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Laws against jaywalking are there to protect people from automobiles, but that’s a relatively new concept in the long history of roads. A hundred years ago, pedestrians had the same right to use the streets as cars (or horses, for that matter). When a person on foot was killed by the newfangled automobiles, it was always assumed to be the driver’s fault.
“If you ask people today what a street is for, they will say cars,” says Norton. “That’s practically the opposite of what they would have said 100 years ago.”
Streets back then were vibrant places with a multitude of users and uses. When the automobile first showed up, Norton says, it was seen as an intruder and a menace. Editorial cartoons regularly depicted the Grim Reaper behind the wheel. That image persisted well into the 1920s.
Today, livable streets advocates such as New York’s Transportation Alternatives spend a lot of time and energy trying to get people to take pedestrian fatalities seriously. But at the beginning of the 20th century, traffic deaths – particularly the deaths of children – drew enormous attention.
“If a child is struck and killed by a car in 2012, it is treated as a private loss, to be grieved privately by the family,” Norton says. “Before, this stuff was treated as a public loss – much like the death of soldiers.” Mayors dedicated monuments to the victims of traffic crimes, accompanied by marching bands and children dressed in white, carrying flowers.
So what happened that relegated pedestrians to the sidewalks and cross walks? The turning point was a public relations battle over a referendum in Cincinnati. Read what happened at The Atlantic Cities. Link -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Flickr user Jay Wilson)
These wire mesh works by Chinese artist Shi Jindian may look like the wireframe view of a 3d object, or some sort of digital art projection, but these fantastically fine sculptures are the real deal, and they’re constructed inch by inch from woven mesh.
Here’s more on the process:
Shi Jindian process involves wrapping the wires around every square inch of the object and then carefully removing or destroying the object, leaving only its wire mesh skeleton
It’s amazing how much detail Shi put into each piece, and the look of each object must change a bit depending on the direction the viewer is facing. Nicely wired indeed!
Link –via Beautiful/Decay
For many years, I “knew” that the Volkswagen was invented by Ferdinand Porsche. But the story is actually much more complicated. In 1923, long before auto companies were competing to offer Hitler a “people’s car” (Volkswagen), Josef Ganz was working on a design for a small, beetle-shaped car. By 1930 he had a prototype, and by 1933 a manufacturer was making Ganz’s Standard Superior model pictured here.
Hitler by then was determined to support the development of a Volkswagen for the German people. Having found no cooperation amongst the big car manufacturers, an independent development consortium was created, led by Ferdinand Porsche. As a Jew, Josef Ganz was an impossible choice. Porsche was now set the task to design a people’s car for 1,000 Reichsmark – a maximum selling price propagated by Ganz in Motor-Kritik.
The Nazis made sure that any Jewish connections to the Volkswagen were erased from history. They banned Ganz from publishing, as well as the entire German press from publishing anything about him. Overnight the name Josef Ganz disappeared from the German motoring scene.
You can read the story of Josef Ganz and his auto designs at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
Now that's a deterrent! By the way, Moosejaw is a clothing company, so the sign is ironic as well. Via Accordion Guy.
Shelter dog Roosevelt was born with deformed front legs, which made running around impossible for the poor little guy until his new owner Stephanie created this wheelchair rig for him.
Now Roosevelt likes to take his wheels off road, tearing it up and playing like a pup again.
Here’s an inspiring word from his owner:
The only difference between Roosevelt and other dogs is that instead of a collar I snap on his wheels to take him out. … People think he should have been put down because they think he’s suffering. But he wakes up happy every day. If you had a child with a disability you’d try to enrich them, give them opportunities. So why not do the same with a dog?
Roosevelt has a sweet set of wheels, and a pretty sweet owner in Stephanie as well. Not bad for a dog considered by some to be destined for euthanasia, eh?!
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Nick Latimer is Baxi, a piggyback transportation company that offers the public a service which is both awkward and embarrassing, and he wants to tote you around Toronto for a fee.
Or maybe he’s doing it all to promote his indie flick Hogtown, which is about a Baxi turned serial killer. It’s definitely an original way to get the word out about your film! I wonder how many people actually took a ride on Nick’s back?
Pining for a Volkswagen Camper but can't afford those cute Westfalia Campers? Well, you can still sleep in style with this retro-cool VW Camper Van Tent. Remember, if the van's a rockin' ... the tent pole's snapped! Link
Anyone who wears a bike helmet while riding knows there aren’t a lot of choices available in terms of style.
The main reason behind this lack of style is safety, as traditional plastic and foam helmets have always been considered the safest bet for protecting your skull.
Coyle Design and Build wants to change that misconception, with the introduction of safety helmets made out of sustainable woods, such as Maple and Oak, with a cork lining.
They carry the same safety rating as traditional helmets, yet have a unique style due to the natural pattern of wood grain, which means no two helmets will look alike.
And while the price tag is still a bit steep (around $350), they’ll definitely make you the most stylish, and eco-friendly, biker on the road.
