Category: Cars

An insurance company has rated the ten most dangerous foods to eat while driving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that eating is a bigger distraction than using a cell phone when driving.

The company, Hagerty Insurance, looked into what sorts of foods folks were eating when accidents occured. The main problems they found:

• Foods that drip ooze get on things — like clothes. Drivers then try to immediately clean them off, taking their attention off the roads. “Drips distract drivers.”
• Drinks that spill do much the same, making open-topped drinks especially problematic — doubly-so if they are hot.

• Sticky or greasy foods interfere with gripping the wheel, and provide their own constant distraction to keep cleaning the hands.

• Foods that take an extra hand can reduce control of the wheel or make manual shifting more difficult.

The list was ranked by the degree of distraction in eating, the degree of difficulty in eating with only one hand on the wheel, and the popularity of the food in question. The top ten:

10. Chocolate
9. Soft Drinks
8. Jelly and Cream-Filled Donuts
7. Fried Chicken
6. Any Barbecued Food
5. Juicy Hamburgers
4. Chili or Chili-covered Foods
3. Tacos
2. Hot Soups
1. Coffee

Other particular hazards they found:

• Morning rush hour is more dangerous for food than in the evening, since folks are more concerned about their appearance.
• The odds of an accident double if the vehicle has a stick shift.
• The odds increase even more when combining eating with cell phone usage.

This is all amusing … but I can attest to the degree of distraction that fighting spills — or simply unwrapping a burger — can cause.

Drive safe out there, folks. A burger isn’t worth an accident.

I don’t know if Colorado actually allows special characters like this, but wouldn’t it be cool?

(Generated via the ACME License Plate Maker.)

(Hey, I’ll probably be replacing the Saturn in a year or so …)

GM’s new vice chairman for product development, Bob Lutz, has a simple goal — getting cars designed that people look at and want to have.

“When I got here, I started asking people to describe the design process, and nobody could do it,” he says. “I realized it was just plain dysfunctional.” Cars were being designed once in the studio and then analyzed and reanalyzed by engineers and marketing experts and constantly redesigned to suit their needs along the way….
There’s no better example of the GM riddle than the Pontiac Aztek, the 2001 sport-utility vehicle that was recently awarded top honors by J.D. Power & Associates for customer satisfaction among light SUVs. The trouble is, not many customers can stop laughing long enough even to look inside an Aztek, whose boxy, butt-ugly design has inspired more jokes than any vehicle since the 1957 Ford Edsel. It’s kind of what Lutz had in mind a year ago when he described GM’s products, among others, as resembling “angry kitchen appliances.”

It’s remarkable that this is a lesson that auto companies in the US still have yet to learn — while comfort, reliability, price, cargo space and features are all things that will close the sale, the sale won’t even get off the ground until you catch the eye. US auto owners still identify with their cars, more often than not, so you want something that folks will want to identify with.

(Via Opine Bovine)