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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) points out that hot weather can be especially hazardous for drivers who have cars with under-inflated tires. The hot asphalt can make the tires blow out. The problem arises when tires touch the hot road, creating friction that builds up heat.

According to a tire industry survey conducted this year, 85 percent of drivers fail to properly check tire pressure. NHTSA estimates that crashes related to tire problems injure about 33,000 people per year and claim approximately 660 lives.

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Pedestrian Fatalities On the Rise

It's hard to say what is causing a spike in pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco, but it is worth a look to see if it is happening everywhere.

Pedestrian deaths recently rose in South Carolina, New York City and Utah. Last year, however, pedestrian deaths nationwide fell by a few percentage points, according to preliminary data recently released by the Annual Assessment of Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes and Injuries.

Maybe the problem occurs more frequently in areas where people regularly travel on foot, on bikes, on scooters or on skateboards. Maybe it is that people are distracted by cellphones and iPods.

Here are some questions to consider:

• What can be done to make crosswalks safer? Most pedestrian deaths occur here.

• Do speed bumps make streets safer for pedestrians? I have heard some fire and rescue departments complain that speed bumps slow down response times.

• Is there anything that can be done to "calm" traffic? Advocates for change say yes.

There may even be a way to reduce pedestrian fatalities by redesigning cars. BusinessWeek reports:

Every year an estimated 780,000 pedestrians die worldwide in automobile accidents -- that's 65% of total automobile related fatalities. This tragic level of pedestrian injuries affects the GDP of countries by 1-3% and exceeds malnutrition, war, and stomach cancer as an international cause of death. With a forecast of 60 million further injuries and six million deaths over the next decade in developing countries, car manufacturers like Nissan are investing in ways to curb this trend such as the "pop-up hood" -- a safety measure to be introduced for the first time in the the Skyline coupe scheduled for release in Japan this year.

Eighty percent of serious pedestrian injuries caused by automobile collisions are head injuries. Of these head injuries, almost all are caused by the pedestrian's initial impact with the hood of the car. The concept of the pop-up hood is to create a buffer space between the hood and the engine, thereby decreasing the impact of the most drastic, and most common, cause of pedestrian injury and death. The British Medical Journal found that a 10cm gap greatly decelerates the pedestrian -- and predicts that when combined with other safety measures and restrictions, this could help to decrease the fatality rate by 20%.

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The Quinceañera Craze

My guess is that most non-Hispanics have never heard of a quinceañera. But among Hispanics, it is big and growing. About 350,000 Latina girls turning 15 this year will celebrate this is rite of passage of sorts. Some families are spending tons of money on the bash that marks the occasion.

NPR did a nice piece on this topic recently.

Slate says:

The story continues:

Many immigrant mothers never had a quince—their families may have been too poor, or upon coming to this country wanted to avoid seeming too ethnic—yet regard it as de rigueur for their daughters. "It's just something that ... we want to give to our children because it's something we never had," one unemployed carpenter tells Alvarez, explaining why, though he lives in a rented apartment with a crowd of relatives, he spent thousands on a quinceañera for his daughter, who offers this interpretation of its significance: "I'm going from being a girl to being a woman."

The girl's mother crowns her with a tiara, while the father gives the girl heeled shoes to replace the flats of childhood. The girl enters the ceremony carrying her last doll of childhood. There is a religious ceremony, during which the girl is often accompanied by a court of 14 couples.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.