If you have it in your mind to steal a coach bus to make up for holiday expenditures, make sure it's not a Greyhound. Beyond the prospect of a beheading, the company can shut your joyride down from Greyhound HQ.
The revelation popped up when one fellow tried to make a run for his pal's place in Syracuse via busjacking. All was going well until "Greyhound disabled the wayward coach electronically," the NY Daily News reports. Cool! But also, what? It's nice to know Greyhound could stop a hijacking in the unlikely event that a terrorist plans to ram a dingy bus into a nuclear plant or something, but the fact that it can remotely stop one of its vehicle in transit is a little disconcerting. Doesn't this seem highly dangerous? What if a coach were killed by accident? Our call to Greyhound corporate hasn't been returned. [NYDN via NY Mag]
Update: Greyhound called us back to say their remote kill mechanism, which tracks each vehicle via GPS, brings an out of control bus to a gradual stop with a warning that the engine is decelerating.