Bad:
Stealing gas
Worse: Stealing gas from a police car
Neatorama-worthy: Stealing gas from a police car, and
posting a photo of the crime in progress on Facebook!
Michael Baker, 20, was swiping the gas last month from a Jenkins Police Department squad car, he made sure to flip the bird as his girlfriend snapped a picture.
While the siphoning photo has been removed from his Facebook page, Baker yesterday updated his 380 friends on his legal problems. “just got out of jail,” he wrote in one post, adding later that “yea lol i went too jail over facebook.” Responding to a friend who had not seen the image before it was yanked, Baker assured, “yea lol u would just have to seen it it was funny as hell tho.”
See the photo in its full uncropped glory over at The Smoking Gun: Link
The electric scooters that deliver from Domino’s Pizza in the Netherlands are almost silent. That makes them potentially dangerous because, like ninjas, you can’t hear them coming. So speakers on the scooters emit appropriate, if delightfully amateurish sound effects.
-via The Presurfer
Relax,
said Matt Soniak of mental_floss, the engineers have actually thought of
this possibility and designed the gas pump accordingly:
Rest assured that you won’t be causing any fireballs or explosions. The hose that attaches the nozzle to the gas pump is designed to break into two pieces when a certain amount of force is applied to it. Next time you’re at the gas station, check the hose for a metal coupling. That’s the break-away point. Once the hose is broken and you’re off on your merry way, check valves in the hose keep fuel from leaking out and creating a hazard.
The financial hazards, however, may still sting you at the wallet: Link
I
didn't do it, officer, and I can prove it ... with math!
UC San Diego physicist Dmitri Kriokov fought his $400 traffic ticket (for runing a stop sign) and won, with this physics paper titled "The Proof of Innocence [pdf]," which he posted to arXiv:
After thinking Krioukov ran through a stop sign, a nearby police officer pulled him over and issued him a citation. According to Krioukov's paper, however, three physical phenomena combined at just the right time and misled the officer.
When Krioukov drove toward the stop sign the police officer was approximating Krioukov's angular velocity instead of his linear velocity. This happens when we try to estimate the speed of a passing object, and the effect is more pronounced for faster objects.
Trains, for instance, appear to be moving very slowly when they are far away, but they speed past when they finally reach us. Despite these two different observations at different distances, the train maintains a roughly constant velocity throughout its trip.
In Krioukov's case, the police cruiser was situated about 100 feet away from a perpendicular intersection with a stop sign. Consequently, a car approaching the intersection with constant linear velocity will rapidly increase in angular velocity from the police officer's perspective.
Physics - Is there anything it can't do? Link
Now that's smart advertising in 140 characters or less: smart Argentina created an ad with ASCII animation in its Twitter page. Each tweet is an animation frame (you can hit "J" on your keyboard to scroll down): Link - via Notcot
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Got
potholes? Forget waiting around for 5 road workers to stand around and watch
while one guy fills the pothole with asphalt! Just grab a bit of non-Newtonian
fluid and, there - you fixed it:
The students, undergraduates at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, devised the idea as part of an engineering contest sponsored by the French materials company Saint-Gobain—and took first prize last week. The objective was to use simple materials to create a novel product.
"So we were putzing around with different ideas and things we wanted to work with—and we were like, what's a common, everyday problem all around the world that everybody hates?" explains 21-year-old team member Curtis Obert. "And we landed on potholes." He and four other students decided on a non-Newtonian fluid as a solution because of its unusual physical properties. "When there's no force being applied to it, it flows like a liquid does and fills in the holes," says Obert, "but when it gets run over, it acts like a solid."
What? Don't believe us? Check out this video clip of people walking on water in a pool filled with non-Newtonian liquid.
Taking a trip to Las Vegas can result in gamblers losing the shirt right off their back at the game tables, and that feeling of loss often leads to bouts of binge drinking and self loathing.
Good thing the Hangover Heaven buses have come to town! Equipped with IV drip dispensers and a soothing air conditioned atmosphere, Hangover Heaven is both the result of, and answer to, Sin City’s excessive lifestyle.
So don’t be afraid to drink up when you visit the Vegas Strip, because the Hangover Heaven will pick you up off the floor and put you back on your feet again!
You know you’ve seen some stuff go down on the subway when you don’t even bother to stop eating a bag of chips when a fight erupts right in front of you.
You’re officially the Fonzi of snack food when you break up a fight while keeping a cool head and continuing to chomp down on said chips. I smell an endorsement deal in this guy’s future!
(NSFW due to coarse language)
–via Best Week Ever
Beep beep! Volpe, a mini-car from Italy, brings new meaning to the phrase "driving to the office." It's small enough that you can actually drive it into the elevator, straight to your office door! Link - via We Interrupt
In Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 Japanese anime classic Akira, Shotaro Kaneda rides a very sweet and very fictional custom motorcycle. Well, Masashi Teshima decided to rectify that last part: he spent more than 7 years and $120,000 to bring Kaneda's motorcycle from the pages of the famous manga series into reality.
