What if motorcyclists were as oblivious to others are many drivers are to them?
What makes driving so dangerous for motorcyclists — aside from the riders who confuse showing off with riding responsibly — is that their smaller size makes them harder to see. Which is why its so important for drivers in “four-wheelers” to be more careful about looking for them.
When your looking around, let your gaze linger a bit longer in each direction, long enough to see the motorcycle’s movement even if the cycle itself got lost in the background.
And expect to see motorcycles every where you look. This will re-train your brain to actually look for them, instead of noticing only pedestrians and other cars. If you’re expecting a motorcycle all the time, they can never take you by surprise.
Finally, make things quieter inside your car. One reason for making motorcycles louder than necessary is for safety: since they’re harder to see, they should be easier to hear. Your ears can often help you detect them better than your eyes can, but not if your phone, music, or conversation makes it impossible to hear anything else.
In our defensive driving classes, our comedian/instructors explain how higher speed means more destructive power in a crash. Scientifically speaking, the formula is force of impact = 1/2 of mass times the speed. In layman’s terms, the heavier the vehicle OR the higher the speed, the more destructive force when the vehicle hits something.
Recently, British telephone program FIFTH GEAR filmed a clear demonstration of this principle.
Most automotive crash tests are conducted at 30mph, but FIFTH GEAR producers decided to conduct a test at 120mph, four time the usual speed but still a speed that many cars on the road can attain. Check out for yourself how much damage this added speed created.
We bring this up in our defensive driving classes to make a very simple point: any reduction in speed can reduce your force of impact in a crash. You may not see much difference between going 40mph and 35mph, but just that 5mph decrease can take thousands of foot-pounds of force out of a collision and seriously reduce the amount damage you and your car sustain.
So it’s all part of our real mission at Comedy Guys Defensive Driving. You have to drive to live your life. We just want to make you as safe possible when you’re on the road.
Found via The Presurfer,
which a really cool ‘blog worth a visit.
There’s something poignant about a car rusting away in a weed-choked field.
It’s easy to imagine the day it was new, when some proud new owner brought it home. The kids had to climb inside and bounce on the seats or pretend they were driving. The neighbors had to walk over and check it out. The owner tooled around town those first few weeks, making sure that everyone saw who was driving the shiny new car.
But new cars eventually get old, and some of them end up in junk yards, where their only visitors are birds and mice and other cars that have outlived their usefulness. This video clip is a nice tribute to cars like these.
If you visit the Orange County Chopper website, you can use their online interface to design your own chopper, complete with a full-color “photo” of what your bike would look like. Choose from a variety of chassis designs, tanks, fenders, wheels, etc. Add your own graphics (although right now the only choices are flames or no flames) and select your own paint color.
When you’re done, you can add a background and see the bike you’ve just designed. Fill out the form attached, and they’ll send you a quote so you can see what your bike will cost.
If you thought that Japan had inundated the US auto market as much as possible, then you might be interested to see this list that Inventor Spot compiled of 10 cool Japanese cars that Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and other companies chose not to import, including the very spiffy Nissan Figaro, seen here in Comedy Guys green.
Some people use cars as just a way to get around. To some, they’re another avenue of personal expression. Some virtually live out of their cars, using them as mobile offices and rolling fast food joints.
But to some of us, cars are fascinating all by themselves. Their design and construction, their technology and mechanics, their history — it’s all interesting.
For you guys, here’s some footage of auto assembly lines, so that you can see and appreciate the workmanship that goes into auto assembly. First, a time-capsule clip of a Chevy plant in Flint, Michigan from 1936.
Now here’s some footage of the 2010 Chevy Camaro. Can you spot any differences in how things are done?
Admit it: when you were a kid, you wanted this car. It was a cool-looking convertible that could float, fly, and save your family from evil Vulgarian barons.
Add a few cupholders, and it would be perfect.
Well, if you’ve got at one million laying around unused, you can have Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang for your very own, because it’s for sale on Ebay.
Profiles in History, a dealer in original entertainment memorabilia and historical manuscripts, is offering the car for sale from eBay account, on behalf – no doubt – of the actual owner. As of this morning, the reserve price of $1million has not yet been met.
I don’t know what’s taking Jay Leno so long to snatch this thing up.
