My Black Brick

I imagine that Drivers Ed in North Korea includes a section on interpreting the odd signals of the counter-clockwise turning traffic cops at some intersections in Pyongyamg. See the Flickr set.

BONUS: Nothing explains the moves of this dork in Rhode Island. At least Officer Johnson’s moves somewhat resemble traffic direction for a pedestrian intersection at University of Pennsylvania.

Hot off the heels of the ridiculous Dodge Charger Super Bowl ad, which depicts heterosexual relationships as a torturous, emasculating hell that can only be relieved by the loud burning of massive quantities of gasoline, comes this parody, depicting the oppressed women who have to deal with their poor Moparians:

“I will listen to Rush and tell you, yes, if there were a gold metal for air-drumming, you would win it.” Nice.

Via The Sexist

The aftermarket, one-size-fits-all floormats I got from the local Pep Boys last year didn’t quite work as planned. After a few weeks the driver side developed a fold that occasionally grabbed and held the gas pedal until I kicked it out of the way. I trimmed and re-shaped the rubber and everything has been fine since.

Not so for Toyota. What supposedly started as a problem with insecure floor mats on 3.6 million American cars has metastasized into a global recall of 6.5 million vehicles and has halted production of almost their entire line of cars.

While there’s some humor in the  “Toyotathon… of Death” title and segment on the Daily Show, the 2,100 reported accidents and 16 deaths isn’t funny.

I’m Audi 5000 !

After waiting an excruciating 18 hours for my FCP Groton order, it finally arrived via UPS. Did I really just order these front wheel bearings yesterday afternoon?

Wait a sec… is the name on the box really the name of the company? FAG? WTF? Do they offer t-shirts with their logo?

I’m disappointed that I didn’t get chosen as a runner up for the ipd RWD photo contest. I’m sure they got plenty of submissions. I’ll try not to be bitter by saying that there’s some cool photos in there. I think next year I need to go for the pensive, looking off into the sunset style that won last years contest.

As for another contest I didn’t quite get accepted for, above is a partial header graphic I created for Volvolution community. I put together a mock evolution of the fronts of Swedish wagons. Enjoy.

Waterloo labs set up a bunch of motors and remote controls to allow them to run an Olds Delta ’88 while standing on its roof. I guess that’s if you wouldn’t be caught dead behind the wheel of an Olds Delta ’88.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Businessweek.com created a post of the “Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years” and put the Volvo 240 in 13th place. I’ll agree with their assesment of the headlights being too huge in the later models, but the headrests? They’re awesome! Yes, it’s boxy. But in a world of cars shaped like suppositories, boxy can be cool.

Jalopnik warns of the wrath of the dedicated RWD Volvo driving public.

While I agree that the exterior of the 1970′s Mustang was pretty ugly, that’s over shadowed by my fond memories of the vinyl back seat of my high school girlfriend’s 1975 silver ‘Stang.

Daily Show has a clip w/ Wyatt Cenac about a Whole Foods boycott. The clips starts with a  bunch of talking heads spouting the “Latte drinking, Volvo driving…” line.

The guys who brought us Freakonomics, a book of counter-intuitive stories of crack dealers who live with their mothers and public school teachers who help their students cheat, are at it again with SuperFreakonomics. This time, however, I think they’re stretching their credibility.

They’ve released a few excerpts from the book, and, while I read their first book, I think I’ll pass on the second. One story that has been courting controversy lately is their assertion that child car seats are no better at protecting kids older than two from death than regular seat belts. Since their data investigation proves inconclusive, they conduct their own safety tests. But they admit, since they’re economists and not safety engineers, they really don’t know what they’re doing.

Their study  looks at  fatality rates and not injury rates. The US Department of Transportation has been freaking out over the coverage ABC News gave to the book, and weights in here. The DOT cites this press release from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia:

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A study released today in Pediatrics by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia offers updated evidence that children ages 4 to 8 who are restrained in the rear seat of a car in a belt-positioning booster seat are 45 percent less likely to be injured in a crash compared with children using a seat belt alone. Furthermore, the study showed there was no difference in the level of protection offered by backless versus high back booster seats. Of those riding in booster seats, children involved in side-impact crashes saw the greatest reduction in injury risk.

Superfreak also covers the economics of prostitution, but, while it’s an interesting topic, it’s not really in line with this blog. Sady Doyle writes an excellent critique of this chapter in the Guardian, followed by Amanda Hess in the Washington City Paper.

The most ridiculous assertion coming out from Dubnerlevitt is that if you’re drunk, you’re better off driving home than walking. They come to this conclusion by using a convoluted analysis of how many miles the average american walks, how many drunk pedestrian fatalities there are each year and compare those numbers to drunk driving fatalities.

Ezra Klein at the Washington Post dissects the analysis:

The next few pages purport to prove that drunk walking is eight times more dangerous than drunk driving. Here’s how they do it: Surveys show that one out of every 140 miles driven is driven drunk. “There are some 237 million Americans sixteen and older; all told, that’s 43 billion miles walked each year by people of driving age. If we assume that 1 out of every 140 of those miles are walked drunk — the same proportion of miles that are driven drunk — then 307 million miles are walked drunk each year.”

“If we assume.”

But why should we assume that? As the initial example demonstrates, a lot of people walk drunk when they would otherwise drive drunk. That substitution alone suggests that a higher proportion of walking miles are drunk miles. Other people walk, or take transit, when they know they’ll be drinking later. That’s why they’re walking and not driving. That skews the numbers and makes it impossible to simply “assume” parity.

In passing the Freakonomics guys mention that drunk walkers aren’t likely to hurt or kill others, unlike drunk drivers. However, factoring in passenger, pedestrian and other driver fatalities brings them to the conclusion that “walking drunk leads to five times as many deaths per mile as driving drunk.” I’d guess that someone who is walking drunk isn’t covering nearly the amount of miles as a driver. As a matter of fact, I’d wager than many of those walking deaths happen within the first mile. And Ezra Klein points out that the walkers are probably in tightly packed urban areas, which are more dangerous to drunk pedestrians than the suburban and rural areas that are more frequented by drunk drivers. These consideration would skew their data further.

Their conclusion is just irresponsible: “So as you leave your friend’s party, the decision should be clear: driving is safer than walking” Yes, they mention you can take a cab, or drink less. But I can comment from personal experience; the best decision is to fold down the rear seats of your station wagon, crack open a window and sleep in the back.

Seeing as I drive a 17 yo POS, I have no idea what the experience of getting a new car repaired is. Apparently many car companies demand that drivers only get their cars fixed through them. They do this by using computer codes that lock the mechanics of the car to anyone other than the dealer. This hinders the ability of smaller mechanics to make a living or provide alternate diagnosis. Ultimately it limits owners from having control over their own cars. What a scam.

From the Right to Repair site:

The need for Right to Repair legislation has become a necessity in order to protect the rights of car owners to decide where and how they have their vehicles serviced, whether at a new car dealer or an independent service facility. Right to Repair ensures that the person who bought the car and not the car company, can decide where that vehicle is repaired and maintained.

You can support the Right to Repair legislation by contacting congress here: http://capwiz.com/righttorepair/home/