6 Pool-Side Tips You Can't Live Without

Swimming pools are a great way to cool down and stay active during hot summer days; however, it remains a significant safety hazard. Drowning is considered the second leading cause of preventable deaths in Canada among children under 10 years old; and approximately 30 Canadians die in backyard swimming pools every year. 

In a Canadian Drowning Report by the Drowning Prevention Research Centre Canada in 2013, there was a increase in drownings in 2010 marking "the 6th successive year of 470 or more drownings"--up 7% from 2006-2010 in contrast with the previous 5-year average from 2001-2005. More troubling for Ontarians, there were 105 preventable water-related deaths from 2011 to 2012--greater even than Quebec (77) in spite of its reputation for having the most number of backyard pools than any other province in Canada.

A striking finding of the report is that drowning victims are indeed getting older, with a marked increase of deaths among those 50-64 years old; and there are more overall deaths among 18-34 year-olds, with a 19% increase in fatalities between 2006-2010. In spite of these growing numbers, risk-taking 18-24 year-olds continue to have the highest water-related death rate of any age group in Canada, with 8 out of 10 being men--a pattern that has alas remained consistent from year to year, reportedly as a result of the tendency among men for high-risk behaviour around water. Overall, 83% of Canada's water-related deaths during 2006-2010 are men.

According to the report, deaths among children under 5-years-old has decreased from 2006-2010--a great improvement from the 90s when deaths among that age group were as high as young male adult risk-takers. Education in drowning prevention among children and parents seems to be a reason for this improvement.

To continue this trend of drowning education, here are some important tips for enjoying city and backyard pools this summer.

1. Backyard pools require adult supervision
Whenever your backyard pool is in use, designate one adult to be responsible for supervising swimmers both in the pool and around the deck area. The adult's primary responsibility is to prevent any form of accident from occurring. The pool supervisor should be trained in basic water rescue and first aid. The lifesaving society recommends a minimum of Bronze Cross and Standard First Aid certification for all backyard pool supervisors.

2. If you're not within arm's reach, you've gone too far
Children require extra-supervision around the water, and thus must be within an arm's reach of an adult at all times. Never leave a swimmer unattended--even for a minute. Drowning can occur in as little as 10 seconds. Most drowning victims cannot call out or even wave for help. In fact, the image of a person drowning as one who is flapping one's arms and crying out in the middle of the water is not accurate--often drowning victims just dip under the water to a rather silent death.

3. Equipment is not a substitute for adult supervision
Lifejackets, noodles, and water wings can augment a swimmers ability to stay afloat, but are not at all substitutes for the alert eyes and solid arms of an adult. As well, pool toys must be removed from the pool when swimming is over, for often children will drown trying to reach for them at a later time from the pool deck.

4. Pool equipment must-haves

• Telephone and emergency phone numbers
• First Aid kit
• Whistle or other sound-signaling device
• Reachable pole
• Ring buoy
• Buoy line between shallow and deep end of pool
• Sunscreen
• Pool chemicals stored in secure location

5. Pool fence

The pool should be surrounded by a fence that is a minimum of 1.5 metres (5 feet) in height--in fact, many Ontario cities have by-laws in this regard that should be consulted. As well, all gates and doors opening to the swimming pool or pool area must be equipped with locking devices and kept locked at all times--unless an adult is present and supervising the swimming pool. An additional fence should be installed around the pool itself to prevent direct access to the pool from the house. Children are known for climbing out of windows and even through doggy doors to get to the pool, so such a fence adds that extra barrier of protection from an unseen fatality. 

6. Basic safety rules

• Never swim alone. Many adult deaths occur during times of solitary swimming
• Don't drink and swim; alcohol is involved in over 1/3 of all preventable swimming deaths in Canada
• Never swim during a thunder-storm
• Never use pool when you can't see the bottom of the entire pool
• Jump--never dive--into shallow water. And don't ever dive into an above-ground pool.
• Always walk on the pool deck--never run.
• Swim only during daylight hours

By considering these very basic safety tips, and educating those around your pool deck of them, you will greatly reduce the probability of a preventable drowning. 

Mosquito Bites Suck--Here Are Some Awesome Easy Remedies To Reduce The Itch

Mosquito bites suck. While those who have lived in Ontario most, if not all, of their lives, it's a very common thing to deal with; and yet, there remain ways of treating them that are largely unknown. So while you're bushwhacking out in Muskoka over the weekend, or cutting your back lawn, here are some tips to treating bites from those pesky critters.

