Cruise Ship Olympians, A Train Derailing Teen Derailing And Very Bad Viral Airplane Napping Hack In This Week's Beyond Cars Roundup

A California woman is suing JetBlue, claiming the airline’s refusal to allow her emotional support dog to accompany her last year led to a resurgence in her Stage 4 cancer. According to the lawsuit, the woman and her husband claim JetBlue also violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when a crew member kicked them off the flight, forcing them to scramble to find a new way home, the Independent reports. - Collin Woodard Read More

A teenager from Nebraska is facing two felony charges amid accusations that they purposefully caused a train to derail. The teen, who has not been named by authorities, is accused of tampering with train tracks and causing a crash so that they could film it and post the footage online. - Owen Bellwood Read More

Sovereign Citizens are a zany bunch who think the Constitution allows them to live free of laws, including driving without a driver’s licenses or registration. You don’t want to share the roads with such drivers, but a pilot in Alaska is making these same arguments this week about his lack of pilot’s license or aircraft registration. - Erin Marquis Read More

Paris 2024, officially known as the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, kicked off to great fanfare over the weekend. One of the games this round isn’t based in Paris at all, however, mostly due to the area’s lack of gnarly swells. The surf competition, added to the Olympiad schedule in 2020, is taking place down in Teahupo’o, and all of the competitors were given luxury cruise ship accommodations for the proceedings. The Auanui 5, shown above, is anchored just offshore, and features 100 cabins and eight guest decks to fit up to 230 passengers. To keep the athletes in physical tip-top, it features a spa and a gym, the Associated Press reports: - Bradley Brownell Read More

Cargo ships are pretty enormous, so you’d have thought that they’d be easy things to miss when you’re sailing the seven seas. That didn’t stop the captain of one massive ship from clipping another huge vessel at anchor, however, as this dramatic footage shows. - Owen Bellwood Read More

So called travel hacker clout chasers on TikTok are making air travel more dangerous for themselves and more annoying for their fellow travelers with this viral napping hack. Petite young women are sitting with their feet on the seat like a bored toddler at the dinner table, and wrapping the seatbelt around their shins so they can nap head-on-knees style. Airline seatbelts are in place to keep you safe during turbulent air, and an abrupt jolt upward or forward could snap a tiny ankle like a dry twig. - Bradley Brownell Read More

A flight between Houston and Boston was forced to divert to Washington D.C. on Sunday after a described “biohazard” situation. The carrier claims the incident was sparked by a passenger experiencing a medical emergency. A United Airline’s cabin crew is expected to assist sick customers, but what happens when they’re the ones puking all over the aircraft? - Ryan Erik King Read More

When someone mentions “motorcycle school,” your first thought is probably of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Basic RiderCourse — the weekend-long training that gets you a shiny new M endorsement on your license. It’s a good course, a useful course, but it’s only the start. Where do you go from there? - Amber DaSilva Read More

In the years leading up to the 2024 Olympics, Paris wasted no time making the city more people-friendly. It added more than 600 miles of bike lanes, planted 65,000 trees, created hundreds of pedestrian plazas, invested in light rail and returned streets to the people. The same year the International Olympic Committee chose Paris to host the 2024 games, it also chose Los Angeles to host the 2028 games. Even with four years remaining, as Dwell points out, it doesn’t look like LA is going to see similar sweeping changes. - Collin Woodard Read More

There’s an awful lot of junk floating around in space, with recent estimates suggesting there could be more than 25,000 objects in orbit around the Earth right now. We don’t often get to see this junk up close to find out how a lifetime in space affects man-made objects, until now. - Owen Bellwood Read More