"car" news and stories

Have you ever mentally shaken a fist at someone driving recklessly, chatting on his or her cell phone instead of watching the road? Probably. Have you even done that while sipping a shake or eating a snack-sized bag of chips, still sitting in traffic? If so, you were no better off than that other guy.

After extensive testing on car simulators, researchers in England concluded that eating or drinking while driving seriously impairs your reaction time and increases the likelihood of getting into an accident, despite the fact that many drivers actually drive more slowly while eating.

The simulation involved driving through a city environment and, at some point, being confronted with a pedestrian stepping out into the street. 9 out of 10 eating drivers had an accident. Some say that this is proof that eating in the car should be regulated, but if so, will changing the radio station be next?

Your best bet is to drive with your own safety in mind and try to take a sip or two of your coffee while stopped at a red light, not while merging onto the highway.

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The expression that "it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk" is a common one, but have you ever heard of someone baking cookies in their car? A woman in New Hampshire did just that, taking advantage of the extremely high heat that her area had been experiencing. With outdoor temperatures in the mid to upper 90s, the temperature in her RAV4 reached about 200F. She placed trays of prepared dough on her dashboard and went inside to wait with her coworkers for the cookies to be done.

The chef, Sandi Fontaine, has actually been doing these car cookies for about 3 years now, whenever the temperature climbs about 95F. She notes that an additional benefit of in-car baking is that the fresh cookie smell lingers in the car for many days after a batch has been completed.

Update: View photo here.

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Some of you are no doubt familiar with the technique of cooking food on your car's engine while you drive. Perhaps you've even read Manifold Destiny. A great site called Instructables has a step-by-step guide with plenty of annotated photos showing how to make things like marinated chicken breasts, roasted potatoes, ramen noodles and apples with brown sugar. Mileage ranges and speeds are suggested, as is placement on different parts of the engine. The tutorial was posted by a mechanical engineering student who goes by Trebuchet03. He also adds that the striker plate inside your car door can double as a bottle opener in a pinch.

How many times does a journalist get to use "Blame it on Tony the Tiger" as their lede? A Florida man, distracted by the bowl of Frosted Flakes he was eating, recently drove his 1999 Toyota Tacoma into the car of a local police officer. Luckily, no one was injured. The accident did cause a reported $5,000 worth of damage to both vehicles, according to the St. Pete Times. "They were in a bowl, but they were dry," a spokesman for the local sheriff's department told the Times, adding "I think the fortunate thing is nobody was really hurt so we can talk about the Frosted Flakes.''

It is likely that many pizza delivery people have second jobs. It is possible that some of those second jobs are in funeral homes. And the number of people who are delivery people with second jobs in funeral homes and who think it is acceptable to transport pizzas in the same car as a corpse is exactly one.

A Domino's delivery driver in Pennsylvania, who also happened to be driving with a suspended license, was pulled over for failing to have an inspection sticker on his bumper. The officer noticed that there was a stretcher in the back of the 1993 Buick, whereupon the driver explained his second job was transporting corpses. This does not violate any health ordinances in that county (though perhaps it should), despite the fact that the pizzas were sitting by the stretcher amidst "rubbish and wet clothing."

I don't live in Pennsylvania, but just in case, I'll stick with carry-out. Better yet, maybe I'll go with frozen or homemade.

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