Dbhalstead

New Comic: Deets

Right now the limit to be considered drunk while driving is a blood alcohol level of 0.08. If the National Transportation Safety Board gets its way, that will change to a BAC of 0.05. That means you'll really need to watch what you drink before you drive.

The BAC of 0.05 was decided unanimously in a 5 to 0 decision Tuesday by the NTSB board. Of course, the NTSB is just an agency, they do not have rule making capabilities. But the NTSB has had a startling track record of recommendations that then cause change.

Drinking age change from 18 to 21? Yep, that was the NTSB. The original 0.08 limit? That too was the NTSB.

To achieve a 0.05 BAC, people would need to have more than two drinks in an hour and then get behind the wheel. However, for smaller or lighter people, it's possible that 0.05 could be achieved after just one drink.

Will they really save lives? Stats show that more drivers were killed with a BAC above 0.08 or that were totally sober than ones with a BAC between 0.01 and 0.07.

With that in mind, is lowering the BAC legal limit a prudent move? I think it is. A lower limit will probably discourage more people from having just one more drink before they head out of the bar or that party. Fewer drinks mean fewer crashes and deaths. That's a good thing.

The National Transportation Safety Board revealed a new initiative Tuesday to curb the number of drunk driving fatalities.

The idea is to lower the legal blood alcohol limit from 0.08 to 0.05 or lower.

Now, any reduction in drunk driving fatalities is welcome. But it's important to point out that only a small fraction of alcohol-related deaths involve drivers with blood alcohol concentration levels between 0.05 on 0.07.

In fact, only 5.6 percent of alcohol-related fatalities in 2009 involved drivers whose BAC was between 0.01 and 0.07, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That number has fallen from 6.3 percent in 1990 and is well short of the 32 percent of fatal accidents caused by those with BAC levels of 0.08 or higher. It is not known the exact percentage of alcohol-related fatalities attributed to those with BAC levels of 0.05 and 0.07.

Read David Shepardson's story, which details how other countries have decreased BAC limits with varying levels of success.

Oh yeah, and don't drink and drive.

Follow the fun: @karlhenk

Japanese softcore porn with occasional racing, simulators giving you the opportunity the drive the slowest vehicles on the planet, or a T-Rex trying to stop your nitro-powered Holden? These are the weirdest car video games Jalopnik readers know.

Welcome back to Answers of the Day - our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!

We can't play with Forza's Jalopnik Pack all the time, and Interstate '76 is tricky to run on modern systems, not to mention Carmageddon. What can you do?

Photo Credit: JefMajor/Enviro-Bear 2000

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10.) Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing

Not even trying to look real. Still, you're the king of the road.

Suggested By: waveridin1959

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9.) Street Cleaning Simulator

Yes, this game is real. It comes from Excalibur Publishing, the simulation specialists who brought you such noted titles as "Garbage Truck Simulator" "Farming Simulator" and "Underground Mining Simulator." The real challenge with this street cleaning sim is not making your city cleaner, but actually turning this game into something fun. It's possible.

Suggested By: My X-type is too a real Jaguar

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8.) City Connection

DMala explains what's going on in this large-scale painting simulator, or something:

Old school arcade and NES. You drive a little hatchback with the goal of "painting" all of the platforms in the level. You have to avoid police cars/taxis that appear in the level, but you can shoot them with oil cans and knock them off the screen for points. You also have to avoid a cat that will randomly appear right in front of you, and will go sailing off the screen and cost you a life if you hit it. Very weird and very Japanese, but kinda fun.

Suggested By: DMala

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7.) Farming Simulator

Image farming with dubstep. You are ready.

Suggested By: tomtom615

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6.) HSV Adventure Racing

This was a fairly good Australian racing game, only it also featured a T-Rex for no apparent reason. Awesome. America got Beetle Adventure Racing, which replaced Holdens with Beetles but nothing else. Even the engine sounds were the same.

Suggested By: Ravey Mayvey Slurpee Surprise

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5.) Tomy Racing Turbo

This was a 1980s driving simulator for children consisting of a car that moved from side to side and a looping background that you could not actually interact with in any way. No crashing, no nothing. This is not software, but let's be fair: it's still more fun than LSD.

Suggested By: Livermoron

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4.) Pyongyang Racer

North Korea's first racing game Pyongyang Racer is a perfect encapsulation of North Korean order. All you do is drive around a city following direct instructions on which way to go, and you get yelled at if you stare at the traffic lady for too long.

