Carmageddon

Here is Carmageddon as envisioned in a General Motors commercial (or should I say Truckmageddon?). GM, which spent $4.5 billion on advertising last year, depicts gas-guzzling trucks as the only vehicle to survive the (oil) apocalypse. In reality, the only functional transport will be the bicycle. Though GM seems to believe otherwise: the commercial opens with [...]

Read Full Post »

Think of the Children

Politicians will go to any length to protect children from underage sex, predators, and abductions. But when public health professionals suggest children should be protected from speeding automobiles — well, get ready for a whole lot of stupid: Asked if the city will drop speed limits, as suggested earlier this week by the city’s chief [...]

Read Full Post »

Creepy Toyota Advertisement

Kids have a biological urge to explore the world. Running, playing, biking. So being cooped up in the back seat of a car for hours at a time can be the worst kind of torture. It is like a sensory-deprivation experiment. But don’t worry: the automakers are coming up with goofy schemes to make it a [...]

Read Full Post »

The Return of Tailfins

Never thought I’d see the day when tailfins make a comeback. Yeah, I know, the marketing droids euphemistically call them rooftop or sharkfin spoilers, but tailfins are what they look like. And like their predecessors, tailfins are found mainly on gas-guzzling brands such as BMW and Lexus.

Read Full Post »

GM’s Aging Demographic

Actually, “Reality Sucks” is the perfect slogan for GM. It survives on government bailouts, and the 20-something market abandoned the brand. And GM knows this better than anyone, as evidenced by this advertisement targeting their few remaining customers:

Read Full Post »

Suburban Whiners

Lately, there is trend among “Big City” newspapers to feature columns catering to the suburbanites. Perhaps it is just a lame attempt to attract a more affluent demographic, but the columns have a boring predictability. Each week one can expect a gripe about the usual urban failings — lack of parking being the biggest complaint. [...]

Read Full Post »

Failure of US Traffic Safety Policy

As a follow up to yesterday’s blog post on the trade barriers to European automobiles, let’s dig into the traffic fatality statistics. The whole point of these trade barriers, after all, is to prevent Americans from driving “unsafe” automobiles. We should expect to find a huge improvement in US road safety, relative to foreigners, right? [...]

Read Full Post »

How ‘Safety’ Regulations Impede Fuel Efficiency

SUV and small truck sales are booming again, and Detroit automakers have returned to their bad old ways. But when prices surpass the $4/gallon mark again, what plan do they have for the next gas crisis? One simple answer: re-brand fuel-efficient cars they already sell in Europe. Believe it or not, both Ford and GM [...]

Read Full Post »

Supersized Dummies

In a new paper to be published next month (Influence of obesity on mortality of drivers in severe motor vehicle crashes) Dr. Dietrich Jehle finds that obese drivers make up a disproportionate number of automobile fatalities. Might one simple explanation be that fat people drive more than their more physically-active counterparts? It isn’t clear from [...]

Read Full Post »

Berkeley Gives Away $100k in Free Parking for Christmas Shoppers

To entice shoppers to drive their cars into its shopping districts, the city of Berkeley is having two parking holidays. Parking revenue averages $20-$50k per day, so the total cost of the parking subsidy could be as much as $100k. Like most California cities, this has been a rough year for Berkeley’s budget. The police [...]

Read Full Post »