Law should require school bus seat belts
The 41 children aboard a school bus Wednesday when
the bus collided with a truck were lucky to escape even more severe physical injury. With no seat belts on the school bus, we're lucky that none of the children died.
Our laws exempt school buses from installing seat belts and protect companies from liability for children's injuries. When will the law be changed? I urge legislators not to wait until the next accident, when children may die. Both articles covering this event state that Ground Transport (bus service) has never had an accident prior to this. School bus companies could employ the best drivers in the world, but that's not enough to protect our children from careless drivers on the road.
Don't wait for the inevitable tragedy. Act now to get seat belts on our school buses.
Lyn Pyle
Kapiolani Community College
Nursing student
System victimizes owners of towed cars
Too often, cars are towed without notification of the owners. A car is parked in a tow zone, the police give a ticket and call the tow company. The tow company in turn notifies the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is three months behind in notifying owners.
Owners of these towed vehicles have no clue what is going on until thousands of dollars in storage fees to the tow company have accumulated.
And where does the vehicle go if the owner cannot pay these outrageous fees? Hey, they're auctioned off!
So who loses and who gains from this whole transaction? I did not even think about something like this until it happened to my family. And you won't either -- until it happens to you!
Celeste J. Cheeseman
Honolulu
Blue bins won't hold much yard waste
Here's what the city web site
www.opala.org says about manually collecting yard waste:
"Keep your yard waste separate from your household rubbish. Bag, bundle or use collection containers no larger than 35-gallons.
"Yard waste should be securely bagged or cut into three-foot lengths and bundled for manual collection."
So this means that all Oahu residents can use regular 35-gallon plastic trash cans (of any color!) for green waste. We can also use the big gray bins that are emptied weekly by trucks with automated lifts.
From my modest Kailua yard, I need at least six regular trash cans for each twice-monthly green waste pickup, plus bundling or plastic-bagging as needed. That blue bin wouldn't make a dent in my green waste, even with weekly pickup.
Please, can we just let the blue-bin boo-boo fade away instead of throwing $8 million into them? We'll find our own uses. After all, most of us are still using our "Recycle Hawaii" bins from the first curbside-recycling failure. These small bins are perfect for hauling newspapers and glass to the school collection containers.
Spend the $8 million on more container collection sites, educating more citizens to become recyclers, or paying a bonus to the folks who hoist the trash cans.
D.J. Henderson
Kailua
Our society must take action for environment
Greenhouse gases, air and water pollution, and conserving our natural resources are environmental issues that we must look into for the sake of our children's future. One way of solving these environmental issues is by recycling.
Recycling conserves energy by using recovered rather than raw materials. This means less fossil fuel is burned and less sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide is released into the air. Recycling decreases air and water pollution by decreasing the need to extract and process new raw materials, which pollute the environment with toxic materials such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and sulfur dioxide.
Saving energy and reducing air and water pollution reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases. Reusing materials instead of always using materials harvested from the Earth helps conserve natural resources.
Our society needs to take action and recycle.
Kanoa Jou
Honolulu
NCAA committee can't defeat Wahines
Round One: Rainbow Wahines (25-6) vs. NCAA Selection Committee (never qualified for NCAA tournament)
Result: Wahines severely punished and bruised, but won by default due to unsportmanlike conduct by some committee members and excessive display of disrespect to the Hawaii fans.
They will now travel to a distant Texas for the second round. Go Wahine Rainbows.
Mario Orbito
Honolulu
Lies of omission are still lies
CBS News reported that just five hours after the 9/11 attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began ordering his aides to plan an attack on Iraq. (
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml)
Yet within hours of the 9/11 tragedy all evidence available pointed to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. It seems to me that the Bush administration used 9/11 as just another excuse to intrude on Iraq.
Nelson S.W. Chang stated in his Nov. 28 letter, "A liar is a person who makes a false statement knowing it to be false." I believe the concealing the truth from Americans also is a lie. The war is simply a massive lie.
Why might the Bush administration fib about this matter?
» To gain control of Iraq's oil and bring a halt to the move toward the use of the Euro as the oil transaction currency standard. Also, oil geologists have predicted that Iraq will reach its peak oil production in 2010, resulting in resources America would drool over.
» To shift the American public's eyes off of our hapless economy and on to patriotism.
Unfortunately, the $400 billion defense budget puts our economy in an even more pathetic state. The Bush administration is nothing but a lie, feeding off those who still remain gullible.
Scott Nishimoto
Aiea