While drivers have to worry about speed traps and traffic jams, almost nobody considers the effects of prolonged sun exposure from driving. (NOTE: Subscribers get to chat with David Sereda on August 14!) It’s a kind of CARma that happens on the left side of your face. This is important, because the rate of men dying from the deadliest form of skin cancer has doubled over the past three decades.
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You will soon be able to operate your TV and stereo with a wave of your hand and control your ear buds with your eyes, but will it be safe to drive your car using your eyes alone?
German researchers have done it: They’ve developed a new technology that lets drivers steer cars using only their eyes. The car was recently tested on the runway of a German airport, but in PhysOrg.com, Juergen Baetz quotes inventor Raul Rojas as saying, “The biggest challenge is of course to drive in a city with pedestrians and lots of obstacles.”But what if you blink? What if you’re in a convertible and something blows into your eye? Instead of making driving safer, this may make it more dangerous than ever.
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But only if you can afford the expensive brands – Car crashes kill more Americans between the ages of 1 and 45 than any other cause. Improvements in motor vehicle safety have been recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as ranking among the 20th century’s top public health achievements, BUT a recent study seems to show that the improvements aren’t benefiting all segments of the population equally. The reason? Some people can’t afford to buy fancy new cars.
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Something suspicious is going on: Federal regulators are studying whether sudden acceleration in Toyotas has to do with cosmic rays. They affect the computers in airplanes and spacecraft, so why not Toyotas too?
The design of Toyota’s microprocessors, memory chips and software could make them more vulnerable to these space particles than the computers inside cars from other automakers.
On the Free Press website, Justin Hyde quotes Sung Chung, who runs a California testing company, as saying, “I think it could be a real issue with Toyota,” but Hyde quotes a Toyota spokesman as saying that their engines are “robust against this type of interference.”
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