Free Republic

Portion of I-95 to remain closed for several days after tractor-trailer carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline explodes into massive inferno

Anti-Israel protesters blocked a roadway to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport early Monday, causing extreme frustration and a snarl of traffic. To block the flow of traffic, protesters sat down in the middle of Interstate 190 with their arms interlocked and used “long tubes” to keep cars from going into the airport, the New York Post reported. Anti-Israel protesters block highway outside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport https://t.co/wLlBm69Nua pic.twitter.com/Ia7OGVagYw — New York Post (@nypost) April 15, 2024 Another group was seen walking around in the middle of a roadway near a sign that read “Your Tax $ Funds Genocide.” The protesters were...

Multiple lanes were blocked on the Memphis-Arkansas I-40 bridge during a pro-Palestinian protest that began at Memphis City Hall on Saturday. Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) cameras revealed a large crowd with traffic completely stopped behind them for some time. As of around 4:30 p.m. these cameras reveal now that some traffic is moving again. Additionally, the I-55 bridge was closed by TDOT for construction during the weekend. The protest began at city hall by organization Memphis Voices for Palestine "in light of the recent ruling by the International Criminal Court," that stated "plausible evidence of genocide happening in Gaza...

New York City Councilman Yusef Salaam is facing calls to step down as head of the council’s influential public safety committee after a controversial traffic stop revealed he was motoring around the Big Apple with out-of-state license plates and allegedly illegal tinted windows. Salaam is also taking heat with claims he embellished his Friday night encounter with an NYPD cop in Harlem, during which the officer pulled him over for the tinted windows but cut him a break when the lawmaker ID’d himself. “This is damning,” City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) said in a post on X. “An elected official...

It’s no joke. Humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon disappear from highways and freeways across the country. The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has given states two years to implement all the changes outlined in its new 1,100-page manual released last month, including rules that spells out how signs and other traffic control devices are regulated. Administration officials said overhead electronic signs with obscure meanings, references to pop culture or those intended to be funny will be banned in 2026 because they can be misunderstood or distracting to drivers. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department...

New Yorkers can only dream about the thrill of the open road as a new survey reveals they spend more of their lives stuck in traffic than drivers anywhere in the US. **SNIP** New York has increased its unwanted lead since last year and the findings were released just hours after New York's Traffic Mobility Review Board released its congestion pricing plan that could see drivers slapped with extra fees of up to $36. Drivers of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks would be charged $15 a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Small trucks would be charged $24, commercial...

Commuters in Los Angeles are bracing for an all-day traffic nightmare after one of the nation's busiest freeways was shut down indefinitely by a massive fire that erupted over the weekend in a storage yard underneath the normally congested artery. The 10 Freeway, traversed by more than 300,000 drivers daily, remained closed in both directions as authorities suggested a series of detours and announced there is no timeline on when the thoroughfare through downtown Los Angeles will reopen. "As we made clear yesterday, this was a huge fire and the damage will not be fixed in an instant," Los Angeles...

It's been two years since Google first debuted Project Green Light, a novel means of addressing the street-level pollution caused by vehicles idling at stop lights. At its Sustainability ‘23 event on Tuesday, the company discussed some of the early findings from that program and announced another wave of expansions for it. Green Light uses machine learning systems to comb through Maps data to calculate the amount of traffic congestion present at a given light, as well as the average wait times of vehicles stopped there. That information is then used to train AI models that can autonomously optimize the...

The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois. Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation,...

As more details emerge about what really happened in Maui, one thing is unmistakable: the government has completely surrendered its delegated charge as the guarantor of unalienable rights, and in its current form, it is wholly unsuited to have any sort of authoritative role. A report out yesterday at The Hill detailed that Maui residents fleeing the blaze were barricaded in by several road closures, established by local authorities; those who heeded the orders died, and those who didn’t, escaped the flames. From the article:Those who disobeyed the barricaded road closures during the Maui fires survived the disaster, while many...

An enraged motorist has been filmed assaulting a Just Stop Oil protester in London, after a “slow walk” protest blocking traffic reportedly caused a pregnant woman to crash her car. Video of the incident posted online by the controversial group showed a man in a red hat punching a protester and knocking him to the ground before kicking him in the head. The man is seen furiously arguing with another person who steps in to intervene, before returning to a damaged silver Mercedes with his distressed female companion. The car appears to have been struck on the rear driver’s side...