Some Medicinal Remedies For Mosquito Bites

1. Deal with the initial itch: Itching is caused by the mosquito's saliva: an anticoagulant that causes the body to produce a histamine response. Scratching will only make the itch more irritated, so try to resist the urge.

2. Treat the area immediately: To reduce the itch, clean the bite area with rubbing alcohol, alcohol wipes, or just plain water. If you have a severe reaction, apply an antihistamine cream or lotion, especially ointments containing a combination of antihistamine, analgesic, and coricosteroid. If an infection due to the bites, see your physician.

3. Select an itch-soothing solution: This may require some shopping based on budget, availability, allergies to certain ingredients, and familiarity with the solution. Always speak to your doctor if you have concerns, or have a history of allergic reactions to certain products. 

Natural Remedies For Mosquito Bites

Below are some natural treatments:

Baking soda + warm water: 

• One tablespoon to one pint of water
• Gently apply the affected area. Use your clean fingers, a cotton swab, or popsicle stick to apply
• Leave on for a few minutes, then wash off with warm water. 

Baking soda + amonia:

• Mix a few drops of household cleaning ammonia with baking soda to form a paste
• Apply to the affected area and allow to dry
• Remove with warm water.

Cider vinegar:

• Soak a cotton ball in apple cider vinegar
• Place soaked cotton ball over the mosquito bites. You can hold it or tape it into place
• Leave it there for a few minutes

Cooled Tea: Apply cooled tea to the area as a compress

Ice Pack: Put an ice pack on the bite for 20 minutes

Clear Liquor: Use neat gin or any clear alcoholic liquor on the bites. This'll cool the skin and stop the itch.

Toothpaste: Use any non-gel toothpaste, and rub it on the bite, and leave a glob of it to dry overnight. Wash it in the morning with cold water and mild soap: the toothpaste will dry out the bite and take away any irritation.

Mouthwash: Go into your medicine cabinet and pull out the mouthwash and apply onto the bite and leave to dry.

Lemon or lime: Cut a lemon or lime into pieces and rub on the affected area or just squirt a bit of juice on it. The acid in the juice as itch-relieving properties.

Banana peel skin: Peel a banana or pull out the peels from the garbage and rub the inside of it on the bite. 

Raw potato: Cut a potato in half and rub an open side of one half on the bite. The potato sap will dry on the bite and reduce the itching.

Finger nail: Use your fingernail to press an 'x' into the bite; this will disperse the protein and stop the itch for a while.

Saliva: Place your own saliva over the bite and let it soak in.

Copper: Hold a penny or copper coin over the bite. Copper often makes the skin feel better after being stung. 

Sterilized Male Mosquitos?

Dr. Flamina Catteruccia On Ending Malaria

According to the BBC, researchers and Scientists of mosquitos have discovered that females mosquitos will mate only once with a male, keeping its sperm for the rest of its life and dispensing it over its reproductive cycle. Moreover, the female does not know the difference between fertile and infertile mosquitos, the understanding of which has led to the drive to find sterilization treatments of mosquitos that do not involve radiation, thus keeping them active enough to engage with females in breeding activity. The current method is to inject male embryos with tiny doses of RNA designed to turn off a gene (called zpg) that is essential for normal sperm development. This method tricks the female mosquito into thinking that she has successfully mated, thus continuing to lay eggs without knowing that they have not been fertilized.  According to Dr. Catteruccia, as quoted in the BBC article, 

"You [could] in principle release large numbers of sterile males over many generations...and eventually all the females will have mated with the sterile males and...you can really reduce the number of mosquitos."

The objective is to reduce the number of hatching mosquitos, and hopefully eradicate what many consider to be the world's most deadly killer of humans. 

Extend Your Longevity And Amp Your Productivity With These Awesome Stand Up Desks

As stated in the last post, sitting down all day at your desk is very bad for your health--indeed, it is considered now the "new smoking." As new research is being done on the effects of being sedentary on the job, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc, there is an emerging wealth of tips and design ideas for either buying or building your own stand up desk. The state of your health impacts the kind of life insurance policy you will qualify for, so it's appropriate that we make some remarks here about a way of working that will, as research is showing, significantly improve your health in a similar way to quitting smoking.

