How do you drop ~$2m worth in a pond of water in a jiffy?  This is how they do it (at least one man did it successfully) in Texas.  Read along this twisted version of a Pelican Brief style thriller ( though no murder of human beings involved, it involves a very expensive &  rare automobile)..

A man blamed a low-flying pelican and a dropped cell phone for his veering his million-dollar sports car off a road and into a salt marsh near Galveston. The accident happened about 3 p.m. Wednesday on the frontage road of Interstate 45 northbound in La Marque, about 35 miles southeast of Houston.

The Lufkin, Texas, man told of driving his luxury, French-built Bugatti Veyron when the bird distracted him, said La Marque police Lt. Greg Gilchrist. The motorist dropped his cell phone, reached to pick it up and veered off the road and into the salt marsh. The car was half-submerged in the brine about 20 feet from the road when police arrived.

The story reported by Chris Paschenko @ The Galveston County Daily News has some interesting details. The man was uninjured after escaping the partially submerged Bugatti Veyron as it came to rest in about 2 feet of saltwater. The man, who refused to give his name, was looking at real estate in Galveston.

About 3 p.m. a low-flying pelican distracted him as he traveled north on Interstate 45 just south of the hurricane levee near Omega Bay. The man jerked the wheel, dropped his cell phone, and the car’s front tire left the frontage road and entered a muddy patch, which foiled his attempt to maneuver away from the lagoon. Chris’ report says Veyron’s powerful engine gurgled like an outboard motor for about 15 minutes before it died.

(Soureces: AP Via Google; The Galveston County Daily News; The Inquisitr)

This week is National “Stop on Red” Week, and the Federal Highway Administration has kicked off several activities that highlight how dangerous blowing through a red light can be.  The activities for the week include a special edition of the Campaign’s Safety Focus newsletter, written by 13 red light running victims, survivors and their families and friends.

It has also released a video that can make you think twice before speeding through  the yellow at an intersection.  The video is a collection of actual crashes captured by traffic cameras situated at these intersections.  In one scene, a motorcycle flies through an intersection slamming into a car. In another, a car t-bones a sport utility vehicle.

The Stop Red Light Running Program was created by the Federal Highway Administration in 1995 as a community-based safety program. This campaign raised awareness of the dangers of red light running and helped reduce fatalities in many of the participating communities. The program calls attention to the dangers of red light running each year in the Annual National Stop on Red Week, – a week dedicated to educating Americans about the dangers of running red lights.

Remember, the number of fatal crashes at traffic signals is rising faster nationwide than any other type of fatal crash.  In 2007 in the U.S., almost 900 people were killed and an estimated 153,000 were injured in crashes that involved red light running. Public costs exceed $14 billion per year, and more than half of the deaths in red light running crashes are other motorists and pedestrians.

Show your Support! Stop on Red!

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, when questioned one night on a television talk show about what makes her so popular, responded: “I’m like a bad car wreck on the freeway. You know you shouldn’t stare but you just can’t help it.” 

We can’t help it, can we? While hardly unique, an accident that brought the State Route 60 in Rowland Heights, California to a crawl one afternoon provides a perfect example. Just past the State Route 57 interchange, three crumpled compact cars limped to the right shoulder and died. The respective occupants and a highway patrol officer surveyed the situation, rounding out the classic picture of an accident scene. For a few miles in either direction cars passed by at the speed of a funeral procession so their drivers could ogle the unfolding scenario. 

Admit it. Most of us do stop and stare — with costly consequences, too. The statisticians at the some urban traffic-safety centers calculate that rubbernecking causes more unnecessary traffic congestion than any other behavior.  

So why do we do it? Are we really that morbid? Do we really revel in the misfortunes of other people? 

“Not at all,” answered Mark Rafter, former assistant professor of psychology at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California. “We stare because that’s the way we are built. It is perfectly normal for us to respond to unusual stimuli with an increased level of attention. In fact, having a sense of curiosity is healthy.” 

Rafter also said that this “novelty interest” increases our chances of survival. Instinct

dictates that we examine any unnecessary phenomenon — such as the brightly flashing blue and red lights of an emergency vehicle — lest it be a threat to our own safety. 

“There are other factors as well,” Rafter added. “Freeway wrecks provide us with the rare opportunity to double check our best guess as to the cause of the delay.” 

Goodness knows that we are granted plenty of time to wonder what happened when stuck in a long backup. When we finally arrive upon the accident scene, we are usually presented with conclusive evidence of just what the problem was. Then there is the frustrating fact that the very slowing of traffic that a collision creates lends us the perfect chance to really get a good look at it. Evidently our voyeuristic tendencies tend to complicate matters.

However, being the individuals that we are, not all of us stare with the same intensity, according to Rafter. 

“Each person strives to maintain their own optimal level of arousal,” Rafter pointed out. “Extroverts need to seek out exciting events to get to normal, so they really stop and gawk, whereas introverts require much less stimulation and tend to look away from tragic occurrences.”

In the final analysis, there’s really no need for us to feel too guilty about where we cast our eyes, at least according to one expert. On the other hand, traffic would certainly move a lot smoother if we elevated ourselves above our basic instincts and just kept our eyes on the road.

©2009, Dr. Roadmap® 

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David Rizzo, better known as Dr. Roadmap,  a Commute Management expert who writes about issues such as improving gas mileage (mpg), alternate routes, traffic congestion, ridesharing, commuting behavior and intelligent transportation systems on California’s Orange Country Register.  He is well known for his comprehensive guide ever written on off-freeway commuting in Southern California, published in 1990.  Two years later he became the first traffic reporter to offer daily alternate routes in real time over the air on one of the most popular morning radio shows in Los Angeles.  His bi-weekly columns appear exclusively for TransportGooru.  This is copyright-protected content.  Please contact Transportgooru if you like to use this article or portions of this article. 

