"If those people want to pursue PRT with (July 12, 2005) The Minnesota anti-PRT activist is at it again. This time he is claiming that the leading U.S. PRT company knows PRT is "too risky." Here's his latest distortion, aimed at discouraging private investment in PRT. Taking out the context What he's doing this time is regurgiating the following passage from a "Risk Factors document" (!) filed filed by Taxi 2000 with Commerce Department of Minnesota (!).
Taxi 2000 Document Reveals Safety Concerns Can Make PRT Systems "Unworkable".
He makes no other comment, leaving the reader to think that PRT can be sunk if regulatory agencies and organizations don't change certain rules. Context is so important, and this is a textbook case. The above paragraph is not some earth-shaking secret admission of a fatal flaw. In fact it is a fairly standard "safe harbor" statement, something all companies that offer stock are required to do, to apprise prospective investors of every conceivable risk, no matter how remote. In this safe harbor, Taxi 2000 is merely saying 'ASCE rules may not allow us to use as short headways as we are capable of, and we're going to seek a rule change because our technology overcomes the reason for the "brick wall" standard.' Every public company has safe harbor statements in their prospectuses, annual reports and 10-K filings. So if everyone gave full, literal and equal weight to everything in safe harbors, no one would ever invest in anything. That said, it important to note that incompatibility with safety regulations is not the only thing the Minnesota anti-PRT activist has been claiming about the Risk Factors document. He has been portraying it as much more dire. Watch him backpedal For a long time the Minnesota anti-PRT activist provided no quotes from "Risk Factors," only his characterization of the contents. But recently, when pressured by this analyst to provide an actual quote from the document, suddenly his interpretation underwent a subtle revision: June 30: "By popular request, I post an excerpt from the Taxi 2000's Risk Factors Document that acknowledges the Personal Rapid Transit headway problem is a major safety concern that would prevent a nose-to-nose PRT system from operating under current safety regulations." Source
Late May 2005: "There is certainty that PRT is impossible and it's in Taxi
2000's Risk Factors document filed with the State of MInnesota [sic]. It says the
headway problem[...] can only be solved by asking the ASCE for a change on their guidlines [sic] for
APM's. ... something that's highly unlikely because professional engineers are unlikely to relax
a safety recommendation that would surely result in crashes,
injuries and deaths."
Source
For the record, this is how PRT has really been designed to deccelerate:
"If all passengers are seated, simple experiments show that a 0.5g [a HALF g]
deceleration will not throw a passenger out of the seat... requirements of PRT
safety is that the vehicle be designed for all passengers seated."
So: just as when the Minnesota anti-PRT activist made the audacious claim that the Skyweb Express and ULTra PRTs don't have air conditioners, then nitpicked 'well, are there air conditioners installed in the vehicles in these photos?', he is backpedaling again. He's changing his earlier, sweeping claims that 'short headways are impossible, it can't be overcome by technology,' dropping the part about technology and just saying 'current regulations might not allow short headway'. Hardly in the same class as Newton's First Law or the speed of light, as he had earlier led you to believe. Distortion; uninformed speculation; fabrication. Now revisionism is in his bag of tricks!
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