It looks like the smart car is reaping benefits for Daimler already.  The vehicle has already sold over 16 thousand units in little over half a year.  Overall sales for Daimler are up, and are at a .5% increase over this time last year.  So it is really starting to look like smart car production was a smart move for Daimler.
Even though much of the market, especially the sale of domestic autos, seems to be down, the market for reliable, well built, fuel efficient cars is on the rise.  I don’t know how many people upon seeing the smart car Read the Rest…

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I hope that this study just pertains to British cars, but I’m certain that it does not exclude us in reality.  It seems that a recent study by British scientists discovered that the average U.K car is something like a cross between a used Pamela Anderson tissue, and the underside of a sewage treatment plant worker’s shoe.  The verdict: U.K. cars are crawling with filth.  Here’s what Sky News had to report:
UK drivers are so slack about keeping their vehicles clean that the typical car has been found to host to no less than 283 different types of bacteria Read the Rest…

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I have long held a theory that men and women are equally bad drivers, just in different ways.  I think of men as being reckless.  A man’s accident involves driving 100mph down the wrong lane, side swiping an ambulance, while barrel rolling past a stopped school bus (all likely to impress a female.)  These are man accidents…recklessly stupid, the types of things that would make your license spontaneously combust if it knew what was going on.
I think of female accidents as negligently dumb.  A female accident involves backing into a building due to the fact that lipstick was being applied Read the Rest…

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Small cars are making a comeback, and rightly so, but they are also a massive cost liability in low speed collisions. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is reporting that several small cars can rack up some big costs in little accidents. The cars that performed the worst in the low speed crash tests are the Hyundai Elantra, Toyota Prius, and the Volkswagen Rabbit. Each of the cars mentioned sustained about $4,000 of damage in the low speed tests. A surprising choice for the best small car in regard to these low speed tests is the Read the Rest…

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If you follow this blog at all you realize by now that I have a bone to pick with the U.S. auto industry. They are inefficient, poorly managed, produce horrid products, and suck money out of our economy to boot. In the latest turn of events Chrysler vice chairman Jim Press stated that Chrysler is ready to compete in the auto market, and all they need from us (the tax payers) is billions of our dollars. According to the Detroit Free Press, Press was quoted as saying:
$25 billion would be a “good start” and that there needs Read the Rest…

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Listen up Jewel.  Alaska just banned all texting while operating a motor vehicle.  So if you are doing any type of auto transport in Alaska, you are going to have to wait to send that text…so you don’t have to make a phone call…and make human contact.  The law reads as follows according to drivinglaws.org:
1. The vehicle has a television, video monitor, portable computer, or any other similar means capable of providing a visual display that is in full view of a driver in a normal driving position while the vehicle is in motion; and the monitor Read the Rest…

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A recent plea by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety asks that states raise the minimum driving age from 16 to 17.  The argument comes from studies that suggest, well, to put it bluntly:16 year-olds kill themselves a lot while driving. The study highlighted the mortality rates of 16 and 17 year-old drivers in New Jersey and Connecticut. In New Jersey 4.4 out of every 100,000 population 16 year-old drivers died in a car accident. Conversely Connecticut had 20.7 per 100,000 16 year-olds die in car wrecks. The difference is that New Jersey does not allow Read the Rest…

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From first hand experience I can tell you that Hispanics make up a disproportionately large quantity of drunk drivers. In my time as a Police Officer, almost every DWI I encountered was a Hispanic, but why? MADD has recently attempted to address this issue. The Dallas News is reporting:
Statistics show about 47 percent of traffic fatalities in Dallas last year involved Hispanics driving drunk.
LULAC sought MADD’s help after community outrage over the deaths of newlyweds Germán and Erika Clouet on Labor Day. Uriel Pérez Palacios, 22, was fleeing from police when he crashed Read the Rest…

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I don’t know about you, but I live in an area with lots of urban sprawl.  It seems like no one lives in the city they work in anymore.  This doesn’t seem like much of an issue, but when you have hundreds of thousands of people clogging the same two roads into the city in question, life becomes unbearable.
According to Smart Growth America, the cities with the most urban sprawl are:
1. Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.
2. Greensboro-Winston-Salem- High Point, N.C.
3. Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
4. Atlanta
5. Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C.
6. West Palm Beach-Boca Raton- Delray Beach, Fla.
7. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk Danbury, Conn.
8. Knoxville, Tenn.
9. Oxnard-Ventura, Read the Rest…

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Chrysler is fighting to have a tax credit given for a line of low speed, all electric, autos.  Apparently their is some debate over whether the vehicles that Chrysler is working towards getting the tax breaks for are new-enough technology.  According to CNN:
David Friedman, research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists Clean Vehicles program, called the lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries that power the GEM cars and Vectrix scooters respectively, “yesterday’s technology.”
“Not a dime of taxpayer dollars should be going to yesterday’s technology, it should be going to tomorrow’s technology” such as lithium ion battery-powered Read the Rest…

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