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Numlock News: February 13, 2024 • Super Speeders, Overtime, Out-Of-State Plates

Feb 13

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By Walt Hickey

Announced some fun news yesterday: I’ve left my position at Business Insider and will be taking a job as executive editor at a soon-to-launch newsroom called Sherwood Media. This won’t affect Numlock, and you’ll continue getting the newsletter each day just like usual, but it is very fun news for me!

Super Speeders

New York’s automatic speed camera system has expanded its coverage and times of operation, and in doing so is now identifying that a small number of drivers within the city are responsible for a disproportional amount of speed violations. These lead foots have been caught going 10 miles per hour or more above the speed limit over 100 times. In 2020, when there were just 1,300 automated traffic enforcement devices, only four drivers had hit 100 such infractions; as of 2023, that’s 186 drivers. Around 200 drivers racked up the same number of tickets as the bottom 25,000 drivers who got a ticket. On average, the 186 drivers owe $11,083 each in unpaid parking fines. On one hand, this is reckless and dangerous; on the other, we do have a list of 186 people who would be a great fit for a Fast and Furious-style squad of car enthusiast spies.

John Surico, Bloomberg

Party

As every politically active person knows, the political affiliation to which one belongs is ineffective, lackluster and disorganized, has suffered a series of humiliating losses, and the vain and out-of-touch party establishment and the spineless rank and file have, of course, doomed this noble ideology to repeated and exhausting electoral failure owing to their own rank incompetence. And conversely, the other political side — they’re cunning, they’re cutthroat and they’re simply running circles around us, all despite the fact that their poorly thought out and mediocre policy ideas can be propped up by their ruthless operatives and devilish campaigning. Yes, to be in possession of politics is to permanently lose, or at least that’s what Americans think: 71 percent of polled respondents say their side has been losing more often than winning, while just 25 percent say they’ve been winning more often than losing, a phenomenon of perception that appears regardless of whether the polled individual is on the right or the left.

Ted Van Green, Pew Research Center

OT

The Super Bowl went into overtime, and thanks to some planning ahead when it came to booking, CBS had sold some insurance units at a slightly cheaper price to air during unexpected bonus breaks. They sold between five and seven contingency spots at a discount from the $6.47 million average 30-second spot, and then when the game went deep into overtime — using 14 minutes and 57 seconds of the quarter to conclude — started working the phones to see who had the stomach to re-up an ad from earlier in the evening. Given that CBS ended up squeezing in another 10 ad spots in overtime, they probably made around $60 million from the Niners and Chiefs running long.

Anthony Crupi, Sportico

Plates

Virginia will start requiring auto insurance on July 1, which may put an end to a long-running strategy employed by some Maryland residents to avoid paying for insurance. Virginia plates have become a familiar sight on the vehicles of people who live in Maryland, as Virginia allowed drivers to just pay a $500 fee if they wanted to avoid paying for auto insurance, and also didn’t require people registering a car in Virginia to live in state. Across the Potomac, that’s a bargain, as the average premium for auto insurance in Maryland is a steep $2,496, and even higher in Baltimore. The Virginia loophole has been a longtime frustration for Maryland, as the state is losing millions in revenue to Virginia. The MVA worked with the Virginia DMV to identify 34,000 Maryland residents who are suspected to have used the loophole, and sent letters to those car owners — including 6,100 in Baltimore — to remind them to register in Maryland.

Daniel Zawodny, The Baltimore Banner

Births

China is in the midst of a baby bust, and has seen the nation’s fertility rate dip to an unsustainably low level to maintain its population. The shift from the one-child policy to the two-child policy in 2015 has now gone further, so much so that families are now being pressured to have three children. A stable population requires a 2.1 replacement rate. The average fertility rate of an advanced economy is 1.4, but the U.N.’s official estimate based on China’s census is that their fertility rate is 1.19 as of 2020. The problem is that the computing tends to focus on long-term trends, and China’s rate has been declining sharply, with many researchers putting the country’s fertility rate at closer to 1.0.

Liyan Qi, The Wall Street Journal

Mahomes

Since 2001, there have been 125 drives in the NFL postseason where it was at least the fourth quarter, there was under a minute left to play, and the team on offense trailed by seven points or fewer at the start. These are your standard clutch moments for a football team, the do-or-die drives that win and lose critical games. Out of those 125 drives, only 40 percent of them saw the team on offense pull off the magic trick and get the points they needed. Some quarterbacks are pretty good at it, such as Tom Brady, who went 5-for-11 (46 percent), or Drew Brees, who went 3-for-6 (50 percent). Only Patrick Mahomes, though, is 7-for-7, or perfect, in those dire situations.

Neil Paine, Neil’s Substack

Cows

There were 87.2 million head of cattle in the United States as of the start of this year, down 1.6 million from the previous year, and the fewest cows on record of any January head count going all the way back to the 82.08 million logged in 1951. This follows ranchers selling off their herds amid serious drought pressure. That said, the number of cattle at feedlots in the U.S. is up 2 percent year over year, which should at the very least delay high prices for beef to come. The concern is that given the current state of cattle herds — and calf numbers that are the lowest on record since 1948 — beef prices are poised to spike in 2024 or 2025.

Nathan Owens, Food Dive

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