Vorsprung Durch Technik?

An accident on Germany's A2 autobahn involving 259 cars has left 66 people injured, 10 of them seriously, but incredibly resulted in no deaths.

The pile-up occurred in the late evening, when a combination of heavy rain and a setting sun hampered the drivers' vision and made the road conditions slippery. The first accident happened near Hamelerwald, and began a cascade of other accidents that over the next two hours grew to span a 30 kilometre stretch of road. It finally took 340 emergency workers well into the next morning to finish dealing with the people and vehicles involved and the clean-up cost is expected to exceed 1.75 million Euros, i.e. $2.5 million (NY Daily News).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Sat Jul 25, 2009 - Comments (7)
Category: Accidents, Destruction, Disasters, Motor Vehicles, Cars

Pimp My Garage?

You may not be able to afford that "West Coast Customs" look for your ride, but how about the garage where you leave it?

Style-Your-Garage.com are offering a range of self adhesive garage-door covers that depict the contents of your garage as everything from a fighter jet to a strip joint. There's even one showing it to be completely empty. So if you fancy having an alligator, a speedboat or even a metro station in your garage, Style-Your-Garage.com have just the thing for you (Daily Mail).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Thu Jul 23, 2009 - Comments (9)
Category: Art, Surrealism, Design and Designers, Graphics, Motor Vehicles, Cars

When You Are A Pedestrian

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 23, 2009 - Comments (1)
Category: Death, Motor Vehicles, Documentaries, 1940s

Transformers Are Real! ... Well, Sort Of

A few years ago, a neighbor of my parents, a man who owned a construction company, parked a backhoe in his driveway. The surrounding neighbors nearly had a riot over how the machine was lowering the value of their property just by being there. So you can imagine how this guy's neighbors might feel. Carlos Owens of Wasilla, Alaska, a former Army mechanic, had a dream. His dream was to create a giant metal robot that could mirror the movements of its human pilot. Now the "mecha", as he calls it, has become a reality. It has taken him four years and cost approximately $25,000, but just think of all the fun you could have with one of these.

Posted By: Nethie - Mon Jun 08, 2009 - Comments (6)
Category: Inventions, Motor Vehicles, Puppets and Automatons, Robots

Trunk Monkey

Perhaps not quite so funny since several deadly chimp attacks. Visit here for the history of this campaign.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Apr 01, 2009 - Comments (9)
Category: Animals, Motor Vehicles, Advertising

New York City Driving—1928

I have no idea of the provenance of this material. Is that Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd driving? Is that really Babe Ruth in the back seat? But I do know it's amazing.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 31, 2009 - Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Motor Vehicles, Movies, 1920s

Self-Correcting Parking Meters

An interesting statistic: "Two-thirds of all District [of Columbia] parking meters reported broken turn out to be operational when a repair crew arrives on-site."

One reason is that people falsely report meters as broken when they're not, but another explanation, according to the DC Department of Transportation, is that the meters are designed to be "self-correcting". They're not really broken. The evil little things are just pretending:

Basically, the parking cops are going to get your money, one way or another. Just resign yourself to that truth.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 02, 2009 - Comments (8)
Category: Motor Vehicles

Catapulted Dummy Tests Driver’s Skill

This would be a useful addition in ALL driver's ed courses, especially if the driver was given no warning. From Popular Science, Aug 1935:

Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 12, 2009 - Comments (6)
Category: Cops, Motor Vehicles, Cars, 1930s