First, I saw an ad for motorcycle helmets that don’t actually exist, courtesy of a Russian advertising agency called Good.

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!)

I liked most of all was the helmet worn by bike racer Valentino Rossi who decorated his helmet with a photo of his own screaming face. (Although to be honest,  before I saw his photo I thought the face on the helmet was PeeWee Herman.)

— Wes Williams

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.

Yes, I can read the sign. But there were no cops around
so I thought I could get away with it!

(photo from GPSmagazine.com)

Cool, huh? This is one of the 20 Amazing Photos that are not Photoshopped,
courtesy of  Web Design Core. And who decided it was okay for “photoshop” to be
a verb. Mrs. Kirkman would be throwing a fit if she saw that.

Tiger Woods can drive a golf ball straight for 400 yards.

We’re basically nice guys around here, so we don’t like to hit a guy when he’s down, but at the same time, we are comedians so picking on a guy when he’s down is a big part of the job description. Just par for the course, so to speak.

We don’t think that Tiger’s driving is dangerous enough that he should become part of our defensive driving curriculum, but we’re not above making a few jokes.

Subject your co-workers to them, but hurry before this story gets old.

Why did Tiger run into both a tree and a fire hydrant?
He couldn’t decide between a wood or an iron!

What’s the difference between a fairway and a driveway?
Tiger can drive straight down the fairway!

Tiger and Elin have signed a new prenuptual agreement.  According to the new contract, the next time Tiger plays a round, Elin will hand him his balls.

Tiger later admitted that this crash was the closest shave he’s ever had. So Gillette has dropped his contract.

Apparently, the only person who can beat Tiger Woods with a golf club is his wife.

Week before last, I had to take a training class which meant driving 10 miles out of my way in the rain down the infamous Central Expressway through Dallas. Nothing happened. But the day before, I had backed into a car and broken its headlights before I even got out of my driveway.

As car crashes go, a broken headlight isn’t much, but my point here is that you must always be careful when you’re behind the wheel. No matter how short the trip is, something can happen and it is more likely to happen if you’re not being careful enough.

For example, have you ever driven across a parking lot without your seatbelt on? Most people in parking lots look out for pedestrians and runaway shopping carts, but too many don’t bother to buckle up in a parking lot. Remember the formula for Force of Impact we teach in class: 1/2 mass times velocity squared. If a 100-lb. woman going 10 mph in a parking lot slams on her brakes to avoid a pedestrian, she’ll be thrown forward at 5,000 foot-pounds of force. Get thrown into your steering wheel with that kind of force, and you’ll definitely be feeling it in the morning.

Most collisions occur within 5 miles of home because those are the streets you drive on most often and because that’s where most of us feel safe to let our guard down a little.

Don’t.

If you’ve got the key in the ignition, keeping yourself safe is the most important thing you’ve go to do until you take it out again.

And if any of this sounds new to you — whether it’s Force of Impact or warnings about accidents close to home or the need to buckle up in parking lots — you might be in need of one of our classes, live or online. People focus on ticket dismissal and insurance discounts (and we can handle both), but the real reason we exist is to make the roads safer, one driver at a time. If your skills need some polish, sign up for one of our classes today.