I have used a stand up desk in my studio at work for about 4 years now, and I would not work any other way. It is a large drafting table whose height I can adjust, as well as the angle of the surface itself. When I am tired of standing, I have a simple wooden stool that I sit on that keeps me from slouching or reclining back and drifting to sleep. (Indeed, I nap, but not at my drafting table. Instead, I have a small pillow stashed in my drawer that makes the floor behind my drafting table quite comfortable--at least for the 15 minutes that I maintain with military consistency).  For technology, I carry a small laptop into work, which I connect to an Apple Thunderbolt monitor and control with a wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard. The laptop can be operated with the wireless mouse and keyboard while in a closed position, which allows me to keep the laptop on a shelf under my drafting table out of the way of action. 

An important point here is that many of us spend more time at our jobs than in our homes or, really, any other 'place'. Thus how your workspace works for you is a vital part of optimizing not only your productivity but also your very well-being. These different models of stand-up desks, though merely scratching the surface of a growing body of knowledge about good workplace design, will help you get on your way. 

The basics of stand-up desk ergonomics: the table height should be at or slightly below elbow height.

Wirecutter has done extensive research on a number of standing desk models, which would be good to read. For their research, they ordered six different standing desks and tried them all out determining which ones worked best. There are two different kinds of standing desks: fixed-height and adjustable, the latter of which has a control panel tucked under its surface for convenient raising and lowering. Unfortunately, many of them are quite expensive, with the cheapest one retailing for about $500 and moving up from there into the $2000 range. Fixed-height stand up desks are great for those just getting into using them, and are the favourite of workspace diy hackers everywhere.  

Below is a mere sample of some great stand up desks.

High-End Designer Models

nextdesk Terra, with Apple monitor, wireless trackpad, and wireless keyboard. The desk has good surface space while looking very stylish. The height is controlled by a little panel that sits just below the man's right hand, for convenient adjustment. A well-recognized stand up desk in publications such as Wired Magazine.

The Max, by Geek Desk. 350 pounds of lifting capacity, 4 programmable height pre-sets, and an LED height display. This model boasts a more industrial aesthetic with a starting price of about $1000.

Ikea Hacks

There are some cool standing desk hacks that are made from Ikea furniture pieces combined in very creative ways. These hacks boast a much leaner price tag--a good kick-off point for those who want to give standing desks a try--and can be customizable. 

This corner floating desk is assembled with Ikea butcher blocks and some simple brackets. A great hack for about $200

This stylish stand up desk is created by fusing together an Ikea T.V. stand with Gallant table legs. The legs are adjustable, and the T.V. stand offers some cool storage for your various supplies. The total cost is under $200. 

For those with home offices, try fusing your standing desk with a book wall for this very stylish and practical hack. 

Famous Standers

Ernest Hemingway, replete with sweeping bay window and deer head--or is that a moose?

Winston Churchill, whom we've covered before in the Art of Napping. I don't see his day-bed there, but maybe it's somewhere off stage left...

Not simply a 21st Century phenomenon, offices in the 19th Century had combinations of sitting, standing, and communal desks. More on the history of the standing desk here.

This Discovery About Sitting Down On The Job Will Blow Your Mind

From bed to car to desk to car to couch to bed: this is life in the fast-lane of the 21st Century, and it is leading to a plethora of health risks some of which are fatal. Technology may be solving certain problems--though we still don't know the extent of the new problems being created by the solving of past ones--and seemingly creating an ease of life and work style, but one of the main consequences is that our lives are more sedentary than ever before. 

If you look at traditional societies, humans travelled long distances on foot, lifted and carried large amounts of weight, and used their bodies for almost everything. Now, our bodies have almost become secondary to our brains, and our brains are growing almost obsolete by the ever growing computing power of machines. With the human body becoming secondary, and the sedentariness of our 9-8 lives, we are actually shortening our longevity. In a recent study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, titled Sedentary Behavior and Mortality in Older Women, a linkage was found between the amount of time sitting and the increased risk of mortality, including heart disease, stroke, etc. 