Interstate 95, the main roadway between the East Coast's two largest cities, New York City and Philadelphia, will be closed for months after a tanker fire caused a section to collapse, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Sunday.An elevated section of northbound lanes in northeast Philadelphia collapsed, trapping the tanker truck and whoever was inside beneath 500 tons of concrete, steel and rubble, about 6:20 a.m., Shapiro said at a news conference.He called the scene “a remarkably devastating site.”Corresponding elevated southbound lanes were found to lack structural integrity, prompting closure of the entire freeway, he said.No deaths or injuries were reported,...

Newly released bodycam footage shows accused killer Bryan Kohberger quibbling with a Washington State University Police officer during a traffic stop about a month before he allegedly slaughtered four University of Idaho students. The October 2022 traffic stop was released by WSU police on Thursday along with a number of previously sealed documents offering a new glimpse into the life of the alleged quadruple murderer. The video, obtained by Fox News, shows a female police officer approach Kohberger’s driver side of his white Hyundai Elantra and tell him that he ran a red light.

BERLIN — German climate activists tried bringing traffic to a standstill in Berlin on Monday morning by gluing themselves to streets all over the capital. Members of the group Last Generation have repeatedly blocked roads across Germany in the past year in an effort to pressure the government to take more drastic action against climate change. On several occasions, they have glued themselves to the roads, enraging some motorists and prompting accusations of extremism from conservative politicians. In addition to the road blocks, the activists said Monday they would also block traffic by marching very slowly through the city later...

More than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are urging the Department of Transportation to condemn the “unjust and discriminatory status quo” of traffic enforcement and implement reforms that will reduce racial inequities in traffic stops. In a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 27 members of the CBC, including Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), expressed a “grave concern for the wellbeing of Black drivers.” HOUSE Congressional Black Caucus presses Buttigieg to reform ‘racist traffic enforcement’ BY CHEYANNE M. DANIELS - 04/10/23 2:55 PM ET SHARE TWEET...

A recent college graduate in Utah was shot several times by police during a traffic stop in early March after officers allegedly saw him reaching for a gun, body camera video shows. Farmington, Utah, police department officers stopped 25-year-old Chase Allan after seeing an illegitimate license plate on the BMW car he was driving at 3:22 p.m. on March 1. Police Chief Eric Johnsen released body camera video relating to the incident on Wednesday. When the police officer told Allan that he was being stopped because there was no registration on the car, Allan said, "I don't need registration and...

A large liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Grace Emilia ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Wednesday. Local media reports the shipping traffic is unaffected as the incident took place in a southern section of the canal where a second channel allows for ships to bypass the blockage. AIS data from Vesselfinder (below) showed four tugboats working to move the 293-m-long vessel. Equasis lists the 2021-built 174,000 cu m ship, which entered the canal early Wednesday morning, as owned by Japan’s NYK. The latest incident comes just three weeks after the bulker Glory bound for China carrying 66,000 mt of...

Katrina Boyle filmed her son-in-law, Will Thornton, as he stepped in to help a marsupial crossing the Gold Coast Highway in Burleigh Heads, Queensland.

One look at this video, and you might think this Wyoming trooper made a wrong turn and ended up in Antarctica. That wasn’t the case, but one might disagree after Wednesday’s wild weather day in southeastern Wyoming. A dangerous blizzard has begun its intensification into a soon-to-be bomb cyclone Thursday as it wallops the Midwest and Great Lakes, with damaging winds also eyeing the East Coast and contributing to a travel nightmare for millions ahead of the Christmas holiday weekend. The National Weather Service in Cheyenne said their record 1-hour temperature drop Wednesday saw a 51-degree plummet. The temperature went...

While we wait for an official inquiry into the possible correlation between the COVID vaccine and sudden death syndrome, a more pressing COVID-related probe was recently taken on by a group of Canadians whose research linked vaccine hesitancy with a high likelihood of — are you ready? — traffic accidents.Research studies are fine, but making a statistical correlation between COVID vaccination and car accidents is about as convincing to the sane as blaming Amtrak derailments on people with toenail fungus or oil spills on tinnitus. What next? Vaccine status will dictate who gets a driver's license? Yup.Published this month in...