*The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to make sure people wear their seatbelts and are turning to automakers for ideas. Among the suggestions: Cut off the stereo, air conditioning, and other accessories until the belts are snapped. That one was rejected.
*New York state has not allowed pickups with open beds to be registered as passenger vehicles on its state parkways. Pickups have had to display commercial license plates unless they had camper tops or related mods. But now there's a proposal floating around that would give passenger plates to pickups so long as they're free of business advertising and have an unloaded bed weight of less than 5,000 pounds. An F-150 would qualify, for example, but a Super Duty wouldn't.
To voice your support of or objection to a cause, visit Congress.org, a Web site that will help you contact your state rep. You can also check out the Bureau of Land Management (www.blm.gov) for information on this land that's your land.