In an article in Harvard Health Publications, Dr. JoAnn Manson, one of the above study's authors and chief of preventative medicine at Harvard-affiliated Bringham and Women's Hospital, states that 

“Even if you are doing the recommended amount of moderate to vigorous exercise, you will still have a higher risk of mortality if you’re spending too many hours sitting. . . . Each of these behaviors is important and has an independent effect on cardiovascular disease and mortality.” 

That is, even if you spend time on the evenings and week-ends in some form of physical activity, your collective time spent sedentary at work will not be made up for; meaning that your hours spent sitting on the job over-rides any gains you think you are making by working out and exercising. 

You might be asking, "Why is sitting at my desk at work such a problem?" According to Dr. I-Min Lee, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, “Sedentary behavior is associated with an increased risk of the development of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease." 

In a study from the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, entitled Reducing Occupational Sitting Time and Improving Worker Health: The Take-a-Stand Project, 2011, it was concluded that "prolonged sitting time is a health risk." This study was done among employees who had sedentary jobs. Here's more of what the study concluded: 

"Study results have demonstrated associations of prolonged sitting time with premature mortality (1–3); chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer (4–7); metabolic syndrome (5,6); and obesity (5,7). In contrast, breaks in prolonged sitting time have been correlated with beneficial metabolic profiles among adults, suggesting that frequent breaks in sedentary activity may explain lower health risk related to waist circumference, body mass index (BMI), triglyceride levels, and 2-hour plasma glucose levels (8)."

Additionally, the Take-a-Stand Project reduced time spent sitting by 224% (66 minutes per day), reduced upper back and neck pain by 54%, and improved mood states. However, and this is an absolutely striking part of the study, the removal of the device largely negated all observed improvements within 2 weeks. 

The Benefits of a Standing Desk on Your Feet Australia Campaign

The traditional North American ways of working are making us sick and shortening our longevity. This research has been around now for a number of years, and yet our offices are largely equipped with sit-down workspaces, and distributors of products and services are interested in keeping people seated so that they are more likely to consume. Television manufacturers want you seated, movie and television shows want you seated, employers want you seated (based on the long-held and false assumption that when people are sitting down, they're working), computer and internet software companies want you seated, so that you are more likely to engage in all the stuff peddled to the world that has only the appearance of importance. 

If you are sedentary in your workplace, and you have read this post, it's time to change this vital aspect of your life. In the next post, I will present the myriad options available for work environments that will help you. The good news is that the heightened risks of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and metabolic syndrome that result from a sedentary work style can be reversed. 

You're Not The Only One Disturbed By Extreme Weather--These Tips Will Help You Cope

Extreme weather extends beyond what is considered normal for a particular region and includes unusual, severe, or unseasonal weather. Some claim that extreme weather is a consequence of human-induced global warming; however, this remains a point of contention among scientists and academics. 

National Geographic: Worst Weather Ever?

While the cause of extreme weather remains difficult to determine and largely contentious, we still know it when we see it: hurricanes, heat waves, golf-ball hail, cold waves, flooding rains, and deathly drought. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2011, the estimates of annual losses due to extreme weather have ranged since 1980 from a few billion dollars to above 200 billion (USD), with the greatest culprit being Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Relatedly, Professor Tim Palmer, Co-Director of the Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate, of the Oxford Martin School of the 21st Century, predicts that extreme weather events will increase in severity over the coming years. 

Professor Tim Palmer, Oxford, on Extreme Weather

Extreme weather, especially in Canada, is here to stay; the key is knowing how to respond to it. Here are some summer examples of extreme weather, and what to do if you're in your vehicle when they happen around you.

Thunderstorms

Thunderstorms develop when warm, moist, unstable air is forced to rise into the atmosphere. This creates turbulence, which in turn, creates positively and negatively electrically-charged areas within the cumulonimbus clouds. Lightening kills an average of 7 people and injures 60-70 people each year in Canada. It is also responsible for 42 percent of the country's forest fires, with an annual 'damage cost' of $14 billion.

In a vehicle: You're safe inside a hard-topped vehicle like an RV, because the outer metal body of the vehicle will divert the lightening. But keep your hands to your lap, and do not touch anything metal inside the vehicle. It will also be important to pull your vehicle over in such instances if your visibility is totally compromised.

Hail:

Hail forms when the updrafts carry water droplets into the colder reaches of a cumulonimbus cloud where they freeze. More layers are added when updrafts hurl other water droplets and they collide with the now frozen particles. This process builds until the frozen particles are too heavy for the updrafts to support, and they fall to the ground as hail.

