then the distance saved is 24 ft. (each vehicle has to make a 90-deg. turn, so those cancel out). If they were saving 28 million miles through this method alone, that would mean they are avoiding a little over 6 billion left turns a year. Over a fleet of 88,000 trucks, if my math is right, each truck would have to avoid 70,000 left turns annually, or 191 per day. That seems like a lot. And anyway, turning right doesn't necessarily help if your destination is to the left, so my guess is that their mileage savings has more to do with a clever solution tailored to the actual layout of the streets between point A and point B, albeit one that favors right turns.
I agree with the time issue from another perspective. If I can get all my packages delivered in a given area within my shift schedule (because I avoid left turns), the fact that I do not have to return to that area tomorrow might account for those 'saved miles.'