A Brooklyn college student was pinned under a car that had crashed into his motorcycle. Rescue workers tried to free him with a hydraulic jack. When the car was 4 feet in the air, it dropped on the student. Read More >

According to government statistics, “grooming” while driving is a major hazard, only slightly less dangerous than using a cell phone, eating and drinking, and talking to passengers. This video drives the point home that  grooming, talking to passengers, and even the slightest hint of eating can be deadly. In this case, the man was lucky and walked. Next time – who knows.

[Skip ahead to 2:08 (or don’t)]

It’s the stuff of a Ray LaHood nightmare. Automotive News [sub]’s lede comes screaming out of the blackness:

BERLIN — Ford Motor Co. has adapted its Sync in-car connectivity system to cope with high speeds on German autobahns.

But you can’t wake up, Mr Secretary of Transportation. For this is no dream…

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When Mercedes featured hooded death in an ad for its Brake Assistance System, our own European automotive advertising veteran, Bertel Schmitt, wrote

never in my life would I have expected to see the grim reaper in a car ad. Especially not in the death seat. Especially not in a Mercedes ad. The boys from Sindelfingen never were known for their daredevil approach to advertising. Even at Volkswagen, which used to take more risk in their campaigns (< - they said this one wasn’t approved), any ad showing an old man with a scythe would have been immediately – - killed.

Of course, most Americans wouldn’t bat an eye at an ad featuring death… from politics to sales, our culture is built on scaring people into buying/accepting things. But this Dutch ad for the Hyundai Veloster, which was apparently approved and then banned, would have caused a few quizzical looks in any country. Not because it features death incarnate, but because advertising the Veloster’s freaky three-door layout as a safety feature is just that absurd. This ad should never have seen the light of day for the simple reason that it’s an old-school and utterly conventional approach (by banned-ad standards, anyway) to marketing one of the few cars on the market that is willfully and unnecessarily unique, simply for the sake of being unique. Surely, in this age of appliance-like cars, conventional styling and unadventurous product planning, uniqueness is enough of a marketing hook on its own…

My former wife was an artist. One of her shows was for the benefit of Washington DC’s National Zoo. At the opening, a society dame walked up to her.

“Love your boobies.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The lady referred to the depiction of a school of the sula nebouxii, a.k.a. the Blue Footed Booby, a water bird. Boobies can cause all kinds of misunderstandings. That thought crossed my mind as I watched the picture above.

I found it at Chinacartimes. Apparently, the picture is spreading like wildfire through the Chinese interwebs. Says CCT: Read More >

For some time now, there’s been something of a low-scale war going on between OEMs and aftermarket parts suppliers just below the national media radar. The issue: whether or not aftermarket structural parts are as good as OEM parts. Ford has been a major proponent of the OEM-only approach, making the video you see above in hopes of proving that aftermarket parts aren’t up to the job. But the aftermarket is firing back, and they’ve made their own video in direct response to this one, which you can view after the jump.
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The Crusade against distracted driving is taking its toll – on the telcos: “State laws that mandate use of hands-free devices when talking on a mobile phone behind the wheel may have cut handheld device usage in half over the past year,” reports Edmunds.

A report released by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) talks about a bloodbath caused by cell phones: Read More >

When news hit late last week that one of Google’s driverless cars had been involved in a minor fender-bender, the anti-autonomous driver argument made itself. “This is precisely why we’re worried about self-driving cars,” howled Jalopnik.”Google’s self-driving car seems like the ultimate distracted driving machine.” But on the very same day, Google claimed that

One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car [emphasis added]

Before you know it, the other side of the debate, as epitomized by Popular Science flipped the argument, insisting that

this incident is yet another example — as if we need one — of the human capacity for error. Hopefully when cars do take over, they’ll be able to prevent these types of incidents on their own.

So yeah, there’s a pretty wide range of opinions on the issue. And with Nevada’s legalization of driverless cars, it’s only a matter of time before something happens that busts the debate wide open again. So, how do you feel about our new robot overlords? I, for one, could live with the technology for freeway/expressway use… but not without drawing some kind of clear lines around legal liability. Off-freeway? No thanks. Too few benefits from packing traffic tighter and too many other variables in traffic. What say you?

NHTSA has denied the niche supercar maker Pagani a waiver for advanced airbag requirements for its new Huayra, possibly forcing the Italian firm to delay US sales until 2015. According to the Federal Register[PDF], Pagani

estimated that if the requested exemption were granted, it would sell 35 to 45 vehicles per year, 6 to 12 vehicles of which would be sold in the United States…. [Pagani] submitted projections estimating that if the petition for exemption is denied and no vehicles are sold in the United States, the company would make an estimated €5,398,000 in net income during the period of 2011 through 2014, compared to €8,613,000 in net income during the same period if an exemption were granted.   The company asserted that the difference in gross revenue between granting and denying the exemption is approximately €34,000,000, and the financial records indicate a difference in projected net income of approximately €3,215,000.

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If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. —O’Brien, in “1984”.

O’Brien was wrong. The picture of the future is a picture of you: completely naked, with your privacy invaded, taken as you walk along the street, sit in your own vehicle, or pursue your own private business. You will be recorded forever, your movements will be marked, your possessions will be noted, you will become completely subservient to a government you may not even remember electing. Eventually, you may die of cancer, moaning out a final cry of drug-addled defiance as you are culled — in a quite humane fashion, of course — to prevent excessive healthcare costs.

