And that made me wonder what kind of creative and artistic motorcycle helmets are being made. So I went looking.
One of the biggest photo collections I found can be seen at Dazzling Design. Comic book heroes like Spiderman, Ironman and the Incredible Hulk all seem popular. (Hmmm… Why all Marvel and no DC? Hawkman would make a killer bike helmet!)
Toyota is trying something either revolutionary or a little crazy.
Possibly both.
Toyota Sweden has announced its new A Glass of Water program, intended to make drivers more fuel conscious by asking them to drive as if they had a glass of water set on their dashboard. This idea, Toyota hopes, will encourage drivers to slow down a bit and drive more carefully, with gentler curver and smoother starts and stops, all with the goal of saving 10% of your fuel consumption.
They’ve even created an iPhone app that is a virtual glass of water. It uses the iPhone hardware to measure external forces and simulates the effect these have on a glass of water, monitoring how much of the water would have been spilled if it were real water in a real glass.
Please understand that they don’t want anyone to drive with a real glass of water on the dash. That can spill into the electrical system and cause expensive repairs. Or spill into the carpet or upholstery, eventually giving your car that lovely locker room smell. Or just spill into your lap, causing wet stains that are hard to explain.
But the idea behind the glass of water is what matters: making drivers more conscious of their own driving habits and styles with an eye toward increasing fuel efficiency.
And that’s an idea that Comedy Guys Defensive Driving can get behind. Anything that makes a driver think more about the act of driving will make us all safer.
Driving alone, you say scathing and funny things
about the bad driving around you. Use some
of that wit here to add a caption to these pics
of impossibly bad drivers.
Harold was so confused that he threw the frisbee into the garage, too.
In a July 13th story, the Online Wall Street Journal released unofficial data from the NHTSA the 3000+ complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyotas that plagued the country and filled the news media earlier this year.
And if the NHTSA’s preliminary data proves accurate, the culprit was more often pedal confusion than any kind of flaw in the design/construction of the vehicles themselves. In the cars examined so far by NHTSA, which has teamed up with NASA for the research, many of them show indications that the brakes were not applied prior to the crashes, but that the gas pedal was floored.
Once again, this is all speculation based on incomplete and unofficial data so far: not actual proven results. Don’t expect a final report of the NHTSA investigation for months yet.
Adding fuel to the speculation is the fact that in November 2009, Toyota announced a recall of almost 4 million vehicles, and three months later there was a rapid increase in the number of complaints filed with the NHTSA. (See our spiffy chart for a visualization of this increase.)
This raises a question: if the problem was actually drivers hitting the gas instead of the brake, how many of them did it because of confusion and how many did it to make some money?
21-year-old designer Kevin Scott has invented a bike frame that he hopes will frustrate bike thieves.
A graduate of Britain’s DeMontfort University in Leicester, Scott has constructed a bike frame where the center section consists of interlocking segments around a ratcheting cable. Ratchet the cable tight, and the frame is sturdy enough to ride. Loosen the cable, and the bike can twist around light poles and streets signs, making it easier to secure the bike by locking it to itself. And, incidentally, easier to fit into the back of a car or store in tight places.
Just last week, we posted Dealing with the Dealership, spotlighting two articles by J Goods at CarGurus.com about how best to deal with salespeople when negotiating your next auto purchase.
Whether to trade the old car in or sell it privately is a decision that many of us face at some point. Peters does a great job of breaking these two options down to their basics and pointing out the common pitfalls in both of them, so that you’re better prepared to avoid falling into them.
Peters even gives specific information on finding a fair price for your car and a step-by-step guide to selling your car yourself so the whole process can go more smoothly.
Matador Trips online has offered up a photo collection of The World’s Most Spectacular Roads. It’s a matter of opinion, of course, and more than half the roads mentioned are in the USA, but there are some beautiful photographs of outstanding driving experiences. If you can’t travel these road, let them inspire you to take a road trip of your own.
And, because Comedy Guys Defensive Driving cares about the safety of all drivers on all roads, we urge you to plan your road trips carefully and be careful and responsible on the road. Stop and rest at least every two hours, and keep yourself and your car in good condition.
After all, the best part of any road trip is returning home again.
Driving alone, you say scathing and funny things
about the bad driving around you. Use some
of that wit here to add a caption to these pics
of impossibly bad drivers.
After years of listening to his rude neighbors force everyone
else to listen to their music, Harry was ready to strike back.
J Goods at CarGurus.com has given us more useful advice on dealing with car salesmen in today’s article Dealing with Car Dealers: Pros, Cons, Tips, Tactics. This time he’s giving us tips on how we can make the trade-in and purchase process work for us: trading in or selling privately, checking out factory rebates and incentive programs, etc.
This is a nice follow-up to his article from a week ago, Car Dealerships: The Inside Story, when he told us about the process from the salesman’s point of view. Actually, the author summed the article up pretty well himself: “learn how and why dealers operate as they do before you can negotiate a successful transaction.”
If you’re in the market to buy a car anytime soon — and now would seem a great time to do it, if you’ve got the money — check these articles out.
More people are talking about Ford’s new Curve Control Safety System, planned for release in 2011.
Last week CarGurus.com was worried about the potential safety risk of this system, designed to adjust the speed at which drivers take curves. Ford hopes this will help to eliminate some 50,000 mishaps every year. T Griffith at Car Gurus is worried that the system will misinterpret the driver’s intentions and intervene when it should have left well enough alone. A valid worry: read his article to get the full picture.
Today, Automoblog has offered its opinion. Instead of talking about the risk, they seem to think this is most
beneficial to people who maybe shouldn’t be driving in the first place. Check out their candid and rather funny comments here. If nothing else, it’s a great example of typing while muttering under your breath.
If, however, your plans involve more commuting than traveling, you might make better use of Automoblog’s “Trivial Traffic Travels,” good advice to make your drive to work more pleasant. Or just more tolerable.
And forget the old saying: sometimes free advice is worth more than you pay for it.
First, I saw an ad for motorcycle helmets that don’t actually exist, courtesy of a Russian advertising agency called Good.
Toyota is trying something either revolutionary or a little crazy.
Are you really hard-core when it comes to cars? If so then 
And if the NHTSA’s preliminary data proves accurate, the culprit was more often pedal confusion than any kind of flaw in the design/construction of the vehicles themselves. In the cars examined so far by NHTSA, which has teamed up with NASA for the research, many of them show indications that the brakes were not applied prior to the crashes, but that the gas pedal was floored.
Just last week, we posted 
