driving
Design
AccidentSketch Helps You Create Detailed Accident Reports
12:30AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Accidents happen to even the most cautious drivers. If you find yourself in one, AccidentSketch is a simple web-based tool that can help you draw up a picture and generate a report to give to your insurance company. More »
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | Need to notify another driver that they’ve blocked your car in, left their car lights on, or are about to get busted by a parking inspector? SMS My Ride lets you send a text to another driver using only their licence plate number. More »
SMS My Ride Lets You Warn Other Drivers
9:00AM Angus Kidman | Need to notify another driver that they’ve blocked your car in, left their car lights on, or are about to get busted by a parking inspector? SMS My Ride lets you send a text to another driver using only their licence plate number. More »
Travel
11:00AM Angus Kidman | Planning a leisurely driving trip around Australia and looking for some good stopover options? People Going Places offers information on places to visit large and small throughout Australia, including a particularly useful “show me interesting locations between two points” option. More »
People Going Places Highlights Travel Options For Caravan Lovers
11:00AM Angus Kidman | Planning a leisurely driving trip around Australia and looking for some good stopover options? People Going Places offers information on places to visit large and small throughout Australia, including a particularly useful “show me interesting locations between two points” option. More »
Travel
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Want to avoid accidents and incidents on your journey home? Free site TrafficHawk offers useful information if you’re a Sydney driver. More »
TrafficHawk Shows Sydney Traffic Trouble Spots
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Want to avoid accidents and incidents on your journey home? Free site TrafficHawk offers useful information if you’re a Sydney driver. More »
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | Political campaigns utilising online media have proved relatively effective in recent years, so NSW motorists’ organisation the NRMA is jumping on the bandwagon with its Roadtube site, designed to let motorists make their complaints about the nuisances associated with driving public. You can upload videos of your key motoring whinges direct to the site or leave a written comment; the NRMA is also organising three temporary video booths in various locations to let the non-tech-equipped have their say as well. Whether this will actually be more any effective than online petitions (or just general lobbying by the NRMA) is of course another question. (The NRMA also effectively claims copyright in your submissions, so if you’re planning on doing more than just ranting straight into a webcam you might want to go straight to YouTube, which the NRMA is itself using for hosting, instead.)
Roadtube
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NRMA Roadtube Site Lets NSW Drivers Whinge
9:00AM Angus Kidman | Political campaigns utilising online media have proved relatively effective in recent years, so NSW motorists’ organisation the NRMA is jumping on the bandwagon with its Roadtube site, designed to let motorists make their complaints about the nuisances associated with driving public. You can upload videos of your key motoring whinges direct to the site or leave a written comment; the NRMA is also organising three temporary video booths in various locations to let the non-tech-equipped have their say as well. Whether this will actually be more any effective than online petitions (or just general lobbying by the NRMA) is of course another question. (The NRMA also effectively claims copyright in your submissions, so if you’re planning on doing more than just ranting straight into a webcam you might want to go straight to YouTube, which the NRMA is itself using for hosting, instead.)
Roadtube
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Money
2:00PM Angus Kidman | If you want your next car purchase to be more environmentally friendly, the government-funded Green Vehicle Guide is a sensible place to start. The site ranks cars based on greenhouse and air pollution emissions, and lets you compare up to three models for relative performance. The lists are ranked by both best performance and vehicle sales, which reveals that most of us apparently haven’t yet taken the green message to heart when it comes to car purchases.
Green Vehicle Guide
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Green Vehicle Guide Rates Cars By Emissions
2:00PM Angus Kidman | If you want your next car purchase to be more environmentally friendly, the government-funded Green Vehicle Guide is a sensible place to start. The site ranks cars based on greenhouse and air pollution emissions, and lets you compare up to three models for relative performance. The lists are ranked by both best performance and vehicle sales, which reveals that most of us apparently haven’t yet taken the green message to heart when it comes to car purchases.
Green Vehicle Guide
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Fix
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Manic traffic, expensive petrol and the perceived idiocy of other drivers can often make a stint in the car seem like torture. At the BBC News Magazine, driving expert Tom Vanderbilt offers ten tips to reduce the stress of driving. Some of them are UK-specific (there’s no option for cyclists not to wear helmets in Australia, for example), but there’s still good advice in here, including the ever-notable assertion that changing lanes rarely helps you get to your destination much faster. Got any other tactics to make driving less of a hassle? Steer them into the comments.
10 ways to rediscover the joy of motoring [BBC New Magazine]
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How To Bring The Pleasure Back To Driving
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Manic traffic, expensive petrol and the perceived idiocy of other drivers can often make a stint in the car seem like torture. At the BBC News Magazine, driving expert Tom Vanderbilt offers ten tips to reduce the stress of driving. Some of them are UK-specific (there’s no option for cyclists not to wear helmets in Australia, for example), but there’s still good advice in here, including the ever-notable assertion that changing lanes rarely helps you get to your destination much faster. Got any other tactics to make driving less of a hassle? Steer them into the comments.
10 ways to rediscover the joy of motoring [BBC New Magazine]
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MobileTraffic Brings Live Traffic Shots to Your Phone
8:15AM Kevin Purdy | Visiting New York and wondering whether a crosstown cab is any faster than the subway? Mobile|Traffic, a free web service for mobile phones (and standard browsers as well) offers updates from more than 4,600 traffic cameras in seven countries, including the U.S., U.K., and Australia. Simply navigate from country to state/province to city, and you’ll get a recent shot of the intersection. Using Mobile|Traffic from a phone requires a data plan, as you’d imagine, and, as MakeUseOf points out, it’s in serious need of map and search functions. But it’s simple, free, and pretty useful if you don’t always trust vague traffic reports of “moving steadily” and the like. Mobile|Traffic [via MakeUseOf.com] More »
Handle a Traffic Stop and Avoid Your Ticket
9:10AM Adam Pash | Car and Driver magazine knows a thing or two about getting pulled over, so they asked seven state troopers from across the Us what they want and don’t want from you, the driver, during a routine traffic stop. For example, rather than preparing your licence, registration, and insurance information before the officer asks for it, “most cops don’t want you to do anything except rest your hands on top of the steering wheel until directed otherwise.” More »Change your driving habits to save on petrol
1:25PM Sarah Stokely | Wise Bread offers up a couple of ways to save money on petrol – and the big one is just slow down your driving speed.
On highways, the “sweet spot” for fuel efficiency is 55 miles per hour, or 90 km/hour. In fact, due to wind resistance at speed, you may use up to 20% more fuel if you speed up from 90km/hour to 120 km/h, according to figures the article quotes from Eartheasy.com.
Even on city streets, there are some ways to increase fuel efficiency – learn to take your foot off the accelerator when you can see you’ll need to slow down or stop. Accelerating burns fuel – so it’s wasteful to accelerate up to a red light, then hit the brakes.
Looking for other ways to save on petrol? We previously told you how to shop around online to find the cheapest petrol. Got any other tips for saving on petrol? Share in comments please.
How to save $0.54 per gallon on gas [Wise Bread]
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