Smart USA quickly responds to IIHS crash test results

(Source:  Autoblog, Jalopnik & IIHS)

“There are good reasons people buy minicars,” says Institute president Adrian Lund. “They’re more affordable, and they use less gas. But the safety trade-offs are clear from our new tests. Equally clear are the implications when it comes to fuel economy. If automakers downsize cars so their fleets use less fuel, occupant safety will be compromised. However, there are ways to serve fuel economy and safety at the same time.”

The three tests we have are between the Honda Accord and the Honda Fit, the Toyota Camry and Toyota Yaris, and finally the Mercedes C300 and the Smart ForTwo. With each we get a full speed offset frontal crash with both cars traveling at 40 MPH, destruction and carnage ensue and rightly so, there’s a lot of energy involved here. These are hardly scientific tests, and they represent the absolute most extreme crash scenario for these speeds, especially for the smaller cars. Ratings got from “Good” at the top of the scale through “Acceptable” and “Poor.” Considering this is one car bashing into another, the evaluation is somewhat subjective, but it gives an idea of relative performance. Let’s take a closer look at each.

 Click here to read the entire article and to watch two other awesome videos.  Seen below is the IIHS report in PDF format.  To download the report, please visit the IIHS website. 

P.S:  According to AutoBlog, folks over at Smart USA were not pleased to see the results of the latest batch of crash testing from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS did a series of frontal offset crash tests between small and mid-size cars, one of which included a smart ForTwo versus a Mercedes C300. While the results may have been what most people expected, they don’t correlate with the ForTwo’s results in standardized tests where the IIHS rates the smart as good in front and side impacts. The feds at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration give the smart 4 stars on frontal impact and 5 on side impact. 

The problem, as Smart USA sees it, is that the IIHS devised a test that no automaker has designed to and that they claim only represents about one percent of real world accidents. Smart has even set up a site for customer testimonials about the crash safety performance of their ForTwo. Typically, in the past, Smarts have actually done quite well in similar vehicle-on-vehicle tests, such as the ones conducted by Mercedes and Auto Motor und Sport after the jump.

(Source: Associated Press via Yahoo! News)

WASHINGTON – U.S. highway deaths in 2008 fell to their lowest level in nearly 50 years, the latest government figures show, as the recession and $4 per gallon gas meant people drove less to save more. Safety experts said record-high seat-belt use, tighter enforcement of drunken driving laws and the work of advocacy groups that encourage safer driving habits contributed to the reduction in deaths.

Preliminary figures released by the government Monday show that 37,313 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year. That’s 9.1 percent lower than the year before, when 41,059 died, and the fewest since 1961, when there were 36,285 deaths.

A different measure, also offering good news, was the fatality rate, the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. It was 1.28 in 2008, the lowest on record. A year earlier it was 1.36.

“The silver lining in a bad economy is that people drive less, and so the number of deaths go down,” said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Not only do they drive less but the kinds of driving they do tend to be less risky — there’s less discretionary driving.”

Fatalities fell by more than 14 percent in New England, and by 10 percent or more in many states along the Atlantic seaboard, parts of the Upper Midwest and the West Coast, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“Americans should really be pleased that everyone has stepped up here in order to make driving safer and that people are paying attention to that,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

(Source: Streetsblog)

Police Say No Criminality Involved In Case of Cabbie Who Plowed Into Restaurant Injuring Seven – “the cab was competing with another car to make a turn when it careened, skidded and hit a pole, then veered into the pizzeria”

The horrific death of a young mother in Midtownwasn’t the only instance of curb-jumping mayhem on Friday. Shortly before Ysemny Ramos was pinned against a building by an allegedly drunk driver on E. 37th Street, a yellow cab lurched off Amsterdam at W. 106th, plowing onto the sidewalk and into a pizzeria.Though seven people were hurt, with one in critical condition as of Friday, and though witnesses told the Post “the cab was competing with another car to make a turn when it careened, skidded and hit a pole, then veered into the pizzeria,” Gothamist reports that “The police told us no charges were filed because there was no criminality involved.”

(Source: Courant via Jalopnik)

We have to hand it to Freddie Mitchell of Hartford, Connecticut for inadvertently discovered a new way to wheelie dump trucks: by leaving their beds raised then ramming overhead signs at highway speeds.

Mitchell, 62-years young, pulled out of a roadside construction site along I-84 with is bed fully raised in “dump” mode. Accelerating hard for 3/4 of a mile, he made contact with the sign for Exit 63 at highway speed. The impact lifted the truck’s cab 20-feet into the air for a truly epic wheelie, but because the sign failed to give way, Mitchell was then stuck in an extremely precarious position.

(Source: AP via Yahoo News)

A good Samaritan who helped push three people out of the path of a pickup truck before being struck and injured has gotten a strange reward for his good deed: A jaywalking ticket.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Sky News)

The pilots of a Turkish Airlines plane which crashed while trying to land at Amsterdam’s main airport were among nine people killed in the tragedy.

Plane crashed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport

The aircraft, carrying 127 passengers and seven crew, broke into three pieces when it hit the ground next to the runway at Schiphol Airport.

Three crew who were in the cockpit were among those who lost their lives and more than 80 other people were injured, authorities said.

Earlier, Turkey’s Transport Minister Binali Yildirim and Turkish Airlines chief executive Temel Kotil were reported to have said no-one died.

The Boeing 737-800 was on a flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam when it came down in a field outside the airport perimeter.

Six people were critically injured and 25 others seriously injured.

Female passenger walks away after crash

TV images showed the aircraft on the ground, with the tail section of the fuselage broken off, and a wide crack in the fuselage just behind the cockpit.