Suggested By: Mason-Dixon

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3.) Desert Bus

Too be fair, it's only a small inner-game of SEGA's unreleased "Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors", but that doesn't keep it from being absolutely stupid. All you do is drive from Tuscon, Arizona to Las Vegas in real time. Yep, real time. It may be the most intentionally, aggressively boring game ever created.

Suggested By:DennyCraneDennyCraneDennyCrane

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2.) Moero Downhill Night Blaze

Drifting, ladies and lots of confusion. Naturally, it comes from Japan, and as our friends at Kotaku put it: "it's a game that fails at being both an adult visual novel and a racing game."

Suggested By: Gamecat235

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1.) Enviro-Bear 2000 - Operation: Hibernation

You drive around collecting fish before you go to sleep for the winter. All you really need to know is that it was billed as "the most realistic bear driving simulator ever created".

Suggested By: Brent Laverty

Every great action movie has a great car chase, and often the car chase is the best part. Think how many movies are known mostly for those chases, like Bullitt, the original Italian Job, or even The Rock.

This car chase, made by League of Buddies/Stoopid Buddy Stoodios can hang with the best of them. Filmed entirely in stop motion, with what appear to be custom-built rigs, it really is an action extravaganza to the eyes. Make sure you stick around until the very end, when you get to see some fascinating production stills.

Just in case, you may want to hide the children if you're going to watch. There's a bit of violence, albeit cartoon violence.

It’s springtime! Time to start working on your project car, learn a new wrenching skill, discover what everything is under the hood (and how it works), or just spruce up your daily driver. All month, we’ll be looking back at our best informative, maintenance and DIY articles from Jalopnik’s near 20-year history to get…

Read more...

Ferrari 458s were racing at Suzuka when one of them was involved in a simply insane accident. The driver and a corner worker were injured, but should be ok. That's unreal, because this is one of the worst accidents I've ever seen.

This occurred in late April during the Ferrari racing days at the famed Suzuka circuit. Driver Shigeru Terajima was driving his yellow 458 when something went very wrong on the front straight. The car spears right after pit out, hitting the safety barrier. The car basically disintegrated.

Amazingly, Terajima and the nearby corner worker survived the crash. Terajima is in serious condition at the hospital, but it sounds like he'll pull through. The corner worker is also in the hospital, but he seems to be in better shape than Terajima. Unbelievable.

Someone animated some 1970s Fords to sing the Bee Gees' "Love So Right." I will never sleep again.

You know what's the worst part? I love this video. It popped up and Curbside Classic and it is so, so much more enjoyable to watch than yet another dubstep-filled cookie cutter car video. The Bee Gees Fords disturb me, but at least the person behind them did something interesting.

So you have a GPS. Good for you! But did you know that the directions it gives you aren't orders, but recommendations? It's true! Well, someone should tell this guy who drove down the stairs of New York's Riverside Park.

A GPS gave a guy directions in NYC, and he followed it, trusting it like a small, blindfolded child listening to directions from a parent.

But in this case, the parent was telling the kid to eat dog shit.

He was driving and instead of paying attention to what he could see out of his windshield, proceeded into Riverside Park and drove down the stairs. Apparently that's when he decided that "hey, I should probably stop because stairs aren't for driving."

Great job GPS. And good job to you sir, for placing your trust in a screen and not what you can see. You're fighting the good fight. Hope you never buy Google Glass.

(Hat Tip to Ray!) Photo courtesy of MyUpperWest

A vintage jet fighter has crashed at an air show in Madrid, Spain, after failing to pull out of a stunt.

The pilot somehow survived the initial crash, but died of severe injuries at the hospital, according to Russia Today.

Though 3,000 spectators were at the event, none appear to have been injured.

We'll update you with more information as it comes in.

UPDATE: The pilot, Ladislao Tejedor Romero, was experienced in fighter jets and was also an assistant to Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes, according to the AP. It's not yet known what brought the plane, an Hispano Avacion HA-200 built in the 1950s, down to the ground. Two rescue workers were also taken to the hospital due to burns and smoke inhalation, respectively, as well as 57-year-old man believed to be the pilot's father, suffering from an anxiety attack.

