We absolutely should be preventing the sale of unsafe batteries in the city and the US in general. The fact that the industry is completely unregulated is abhorrent.

I can’t believe the amount of effort that goes into preventing the import of, say, 20-year-old cars vs the amount that goes into preventing the import of unsafe electric transportation.

The vast majority of batteries in phones/laptops are safe and comply with various mandatory and elective safety standards. The e-bikes most commonly purchased do too. But many people buy cheaper batteries or run more amperage through them than is sound, and you get bad results.

There are plenty of incidents with “thermal runaways” in consumer batteries too — next time you’re on a plane, pay attention to the new addition to the safety briefing about not retrieving your phone if it falls into the seat. That warning is because of what happens if you crush a phone (it’s a battery fire)

ACS data also is an incomplete survey which misses a lot of relocations, particularly of those during and immediately after college (so, all the Gen-Z relos and some millennial ones). A lot of the data is inferred from USPS mail-forwarding and other voluntary data sources — many young people don’t change their mailing addresses formally or switch their driver’s licenses (if they have them).

They never should have been turned off in the first place. The accidents 15 years ago weren’t related to ATO and we’ve been running worse, slower service for no reason ever since.

I’m curious what would count as an actual legislative accomplishment in your book.

I meant last year, d’oh.

Let’s point to a series of legislative accomplishments during this calendar year, but the guy will say “it hasn’t affected me yet so it doesn’t count.”

Never mind that most legislation goes into effect on 1/1.

Also there was a pretty big “codifying marriage rights into law as far as the federal government can do so” bill but everyone just ignores that.