Behold, the real life Akira Motorcycle over at Nerd Approved: LinkThis 1944 American newsreel shows the US Army’s “Super Jeep”. It was a rare extended-body jeep that could carry ten men. According to the newsreader, it was designed for shore patrol and was capable of traversing more rugged terrain than the standard jeep.
-via Jalopnik
Either the owner of this car is in a competition to see who can eat the most McDonald’s, they’re trying to build a passenger out of used fast food wrappers so they can drive in the carpool lane, or they’re starring in a new reality show called Car Hoarders. Whatever the case, this person obviously knows how to live the high life!
I bet there’s a Burger King party happening in the back seat, and the two are kept separate so another Burger War doesn’t take place between the Brits and the good ol’ U.S. of A. Go Team Ronald!
The old “Do Not Enter” sign just didn’t do the trick. You have to wonder how many problems they had before deciding to post a sign to spell it out for everyone. Then again, if people using GPS don’t read signs, will this help at all? Link
Passenger: Don’t drive through the water! You don’t know how deep it is!
Driver: This is a Land Cruiser -we’ll drive right through along the bottom, mate.
Passenger: But what if it floats instead?
Driver: No worries, the engine will just shift into jet mode.
Do not try this at home. Or anywhere else. -via Everlasting Blort
Before you put a sticker on your car, consider the worst thing that could possibly happen -an auto accident. And then consider that if you make the news, people will read your bumper sticker. It happened in Manhattan.
A driver who crashed and flipped on the FDR Drive yesterday might want to consider retiring his bumper sticker, which reads: “Why am I the only one on the planet who knows how to drive?”
It was seen on the rear bumper of this Nissan Altima. which lost a high-speed battle with a guardrail in a northbound lane at East 71st Street at 9 a.m.
No other cars were involved.
The unnamed driver was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Link -via Arbroath
Be assured that the tractor did not originally go as fast as the video does. This pleasant taste of country living is accompanied by the music created for the South Park “Jewelry Polka” sequence. Which will be in your head the rest of the day. -via reddit
If you’re going to drive in Mumbai, you’ll have to be tough. And you’ll have to drive a car that will endure the challenges of that city’s roads and traffic. Mumbai drivers, apparently, honk their horns a lot. Enough that standard car horns on European cars aren’t up the job.
That’s why German carmaker Audi has drastically raised its standards for car horns built for export to India. Audi representative Michael Perschke explained:
“You take a European horn and it will be gone in a week or two. With the amount of honking in Mumbai, we do on a daily basis what an average German does annually.”
Perschke said the horns are specially adapted for driving conditions in India, a booming market where Audi is one of many foreign car brands competing for increasingly wealthy customers.
“The horn is tested differently – with two continuous weeks of only honking, the setting of the horn is different, with different suppliers,” he said.
Can anyone who has been to Mumbai confirm what this article says about the use of car horns in that city?
Link -via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Flickr user rickbradley
His name is Taxi Dave, he drives the Party Cab between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., and he’s a one man mobile paaar-tay in Sacramento, CA!
Watch him strut and sway his way across the parking lot, performing the Taxi Dave Dance in order to attract new customers. Party Cab is in the house tonight indeed!
–via Videogum
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Photo: Rosemary Tierney/ABC News
Sometimes, the headlines just write themselves. Here's what happened when the kaBOOM bus actually did go kaboom:
LinkThe 45-seat kaBOOM party bus was on its way to collect schoolchildren for an excursion when a tyre burst, near Mallala on Adelaide's northern outskirts.
The driver managed to pull over safely and was attempting to change the tyre when fire erupted.
Country Fire Service crews took half an hour to put out the blaze, which destroyed the bus which had a KABOOM1 numberplate.
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When you’re looking for a vehicle that epitomizes the Jurassic era, look no further than the Volkswagen beetle!
Created by the Mutoid Waste Co. for the Beautiful Days festival in Devon, this guy would be scary if he could walk faster than my grandma.
Thankfully, this guy isn’t going anywhere except straight into my dinosaur scrapbook.
Gypsies are known for being very colorful people, and their traveling wagon homes reflect their flair for style, and help them stand out from the rest of the caravan.
It’s like Pimp My Ride from the old country, and most of them look like they come straight out of a fairy tale, except for the creepy shirtless guys hanging around everywhere.
Head over to Flavorwire and check out these gilded mobile homes for yourself, it may make you want to hit the road and live the life of a nomad.
Link –image credit: Lenora Genovese
Somewhere in Texas, there’s a tree that grows the most marvelous fruit: classic Volkswagen Beetles. It grows only one a year, but it’s worth the wait.
Hey, don’t act like that’s a weird thing to say. After all, ratchet screwdrivers grow on trees.
Link -via Colossal | Photo: Flickr user tipper
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