The company helping to bring you the above future is called, without irony, “American Science and Engineering, Inc.”

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Former TVR owner Peter Wheeler used to explain the lack of airbags in his firm’s high-powered sportscars by arguing drivers would be safer if he installed a metal spike in the middle of each steering wheel. That was back in the late 1990s and early 2000s… since then, the rise of adaptive cruise control, “attention assist” systems, collision-sensing brake pre-loading and more have only made his critique all the more provocative. And, according to research cited in a Wired Magazine report, Wheeler’s philosophy seems to have a strong basis in science.

“The point the automakers are making, which is true, is that they go to extreme lengths to make these systems work and extremely reliable,” [Stanford University’s Clifford] Nass said. “The reliability on these systems is very high. If you have automatic cruise control, it’s not extremely often you have to jump into the fray.”

Therein lies the problem. We come to count on our cars to keep us out of trouble, even in situations where the technology isn’t designed to.

“Road hazards other than the car in front of you are so rare, especially on the highway where these adaptive cruise control systems would be in play, that they would, over time, encourage a complacency that undermines safety,” said Erik Blaser, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who studies vision and perception. “You stop paying attention to the driving.”

Though these “semiautonomous” systems are sold as safety equipment, researchers argue that they create a sense of reliance that actually makes drivers less safe (unlike “secret” safety systems like stability control and ABS, which operate consistently without the driver’s knowledge). And, somewhat counterintuitively, these researchers argue that the rise of semiautonomous driver aids actually increases the need for life-long driver eduation.

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In addition to the recent tales (and sitcom gags) of GPS units leading hapless drivers into bodies of water, we have a new twist on the theme: GPS units leading hapless drivers astray in Death Valley. NPR reports

After a long day, [Donna] Cooper and her family asked “Nell,” the GPS, for the shortest route back to their home.

“Please proceed to the highlighted route,” Nell said.

But what came next did not compute. The GPS told them to go 550 feet, then turn right, Cooper says.

“Well, at 550 feet it was like a little path, and then it was like, go a quarter of a mile and turn left. There was nothing there. She had me running in circles for hours and hours and hours,” she says.

A park ranger explains that this happens “a couple times a year now,” including one incident two years ago in which a mother and her son were lost on an abandoned mining road for five days and the boy died. Rangers are now working with GPS firms to update their data on small and closed-down roads, but say no amount of work will ever replace common sense when it comes to navigating desert roads. Speaking of which, what happened to Cooper’s family?
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If you don’t speak German, you can go ahead and skip to 1:30, where the magic happens. Essentially, the German safety nuts at the ADAC and DEKRA have been trying to scare motorists silly for some time now, shaming automakers and educating motorists about the dangers they face every day. The latest terror: a semi truck plowing into you from behind at about 43 MPH. The results? Well, they speak for themselves. The reason? Illustrating the need for Emergency Brake Assist in large trucks, which the ADAC argues should be mandatory for all trucks [per Autobild]. Though this does seem to be something of a case of legislating against stupidity, the ADAC certainly make a vivid argument for their cause…

The Governor’s Highway Safety Association has reviewed a number of studies on distracted driving, and its report [PDF here] shows a number of disturbing findings. A few of the highlights (or is that lowlights?):

• At least one driver was reported to have been distracted in 15% to 30% of crashes at all levels, minor to fatal. The proportion of distracted drivers may be greater because investigating officers may not detect or record all distractions. In many crashes it is not known whether the distractions caused or contributed to the crash.
• In almost 80% of all crashes and 65% of near-crashes the driver was looking away from the forward roadway just before the incident and that secondary task distraction contributed to 22% of the crashes and near-crashes
• about two-thirds of all drivers reported using a cell phone while driving; about one-third used a cell phone routinely. In observational studies during daylight hours in 2009, between 7% and 10% of all drivers were using a cell phone… about one-eighth of all drivers reported texting while driving. In observational studies during daylight hours in 2009, fewer than 1% of all drivers were observed to be texting.
• Cognitive distractions by themselves – thinking about something other than driving, without any manual or visual distraction – can affect driving performance. Two recent studies reinforce the conclusion that distractions affect the mind, not just the eyes, ears, or hands
• [Two] studies found that crash risk was about four times greater when using a cell phone. Hands-free phones did not appear to be any safer than hand-held phones.
• In the only study of texting bans, HLDI studied their effect on collision claims using the same methods as their 2009 study of cell phone laws. They concluded that texting bans did not reduce collision claims. In fact, there appears to have been a small increase in claims in the states enacting texting bans compared to neighboring states… there is no evidence that cell phone or texting laws have reduced crashes.

If you’re at all interested in a relatively concise (50 pages) overview of the state of distracted driving research, this report is well worth a download. Ultimately, though, the report offers more challenges than easy answers, as it largely debunks the notion that increased enforcement or hands-free laws make much of a difference in the problem. [via AutoObserver]

Say what you want about the nannyfication of cars, about gadgets that disturb the intimate relationship between man and machine. But a lot of the drastic decline of fatalities on the road goes on account of cars made safer with little electronics brains. Now, the brains think of people not even in the car. Read More >