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Remember
your first time driving? For most Americans, nothing symbolizes freedom
more than the open road. But that's changing: for more and more teenagers,
freedom doesn't mean a fast car. It means a fast Internet:
If Ferris Bueller had a day off now, would he spend it on Facebook?
Recent research suggests many young Americans prefer to spend their money and time chatting to their friends online, as opposed to the more traditional pastime of cruising around in cars. [...]
But with money tight in many households, and the cost of gas and insurance soaring, some youngsters are having to choose between buying a car and owning the latest smartphone or tablet.
In a survey to be published later this year by Gartner, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would choose internet access over owning their own car. The figure is 15% among the baby boom generation, the people that grew up in the 1950s and 60s - seen as the golden age of American motoring.
Zappos certainly got in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday on Wednesday evening, they went ahead and paid all of the tolls for drivers heading through one section of the turnpike between 5-7 PM. While it was only a $1.50 savings per person, but certainly a great way to cheer people up as they headed home for the holiday weekend.
Link Via Consumerist
Image via Dan4th [Flickr]
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Starting December 1st, the Netherlands will be giving their drunk drivers a holiday gift. Drivers who have been pulled over with high blood alcohol content will be given “alcolocks” to install into their cars. The device acts as a breathalyzer that can keep an engine turned off.
The way the alcolock works is that the driver must first breathe into it to unlock the engine, and will have to repeat the same process at regular intervals during the journey.
If the mini-breathalyzer, which is fitted to the dashboard, indicates a blood alcohol level above the legal limit, the engine will not turn on.
The alcolocks will be installed for two years with a possible six-year extension if the driver continues to drink and drive. In the worst cases, the driver’s license will be revoked, and the driver will have to wait five years before he or she can take a new test.
About 200 people die every year because of drink-driving, Dutch media reported.
Link | Image Credit Felix Triller
I think the craziest road I ever drove on was the one lane, ocean-side freeway that hangs over California’s cliffs on the Coast Highway 101. While that got a little intense at parts, it was nothing compared to the terrifying roads seen in this Mental Floss article.
I hear there’s an extra joke in the music if you understand Portuguese. -via The Daily What
Even driving down the highway can be a virtual experience! With this Google Earth application, just enter your location and destination, hit “go” to find your route, then go to the simulator panel and hit “start.” You can adjust your speed as you drive along. Now, slow down and enjoy the scenery! Requires the Google Earth plug-in. The screenshot shown here is where I’m either getting on the Brooklyn Bridge or plunging into the East River. Link -via Metafilter
UPS saved a lot of money by eliminating left turns from its delivery routes. Would this practice be effective on a larger scale? At Smithsonian, Sarah Zielinski writes:
UPS minimizes left turns for its delivery trucks to save on fuel. (And it works, as the Mythbusters demonstrated last year.) In the 1960s, the state of Michigan designed an intersection known as the “Michigan left” that prevents people driving on side streets from making left turns onto a multi-laned divided road; if they wish to go left, they’ll first have to go right and then make a U-turn. And superstreets, or restricted crossing U-turns, which are found in some other parts of the country, such as North Carolina, work in a similar way, preventing left turns. It’s never really caught on, though, since it seems to be a big inconvenience.
However, a new study from North Carolina State University says that superstreets are actually more efficient than traditional intersections. The researchers collected data from three superstreets in North Carolina that had traffic lights and looked at travel time for both right and left turns as well as passing straight through. They also examined collision data from 13 superstreet intersections in that state that didn’t have traffic lights.
Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo by Flickr user taberandrew used under Creative Commons license
After allegations that some of Toyota’s cars get stuck accelerators, designers are taking a look at a 1990s Swedish design that never became popular. Sven Gustafsson’s invention was a single pedal that did both jobs. Masuyuki Naruse brought the invention to Japan years ago and has been trying to popularize it. It’s a superior approach to driving safety, according to psychology and engineering expert Katsuya Matsunaga:
“Simply speaking, the conventional pedal setup, which forces drivers to switch back and forth between pedals, is dangerous,” Mr. Matsunaga said.
“Mr. Naruse’s pedal works because it takes into account how our bodies work,” he said. “It makes sure that when we make a mistake, the car stops.”
Replacing standard pedals with the Naruse device requires no big changes to a car’s braking or acceleration systems, Mr. Naruse said, and retrofitting costs about 100,000 yen ($1,156) each. The biggest challenge of mass marketing the pedal, driving specialists said, would not be cost or technology, but the need to fundamentally change the way millions of people drive.
Link via Popular Science | Image: NYT
Walking on eggshells is probably nothing for Li Guiwen of Beijing. After all, he has driven on beer bottles:
Li Guiwen, an army driver from Beijing, steered along 1,798 bottles for 60.19m in a time of eight minutes and 28 seconds in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. [...]
Li, who thought of creating this record after a drinking bet with friends, added, "Since the failure last year, I have been training constantly."