In a vehicle: A car can give you reasonable protection, but be aware that extremely large hail could break windows. If you hear a forecast of an extreme hail storm on the news, it's best to find some kind of temporary shelter to prevent your vehicle from major damage.

Flash Floods

A flash flood is a rapid flooding of low-lying areas, such as rivers, dry lakes and basins. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, tropical storm, or meltwater from ice or snow flowing over ice sheets or snowfields. A flash flood is distinguished from a regular flood by a timescale of less than six hours.

 

Calgary Flood, 2013--CTV News

In vehicle:  

Almost half of all flash flood deaths happen in vehicles. Driving through flash flood areas can be extremely dangerous. 

• Never drive through a flash flooded road or bridge--back up and try another route. Stay on high ground. 
• Listen to the radio for weather information. 
• Take routes that avoid flooded areas. 
• If your car becomes flooded, do not stay in it--abandon it immediately and move to higher ground. 
• If your car is swept into the water and submerged, don't panic. Stay calm and wait for the vehicle to fill with water. Once the vehicle is full, the doors will open. Hold your breath and swim to the surface. 
• If you are swept into fast moving floodwater outside your vehicle, point your feet downstream. Always go over obstacles, never try to go under. 
• If you are stranded on something above the floodwater, such as a tree or building, stay put and wait for rescue. Do not enter the floodwater. 
• Do not walk into flood water--a mere six inches can sweep you away.
• If possible, avoid contact with flood water. It may be contaminated with oil, gasoline, or raw sewage. It may also be charged with electricity from fallen power lines.

Tornados

Tornados often occur in the hot, humid weather of late spring or summer afternoon or evening. The storms that create tornados often occur in areas where warm and cold air masses collide. Tornados are violently rotating columns of air extending from the cloud base to the surface. A tornado can range in width from 10 metres to 2 kilometres. 

In a vehicle: A vehicle is not a safe refuge when a tornado strikes. Don't get caught in your car, camper, or mobile home. If possible, go to the lowest level of a building with a strong foundation or basement. If no such building is available, then leave your vehicle, find a low-lying area, lie down flat, and protect your head. Such areas can be a deep stand of trees in a low-lying area, or a ditch or other low spot. The key is to get as close to the ground as possible and protect your head from flying debris.

The most important point in all of this is to stay alert and informed. Environment Canada posts climate reports throughout the day. Before you travel, especially over long distances and across provinces, consult the Environment Canada website and look at the long-term forecast. You can also get such information through sources like the Weather Network. 

Jeff Masters, from Weather Underground, On the 9 Biggest Weather Disasters To Hit In The Next 30 Years And How To Prepare

Some believe that extreme weather is intensifying; that we are in some kind of pre-apocalyptic period in human history. Whether you believe that or not, staying informed and alert is your best insurance against being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If, however, you find yourself in such a scenario, hopefully these tips will come to mind.

These Smart Tech Solutions Are The Highway To Self-Driving Vehicles

Wearable technology offers a fine set of interim tools on the way to fully operating, and ubiquitous, self-driving vehicles. There are several products currently on the market that are at more of an early-adoption stage, but have yet to reach the high levels of consumer demand that are projected over the coming years. The extent to which wearable technology will be perceived as a valuable connection device to one's vehicle is yet to be seen. As Tony Rizzo in Wearable Tech News maintains, "We're not convinced the buying public [will] go out of its way to seek out these features. Rather auto makers will implement them as solutions...and wait for consumers to adopt them."

One issue that comes up frequently in conversations about wearable technology and driving is safety, the logic being that if it is dangerous to use a smart phone while operating a vehicle, then it is by that fact as dangerous to use wearable technology. However, such claims have to be proven, and not merely presupposed, especially when it comes to important matters like driving laws. As well, wearable tech's multi-app functionality can become a deterrent for legislators, meaning that it's not the use of the technology in communication with the vehicle that's the issue, but the fact that one can simultaneously chat, check email, and surf the web that poses safety issues. The pattern with Canadian regulation on technology is that it varies from province to province, but, as Monica Goyal for itbusiness.ca explains, "in places like Ontario, most of our regulations around technology are enacted years after the technology comes about, and almost always for the protection of the public." Indeed, the legal institution is one of the slowest to respond to change in our world; so while Google and other great companies are changing the way humans interact with their world, the laws are often very slow to catch up. And it could very well be the case that the lack of legal regulations for such wearable technology as they relate to vehicles could render the technology obsolete before it even has a chance to hit the marketplace. 

