Research studies about things people can’t do, about putting eyes onto the front of automobiles, and about 57 people and a fake-food buffet are featured in the “Improbable Research Review” column in the special Super-Advanced Theories issue (volume 29, number 1) of the magazine. You can read that article free online. Better still, buy a copy […]
A new study can fuel old arguments and grievances about how other people should go about parking their cars. The study is: “Parallel Parking Vehicle Alignment Strategies,” Benjy Marks and Emily Moylan, Findings, March 2022. (Thanks to Kurt Verkest for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Sydney and UNSW Sydney, […]
Driver education for rats—and how to improve it—is the subject of this new study: “Enriched Environment Exposure Accelerates Rodent Driving Skills,” L.E. Crawford, L.E. Knouse, M. Kent, D. Vavra, O. Harding, D. LeServe, N. Fox, X. Hu, P. Li, Clark Glory, and Kelly G. Lambert [pictured here], Behavioural Brain Research, epub 2019. The authors, at […]
The bugs research that won Mark Hostetler an Ig Nobel Prize in 1997 is now, two decades later, finding new uses. A news report in Forbes magazine explains: Ford Launches Bugs At Sensors Because Keeping Them Clean Is Crucial For Self-Driving Cars To address this, Venky Krishnan, Ford Autonomous Vehicle Systems Core Supervisor and his team consulted […]
Vehicles could be fitted with what they call an ‘Ethical Knob’, under a proposal by Giuseppe Contissa, Francesca Lagioia, and Giovanni Sartor of CIRSFID, at the University of Bologna, Italy. The device might help clarify ethical/legal issues with Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). What for example, should a self-driving car do when it ‘realizes’ (in an impending […]
Building indirectly on Ig Nobel Prize-winning research, a 2015 study warns about the number of insects killed in collisions with cars, trucks, and other motor vehicles. The study is: “Road mortality potentially responsible for billions of pollinating insect deaths annually,” James H. Baxter-Gilbert, Julia L. Riley, Christopher J. H. Neufeld, Jacqueline D. Litzgus, and David […]
Researchers Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Andrea Serge and Mª Luisa Ballestar at INTRAS (University Research Institute on Traffic and Road Safety), University of Valencia, Spain, have performed a new study on shouting and cursing whilst driving. “The aim of this study was to describe the factors and perceptions related to aggressive behavior of verbally insulting […]
“The emerging [hedge fund] manager who goes out and buys a fancy sports car right off the bat is someone you probably want to avoid.” – informed an article in Business Insider (Singapore), February 2016. But was the statement measurably valid? To find out Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray and Melvyn Teo set up […]
Anyone who has driven a vehicle in various different countries might have observed that the national rate of ‘horn honking’ varies considerably – but why? A widely-cited study by Douglas T. Kenrick and Steven W. MacFarlane (published in 1986) investigated whether one simple variable – temperature – might be having an effect. The team organised […]
Would one expect to see an increased amount of jerks amongst drivers involved in accidents, rather than drivers who have not been involved in accidents? Yes, explain Omar Bagdadi [pictured] (of VTI, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Borlänge, Sweden) and András Várhelyib (of Trafik och väg, Lunds Tekniska Högskola, Sweden), in a paper […]