Link – via Unique Daily
The government of the Swiss canton of Fribourg has hired an actor to dress as an angel, stand in the middle of roads around the canton, and urge people to drive slowly:
The ‘road angel’, who forms part of a safe-driving campaign, will wave and flap his wings at motorists travelling too fast. [...]
‘The idea is to provide a sort of concrete protection, to have a real angel telling drivers to be responsible,’ Benoît Dumas, a Fribourg police spokesman, said.
‘To have a physical presence like that makes the message more visible, and it’s out of the ordinary.’
The actor, whose identity has not been released for privacy reasons, works 20 hours per week and will ‘appear’ in different parts of the 670-square-mile region of western Switzerland.
Link via Fast Company | Photo: Daily Mail
This viral video shows a little boy who parallel parks his toy car like an expert stunt driver.
via Urlesque
Thomas Feely of Leeds, UK, has committed 110 driving violations and has, at various times, been banned from driving 59 times over the past 28 years. He usually ignores these bans, and will now spend 5 months in jail as a consequence:
Feely, from Leeds regularly flouted driving bans, despite living just yards from a police station.
He was stopped by police for driving whilst disqualified and without a licence just three days before he was due to be sentenced for an earlier similar offence.[...]
Magistrates heard this week that he had been banned from driving 59 times in the past 28 years.
Link | Photo: (unrelated) by flickr user tompagenet, used under Creative Commons license
Simon Seeks has compiled a list of the most dangerous roads in the world. Many feature rock slide hazards, hair pin turns, steep cliffs and no guard rails. Still, it’s amazing just how beautiful some of these deadly roads are –often because the views from these places are unbelievable.
Link Image Via Damian Morys [Flickr]
Driving is boring and it takes time out of your busy life. Why not multitask and use your driving time more productively? With the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk, you can eat, use a computer, read, do your nails — whatever. What could possibly go wrong? On sale at Amazon.com for $23.23. | Link
This past week, drivers in Samoa had to switch from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the wrong, er, left side. Since the switch was relatively sudden, all the buses now open onto the middle of the street! The Samoans say the switch was to end their dependence on American-made vehicles. Mental_floss takes a look at how other nations decided which side of the road to drive on. Some reasons seems silly in retrospect. Link
Yesterday, the residents of Samoa began driving on the left side of the road instead of the right. This is the first major switch since the 1970s, when Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone made the change. Randy James of Time magazine has an article exploring how different nations came to use different sides of the road:
Theories differ, but there’s no doubt Napoleon was a major influence. The French have used the right since at least the late 18th century (there’s evidence of a Parisian “keep-right” law dating to 1794). Some say that before the French Revolution, aristocrats drove their carriages on the left, forcing the peasantry to the right. Amid the upheaval, fearful aristocrats sought to blend in with the proletariat by traveling on the right as well. Regardless of the origin, Napoleon brought right-hand traffic to the nations he conquered, including Russia, Switzerland and Germany. Hitler, in turn, ordered right-hand traffic in Czechoslovakia and Austria in the 1930s. Nations that escaped right-handed conquest, like Great Britain, preserved their left-handed tradition.
Image by flickr user multitrack used under creative commons license.
Have you ever found yourself driving your car and saying “Hey, I’d like to have a freshly-baked pizza right now, but I don’t want to stop driving”? Well, you’re in luck! You can plug this 12-volt pizza oven directly into your car’s cigarette lighter.
Link via Geekologie
Think that the person yakking on his cell phone while driving in the car next to you is bad? He’s nothing compared to this dancing Romanian driver! How on Earth did he get his license?!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Information Nation
If you think that talking on the cell phone and driving is dangerous, wait till you hear what else this woman did: she breastfed her baby while driving her other children to school!
Police say it is against the law to drive with a child in your lap. Children under 4 or 40 pounds must be properly restrained in a child safety seat.
In this case, officers said Compton had the child in the lap with the baby’s head up against the steering wheel. They say there is not only the risk of a crash, but deployment of the airbag.
Compton said she will take the advice of the officers into consideration, but she may breast feed her baby while driving in the future if she feels that is is necessary.
If you think about it, she’s got some skillz breast feeding, talking on the phone, and driving all at the same time!
WHIO Dayton TV has the story (and video clip): Link
Ever wonder how to make the construction light signs change their text? Now you can with these handy instructions:
“It will ask you for a password. Try “DOTS”, the default password.
In all likelihood, the crew will not have changed it. However if they did, never fear. Hold “Control” and “Shift” and while holding, enter “DIPY”. This will reset the sign and reset the password to “DOTS” in the process. You’re in”
Am I the only one that thinks maybe, just maybe, these things should be a little harder to change? They usually are protected with a tiny lock, and sometimes that’s not even on there. What if the sign above was trying to warn the whole road was blocked and people laughed and kept driving 65?
Link Via BB Gadgets