These are interim tools is because they will provide a particular kind of functional connectivity to your vehicle, but one that will be obsolete once vehicles learn to drive fully on their own, and the human driver is no longer needed. Vehicles will then have their own very sophisticated navigational systems that will make redundant an external device for driving, such as Google Glass, etc. In fact, the future of vehicles will completely change the way humans interact with and drive in vehicles, simply because they will be fully self-driving and not requiring any kind of human intervention for its control or destination once it has been programmed. 

Here are just a few examples of the fusion of automobiles and smart technology.

Hyundai Blue Link

Mercedes-Benz App On Pebble Steel Smartwatch

Samsung and BMW i3: Smart Connectivity

Nissan Nismo Smartwatch

iPod, Netflix, Driverless Car--More On Disruptive Innovation And The Future Of Driving

Remember the time when you would walk into a music store to buy CDs? What about the seeming hours you spent per week pacing the walls of the video store for that single gem that you would pay almost 6 bucks to rent--for only one night? What about the time you got your newspaper or magazines delivered to your house? Seems like decades ago? Now you can purchase music and movies anywhere: when once you would sit on the subway thinking about what movie to rent, you can now just sit in your seat and either rent or buy and even watch it right there. Your news and magazines come the same way--the headlines coursing through cyberspace faster and more dynamically than droning along the once-a-day conveyor belts of newspaper printers. 

Ken Auletta of New Yorker: How Netflix Killed Blockbuster.

But these disruptions didn't come from the industry experts, as we now know; they came from technology companies with smarter faster machines and very savvy, emergent business plans that seem in retrospect miraculous. These disruptions have only happened over the past several years; and how many of us saw them coming? Very few... 

The signs are there for all to see: self-driving vehicles are going to disrupt a lot of industries (insurance, auto, fuel, and transportation to name a few); and to be on the right side of these changes means that industry leaders need to be thinking seriously about the implications of self-driving vehicles now. 

And we as consumers need to be thinking about these changes. When you look at your child, just think that they will most likely have no experience driving an automobile--the thrill and freedom of the open road and almost unadulterated autonomy... No--they'll be sitting in a vehicle that will drive them to a programmed destination, drop them off, and most likely drive away to pick up somebody else. For, as Attorney and editor of The Hollywood Reporter, Jonathan Handel, put it in Huffington Post, "Once a car learns to drive, there's no need to own it and there's no need for a driver. That's because the car can come when called, take you to your destination, then go off and pick up someone else." Yet another implication of self-driving cars that Handel explains, and is not evident, is that when driving oneself becomes unnecessary, such an activity will become rare and therefore more expensive, less convenient, and, ultimately, unlawful, simply because the cars will drive much better than we can. 

Sit down, make an espresso, get online, have meetings: all these things will be a reality in the driverless car of the near future.

By virtue of the highly complex landscape maps that Google and other driverless vehicles use (that, incidentally, will only get more detailed and complex over time, and therefore orders of magnitude better) allow the car to have very precise knowledge of the road by virtue of which it can make quick adjustments to spontaneous hazards. Once this takes place, a driverless vehicle will become convention, and human drivers will be seen as posing even greater risks. Already, the cost of driver error--from fatalities to insurance costs--is very high; but when intelligent vehicles are able to significantly reduce, if not nearly eliminate, those costs, then human driving will not only be considered unadvisable but also simply unacceptable. 

What this implies is that if such companies as Google are designing us out of the drivers seats of vehicles that will come online in 2020, then it will only be a quick matter of time before our licenses are pulled and registrations revoked. Like gun control, there will be vehicle control; and it's not implausible to think of the imposition of a regulatory annual human driver fee to deter the majority from engaging in such risky and wanton activity.

And it has tremendous bearing on the insurance industry, for as Chunka Mui, Contributor to Forbes Magazine and co-author of Billion Dollar Lessons, explains, "Insurance premiums are a direct function of the frequency and severity of accidents. In a world of driverless cars, where accidents are significantly curtailed, most of the premiums will go away. . . . [which means that] the market might be reduced by 75% or more."

