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gps tracking devices
offbeat news
Swiss Group Attempts To Ban Just About Anything With An Engine And Wheels
Swiss hippies involved in The Young Green Party have collected 120,000 signatures to validate legislation aimed at banning SUVs, off-road vehicles and sports cars. The referendum on the topic will be held within 18 months and, as far as we can tell, is the most anti-fun, anti-free-market steaming pile of proposal ever considered. This, of course, would be a terrible blow for the likes of Swiss tuners Rinspeed, who build cars pretty much strictly from that list. More »
road rage
Are You A Sidezoomer, Lineupper, Ersatz Exit-Laner, Or Vigilante?
Anyone who's done any driving around the San Francisco Bay Area will likely flinch at the mention of the dreaded Caldecott Tunnel, whose crazy merges and direction-changes provide the perfect petri dish for growing cultures of bad driver behavior. Cynthia Gorney has written a humorous (yet deadly accurate) piece describing the different ways in which drivers deal with the Caldecott. I freely admit to being a Caldecott Vigilante; I know it's bad, but I must punish the wrongdoers (even though one of them will probably start busting caps at me for it). Since it's Monday, let's have a poll; make the jump to cast your vote. [New York Times] More »
news
MIT-Developed "Aware Car" Rats Out Older Drivers
The
gadgets
Anti-Sleep Driving Alarm Shuns Tilted Heads
There's been some pretty high-tech solutions to the on-going problem of sleeping drivers, but this device tries to simply the process. The Anti-Sleep Driving Alarm is an alarm worn around the ear. If it senses the head tilting 30 degrees or more it will sound a high-pitched alarm. It's as simple as that. The funny part is how this product is being marketed. More »
classic ad watch
Goodyear Polyglas Tires Help Stereotypical Women Drivers
This commercial aired during the first Monday Night Football game in 1970 and proves just what everyone already knew: women can't drive worth a damn and need exceptional tires to compensate for the lack of driving ability. Of course, the woman in the video has to deal with construction, bumpy roads, detours and more while picking up her manly husband from the airport after a very long and manly business trip. It kind of reminds us of the shower scene from Psycho, which is fairly accurate given a woman behind the wheel was like being murdered, at least in the 1970s. [Youtube] (Thanks, Sugi)
safety
Captain Obvious Of The Day: Teens Think They're Good Drivers, Like Loud Music
A recent study by Erie Insurance points out a lot of factors that anyone under the age of 60 probably already knows. The insurance company conducted a study surveying 2,127 licensed teenage drivers and came to the shocking conclusion that teens like to talk on the phone, text message and listen to loud music while driving. More »
gadgets
Who needs wife when you can have a tiny box with three LEDs constantly judging your driving? The U.K. military has begun testing a program that will monitor driving habits of its personnel. Installed in 200 vehicles is a system from Greenroad Technologies. It uses a green, yellow and red LEDs to rate your driving based on a memory of 120 different maneuvers.
More »
Road Safety Monitors Judge Your Driving Automatically
Who needs wife when you can have a tiny box with three LEDs constantly judging your driving? The U.K. military has begun testing a program that will monitor driving habits of its personnel. Installed in 200 vehicles is a system from Greenroad Technologies. It uses a green, yellow and red LEDs to rate your driving based on a memory of 120 different maneuvers.
More »
top gear
Top Gear's Stig: Man Not Machine?
Some say he's a space alien, a specialized robot, or a secret genetics experiment. All we know is that he's a very talented driver who has a very mysterious identity. Until now. This new photo that has surfaced clearly shows a man behind the mask. So he's human after all. But which human?More »
government
REAL ID, Really: Secure Driver's License Rule Changes Proposed
It's called the REAL ID Act, and supporters claim it's a law designed to make it harder and more frustrating for terrorists and con artists to get government-issued ID. The Feds have spent the past couple of years working on all the deets, and now they've got 'em some rules which apparently they'll be looking to unveil today. As we'd expect, the ACLU's got some issues with it, declaring "REAL ID amounts to the "first-ever national identity card system," which "would irreparably damage the fabric of American life..." But yesterday DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff strangely responded to reporters:"We worked very closely with the states in terms of developing a plan that I think will be inexpensive, reasonable to implement and produce the results," he said. "This is a win-win. As long as people use driver's licenses to identify themselves for whatever reason there's no reason for those licenses to be easily counterfeited or tampered with."Yeah, well some people don't use driver's licenses to just identify themselves — sometimes they use them to identify themselves as other people for nefarious purposes — isn't that why the Feds were proposing a new ID system? We're big fans of civil liberties and state's rights 'round these here parts in case you haven't noticed — and a couple of the provisions stick in our craw a bit. The details of how DHS wants to stop pretending and start getting REAL are below the jump. More »
offbeat news
In Mother Russia, Lada Stops Concrete Walls!