This car is one of six that were built for the filming of the the 1968 musical starring Dick Van Dyke and Sallie Ann Howes. Two of those six were the pre-Caractacus Potts racecars – one for the racing scene and one in its dilapidated state. Two others were the “special effects” cars, rebuilt to fly or to function as a hovercraft. The two remaining cars were actual driveable roadcars.
The car offered for sale now is one of those two, the “backup” road car. The primary road car, as well as the hovercraft mobile, are on display at the Cars of the Stars Museum in Keswick, England.
Few brand names inspire the kind of loyalty that Ford does.
In fact, when I was growing up here in northeast Texas, it was very easy to divide the world into three groups: Ford people, Chevy people, and everyone else.
And not many of everyone else, to tell the truth.
Year after year, through good times and bad, people are loyal to Ford vehicles in a way that other car manufacturers can only envy. And there was an impressive public display of this loyalty this past weekend in the Ford Car Club’s Western Regional auto show, Fabulous Fords Forever, held April 10 at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California.
Are you one of the many people who miss the stylish look cars used to have?
Granted the rounder shape is more aerodynamic and fuel efficient, which is increasingly important given gas prices and petroleum depletion. No matter that I get the feeling that people are driving around in giant multi-colored soap bubbles made of fiberglass.
Moreover, all those point bits and enormous hood ornaments could turn into lethal weapons in a crash.
But there’s still something cool about a shiny car dripping with chrome, breezing down the road with tailfins cutting proudly through the wind. It’s like that scene from Die Another Day when James Bond leaves 2002 Hong Kong and we see him next in Cuba, cruising along in an open 1957 Ford Fairlane.
For those of you who like to see how people in the past envisioned the future, a YouTube user named paleofuture posted this short film first released in 1948.
In January, the Ford Motor Company launched fordimages.com, where the company is making prints of some 5000 images from its archives available for purchase.
The photos include portraits and photos from events, factories, sports events, and product development.
Archive manager Dean Weber and his team have been sorting through dusty boxes, filing cabinets, and the like in the Ford Archives in Dearborn, Michigan, to choose the best photos for sale.
The team plans to have another 5000 images available online by the end of the year.
Prices start at $25 per print. Check out the Website to see the collection of available prints.
When it comes to auto repairs, all of us are interested in the price and most of us are also a little worried that we’ll be taken advantage of. It’s hard for the average driver to know enough to see through deceptive practices and outright lies.
And there are enough disreputable repairmen out there, ready to take advantage of a customer’s ignorance, to make the entire profession look suspect.
Ted Olsen has written eight books and numerous articles on the automotive service industries. He has an ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certification and numerous other certifications from auto manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and General Motors.
He is also the author of an online article called 10 Things You Just Never Say to Your Mechanic, which is certainly worth reading. Like poker games and dating, getting your car worked on is one of those situations where a few badly considered words can be very expensive.
J Goods at CarGurus.com is also helping out on the subject of auto repairs with his article Car Repairs for Dummies. He offers good advice on finding a repairman that you can (probably) trust and provides several links to useful online resources.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to protect themselves from being taken advantage of when it comes to an auto repair job?
Cadillac announced today that it would be ending its four-year absence from auto racing with its CTS-V Coupe. The car will be developed by the Michigan engineering firm Pratt & Miller.
You can see the list of the 16 cars that brought the highest prices at the online marketplace — the lowest price was over $300,000 — as well as comparisons of the eBay price with the original sale price when the car was new. As my rather incoherent nephew would say, “inflation gone wild.”
With a very cool architectural design that fits well with the Porsche reputation, the museum contains objects and photographs documenting the auto design careers of Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche. Much of the archives was lost during World War II, but the remaining records make a fascinating and largely unpublished catalogue of auto history.
If a visit the museum itself isn’t possible right now, this article and the photos with it are a nice substitute.
This is a small-scale model of an unbuilt 917 exercise. It’s six inches tall and not quite one foot
long, and it’s a hollow, unfinished model of a car that was never built, but it’s worth
so much more than my actual car that I don’t like to think about it.
There’s something poignant about a car rusting away in a weed-choked field.
In January, the Ford Motor Company launched 
Cadillac announced today that it would be ending its four-year absence from auto racing with its CTS-V Coupe. The car will be developed by the Michigan engineering firm Pratt & Miller.
Over at 