But is this just a lot of blown smoke--futuristic babble that is purely speculative and the stuff of sci-fi? You might think, "Well, these technologies are way out in the future, and will have no bearing on us for another 50 years..."  

While this may be a common way of thinking, the reality is that such disruptions may take less time, as Moore's law and Ray Kurzweil's research on exponential growth show. Indeed, according to Kurzweil, there is a million-fold growth of technology every year, which exponentially will become quickly over time to billon-fold increases. In such a world, self-driving vehicles will be a very simple reality.

Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity and the surging pace of exponential technological growth.

We are living in a very complex and surging technological world. Many claim that more change has taken place in the past century than over the last 1000 hundred years. And now, more change will take place over the next ten years than the last 100. Indeed, with the doubling of information technology every year, the world's knowledge doubles with it, which both opens up new opportunities and comforts as well as greater risks, and, overall, pressure on human biology to somehow keep up. 

Self-driving vehicles are already a reality. Where they go from here will be determined by ever-emerging exponential technological growth. While we have information from which to make inferences about the next 10-20 years, to think that things will simply continue along a linear path and thus be pretty much the same is a very serious oversight.

These Self-Driving Cars Are Going To Disrupt Everything

Driverless cars are a reality--whether we know it, believe it, accept it, love it, hate it, or not. This will be one massive disruption to numerous industries, including insurance. While some skeptics in the insurance industry claim it will take decades for insurance as we know it to become obsolete, we have very recent examples of industries that have collapsed due to disruptive technologies, even though the signs had been there for anyone able to see them. 

I like KurzweilAI.net: it's a website that lays out news stories for futurist nuts like me, based on the research and thought of futurist, inventor, and thought leader, Ray Kurzweil. One study it paid considerable attention to was the IHS Automotive Study, released on January 2, 2014, that forecasts nearly 12 million yearly self-driving cars sales and almost 54 million in use on global highways by 2035. According to this forecast, self-driving cars (SDC) that are a hybrid of computer and driver-control will become nearly ubiquitous by 2025, followed by a complete transition to self-driving-only vehicles by 2030. 

The rise of SDCs is forecasted to emerge along the above trajectory, comprised of five distinct levels, as shown above.

Accordingly, complete ubiquity of self-driving personal and commercial vehicles will emerge by 2050. Such vehicles will provide greater safety to drivers and pedestrians: near-zero crashes of SDCs (although non-SDCs will crash into SDCs), near-zero pedestrian deaths, and less traffic congestion and air pollution. It is indeed presumed here that SDCs will be electric, not gasoline-fuelled, vehicles, given for instance the European Commission's comprehensive strategy, titled Transport 2050, whose primary goal is "To halve the use of 'conventionally fuelled cars in urban transport by 2030; phase them out of cities by 2050; achieve C02-free city logistics in major urban centres by 2030." 

What these reports are forecasting, and admonishing, is the disruption of the entire global transportation industry--all within only about 15 years' time! In this very short time-period, most--if not all--gas-powered vehicles will be obsolete, and removed from the roads, as well as all human-driven vehicles. This is a possible shift of millions of vehicles world-wide and trillions of dollars in lost and recovered profits. According to the IHS Report, North America will account for 29 percent of worldwide sales of SDCs in 2035, or nearly 3.5 million vehicles. China will be not far behind, capturing the second largest market share with 24 percent or 2.8 million units, and Europe will have the third largest market share with 20 percent of the total, or 2.4 million vehicles. Who will be on the right side of this change? Technology companies, such as Google.  Who will find it very difficult to compete? Traditional companies, whether auto or insurance--unless they have been able to reinvent themselves and intentionally drive the change rather than merely react to it. 

GM VP, Larry Burns, Gives This TED Talk On The Future Of Cars 

If cars are self-driving by 2030, then auto insurance will by that fact undergo a massive change. Insurance companies will have to innovate to stay both relevant and profitable; and they'll have to compete with the likes of Google which will most likely enter the insurance business to cover any litigations as a result of their vehicles succumbing to accident. 

But as you'll read in a future post, it appears that by 2020 highly-automated vehicles (those that are autonomous, but with human over-ride) will be hitting the roads--that's only six years away and may present a good reason to hold off on buying that new vehicle.