The post on Russian satellite navigation standards earlier this morning made us remember to check out our favorite site filled with all sorts of borscht. How could we forget to head over to English Russia, the only web site where we're able to find pictures of a Lada going straight through a brick wall with the only explanation for why being:More »
offbeat news
Police Pulling Over Good Drivers For Christmas, Spreading Cheer and Fear
Because real police work takes a lot of effort, cops in Rancho Cordova, California are pulling over people for good driving and giving them $5 Starbucks gift cards donated by local businesses. The idea came from a traffic cop who wanted to "promote the holiday spirit and enhance goodwill between the traffic unit and the motoring public." What if you don't like Starbucks coffee? Prepared to get tased, bro. It's a White Mocha Frap or a few thousand volts. African American community leaders applaud the effort as they'll be happy to see white people get pulled over despite doing nothing wrong for a change. More »
news
Mercedes-Benz System Warns Driver: "Dieter, You Are Sleepy... And Sorrowful"
As part of a partnership with Red Bull—not really—Mercedes-Benz is developing a system that can determine whether a driver is restless or sleepy. We've seen a lot of similar systems in the past for drunk driving, but rarely hear about companies taking precautions against restless drivers, which can be just as dangerous as drunk drivers. More »
news
Only Half of Polish Adults Drive (Insert Punchline)
In Post-Soviet Poland, cars drive... there are... well a majority of people don't drive cars. Almost all of the Polish-Americans we know drive (and living in Chicago, there are a lot) . But according to pollster Estymator, only half of Polish adults still living in Poland engage in the ancient art of driving. The study also indicated that most of the drivers are men, with a mail-to-female ratio of 57/42. The most popular car, making up approximately 25% of the total, is the Fiat 126, also known as the Maluch. A breakdown of the study's findings below the jump: More »
former fat kids of the world unite!
I am a former fat kid. Yes, that's right, an FFK. Not to make things too personal here, but because of that I'm not so much a fan of McDonald's. Which is why I perked up to one of the promo pieces CNBC's got running for a special taking viewers "Inside the McDonald's Empire" tonight at 9 PM. The piece catching our eye was this one for the service provided to bus drivers who bring their buses into a McDonald's inDarian Darien, CT. The drivers get their bus cleaned, they don't wait in line and often they don't even pay for their McMeal. Wonderful. Thank you bus tour drivers of Darian, CT — thank you for helping make your riders get more and more fat. I'm so upset I'm going to run over and grab a sack of the new one-third pound burgers and shovel them down my throat until the fat overload makes me feel better.
Connecticut Bus Drivers Should Be Thanked For Fattening Up Their Riders
I am a former fat kid. Yes, that's right, an FFK. Not to make things too personal here, but because of that I'm not so much a fan of McDonald's. Which is why I perked up to one of the promo pieces CNBC's got running for a special taking viewers "Inside the McDonald's Empire" tonight at 9 PM. The piece catching our eye was this one for the service provided to bus drivers who bring their buses into a McDonald's in
get my maepsy home unscathed!
The Grim Life Of Korean Designated Drivers
We've all heard about various services that let folks who've swilled a few too many Everclear-and-Hawaiian-Punch cocktails dial a number and have a sober driver show up to drive them home in their own cars (Top Gear has documented such a service in London, for example). However, the South Korean version of this service has the nation's 100,000 rent-a-designated-driver employees toiling in a Dickensian world of belligerent customers, rides hitched home from edge-city truck stops, and general harshness. The whole thing sounds like good material for a plaintive country song, Korean style.Drinkers in Korea Dial for Designated Drivers [New York Times]
Related:
Booze-Induced Drivin' Confidence Through The Ages [internal]
novelties
Getaway Drivers: Real-Life Transporters for Hire?
"We will not cater to you and serve you wineand food. We will pick you up from any location, under any circumstance, and get you safely to your destination as fast as possible, without "capture."
— Text on Getaway Drivers Web site More »
