Great article talks about transportation on two wheels!! Here’s an interesting thought: there are some 200 million motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, and trikes currently on the world’s roads. It’s definitely not hard to see why, especially in countries like India, China, and Africa, where they outnumber cars and trucks. It’s not hard to see why – motorcycles are affordable, efficient, and easy to repair.

Motorcycles also happen to be a whole heck of a lot of fun to ride – they’re nimble, quick, and without tons of metal and glass surrounding you, there’s an unmistakable sense of freedom. That same lack of protection can also make them quite unforgiving and dangerous.

Read the full article here.

Distance driving can be mind-numbingly boring, but looking away from the road to text or change songs is a life-or-death gamble. Plus, buttons embedded in the wheel only control a fraction of a car’s functionality. Now German researchers have a wheel prototype that puts everything within reach — no glancing needed.

“If you have gestures on the steering wheel, you spend more time looking at the street,” said Albrecht Schmidt, a computer science professor specializing in human-computer interaction at the University of Stuttgart in Germany who worked on the prototype.

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Ever feel like your local plow drivers were purposely putting more snow on your car as some sick, cruel torture to make winter even worse?

Well, up in Lowell, Mass., a working-class suburb north of Boston, one guy really was. Because he filmed it and uploaded the video to YouTube. And then the city promptly fired him.

Read the full story and see the video here.

Toyota says it is recalling a total of more than 1 million vehicles, including some late-model luxury cars, due to a pair of safety problems involving defective airbags and faulty windshield wipers.

The announcement comes during the same week the maker confirmed it regained its title in 2012 as the world’s best-selling automotive manufacturer.  But Toyota also had more vehicles recalled than any other automaker operating in the U.S. last year – the third time it has captured that dubious distinction in four years.

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Not that I would not love to own any of them.  It’s long been known as “America’s sports car.” But as Chevrolet gets ready to roll out the latest version of the Corvette, that’s clearly no longer good enough for the General Motors division.

When the all-new model, known to aficionados as the C7, debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, Chevy is clearly hoping to deliver the sort of sports car that can challenge global leaders like Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini.

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from the 60′s!!

This is a first for me!  A published poem about a junkyard! For Hoppe, that means the poems in his newly released book Diamond Plate (Obsolete Press, $10.00) should appeal as much to the mechanics he grew up with in the Michigan Rust Belt as to his peers in the Austin poetry scene. Hoppe will read poems from Diamond Plate Wednesday at an Austin Community College event that is free and open to the public.

Having worked a bevy of blue collar jobs, actively participated in the punk poetry and ‘zine scene, converted to Buddhism, raised a son and joined the English faculty at Austin Community College, Hoppe gives off the impression of a man whose eclectic life has mellowed to a gentler rhythm.

The poem “Junkyard Thaw” does just that. “Today’s adventure / finds me at the junkyard / where icicles give car grilles / vicious fangs,” he writes, capturing the surreal beauty of abandoned car parts in a section of the book called “The Persistence of Machines.”

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Many DYI’ers want the option of pulling their own parts from auto salvage yards for even more savings!!

It takes a lot for an industry with more than 8,000 businesses and $22 billion in annual sales to change direction. That’s what’s happening now in automotive recycling, where self-serve salvage yards that permit customers to remove their own parts from scrapped vehicles are beginning to supplant traditional full-service operations.

Thus far, there are only about 200 pure self-service yards, estimated Dimitri Gerontis, principal at S3 Software Solutions, a Salt Lake City provider of software for self-service auto salvage operators. “But there are probably upwards of 400 to 500 of what would be considered a hybrid yard, bordering between self-service and full-service,” Gerontis said. “And everyone’s looking in that direction.”

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Hyundai Motor Co is recalling some Santa Fe SUVs and Sonata sedans for separate air bag issues, U.S. safety regulators said Monday.

In the United States, Hyundai is recalling 199,118 Santa Fe SUVs from the model years 2007 to 2009 that were made from April 2006 through July 7, 2008, because the front passenger air bag may not deploy in a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing.

Separately, Hyundai is recalling 22,513 Sonata sedans in the United States for the model years 2012-2013, made from January to June this year, because the side air bag may inflate, to the surprise of the driver.

Read the full article here.