UPDATE #2: Reader The Stig's Oklahoman Cousin just posted this video, taken from another angle. The bad bit is towards the end:

A Somalian-born Muslim cab driver, who also happens to be a U.S. Army Reserve veteran of the Iraq War, says that one of his recent customers, a man furious over the Boston Marathon bombings, broke his jaw during a disagreement in Northern Virginia.

The Washington Post has the scoop on what driver Mohamed A. Salim said happened to him early Friday morning. They also have a video Salim captured with his cell phone that shows the argument that apparently led to his assault by Ed Dahlberg of Clifton, Virginia, who has since been charged with a misdemeanor.

Salim told the Post that he picked Dahlberg up outside of a Fairfax country club around 2 a.m. He tried to get into the cab with a beer, but Salim told him to finish it outside.

Dahlberg asked Salim where he was from and whether or not he was a Muslim, and then asked him what he thought about "jihad." Salim had a sense that the conversation could go south, so he began recording it with his phone.

From their story:

On the video, a middle-aged businessman can be heard asking Salim if he is Islamic and then asserting that most Muslims are terrorists. He says the Koran directs Muslims to kill nonbelievers and then repeatedly and loudly demands that Salim denounce the Sept. 11, 2001, attackers. When Salim asks if the passenger is threatening him, the passenger uses an obscene phrase to respond in the affirmative.

“If you’re a Muslim, you’re a [expletive] jihadist,” the passenger says. “You are just as bad as the rest of them.”

The two men begin to argue, and that's when Salim says Dahlberg started to punch him. Salim said that after he stopped recording to call police, Dahlberg broke his jaw and referenced the Boston bombing as the reason he was so angry.

Salim says he has also lost partial vision and hearing since the attack. He is a married father of four who worked in military intelligence and as a linguist, the Post reported.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations is asking Virginia prosecutors to treat this as a hate crime.

Whether he's guilty of assault or not is up to a jury to decide, but the video makes it clear that the guy is a bigoted asshole. There's no excuse for treating someone else this way.

Photo credit Shutterstock

Self-styled "internetainers" Rhett & Link continue their evil plot to rule the world of awkward advertising with this latest spot for Arlen's Transmission in Burbank, CA.

Yes, this is a real shop. No, we do not want to go to there. Even if we get to meet "Goorgen."

Seriously, is that a real name? If so, am I spelling it right?

You know how most people will just honk their horns or shake their fists when they get cut off on the highway and then forget about it? This Toyota Camry driver isn't most people. A dash cam video captured his insane acts of road rage on a California highway.

The incident was filmed by a Mini Cooper driver who was traveling on Interstate 880 in the Bay Area on Saturday. The first part shows that the Mini passed the Camry on the right, but then had to dodge the sedan when it changed lanes unexpectedly.

At some point the Mini gets over into the far left lane, and that's when the Camry pulls up in front of him and brake checks him. When the Mini changes lanes to get away, the Camry does it again — and then again later, when the Mini gets over to the far right.

And when the Mini passes him and gets over to the far left lane, the Camry follows him yet again and swerves into his lane. Eventually, he just gives up and speeds off.

The whole thing is pretty scary to watch. To his credit, the Mini driver does a good job of trying to avoid the guy, and while the safe thing to do would have been to simply exit the highway, it doesn't look like he had many opportunities to do that. Plus, he didn't know if the Camry driver would follow him.

No word yet on whether the Mini driver turned this video over to the cops or not, but that's what I'd do. The Camry driver is clearly an overly-aggressive asshole who shouldn't be on the road at all.

This is just proof that asshole drivers come in all shapes, sizes and colors — even beige. Stay safe out there people.

Hat tip to Nate and McMike in Oppo-town!

Today, at work at a farm, we got a new calf. It looked like it had to poop, but was having difficulty. About four hours later it still hadn't pooped. Turns out it was born without an actual butthole. It was there, just sealed up by skin. I literally had to cut this poor calf a new butthole. FML

Whaddya mean you didn't know Chris Bosch was an inter-dimensional warrior of justice and Heat teammate Mike Miller, an inter-dimensional werewolf? Do you not watch basketball or something? [Deadspin] More »

Ever feel like you're all alone in this big, ol' universe? Don't. Because NASA has just discovered two prime planet candidates that fulfill nearly every condition necessary to life that we're aware of. And according to William Borucki, chief scientist for NASA's Kepler telescope, these two are the best bets we've ever found. More »

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