One was a new GTI that within three years lost all clutch hydraulics, leaving my friend stranded on the highway unable to depress the clutch.

One was my colleague Jason Torchinsky’s wife’s Tiguan, a 2011 vehicle whose engine literally blew up despite being meticulously maintained.

Two of my friends had Touaregs, and…

The data doesn’t lie, entities with more diversity perform better. We are in a world driven by ideas to solve complex problems. Having a group of people from the same background results in group think. The issue is that creating a diverse organization is difficult and often starts with worse performance as the entity…

This comparison shows how the physical disconnect between your hands and your virtual car’s front wheels results in the steering strategy of “crank it all the way and hope it bites”. This is the default driving style when using a controller, like it or not. But the realities of two dimensional pixel piloting don’t…

It makes the person getting mad feel kind of smug.

Does getting mad at someone for not doing enough really help anything?

I never really listened to NPR on the radio much but I am pretty sure I am not the only one avidly reading the hell out of their website during the pandemic. They are everything you’d want in a news outlet, just good steady, factual reporting without sensationalist click bait or fluffed up non-news items. 

I believe planes have more that 1. Airbus has 3. 757 has 3...

Because horsepower is really a measure of torque. The V8 makes more torque per revolution than the 2.7. As a result, the 2.7 must do more work to make up the difference. Unfortunately, internal combustion engines aren’t efficient, and most of the work ends up wasted in heat and exhaust.

Seems like this is an update to the old way VW used to say “fuck you”:

In other words, they really are like a real automaker now

Especially since it has Corvette headlights.

Is anyone else terrified to see further degradation of driving skills in North America? I mean really, what kind of a passenger would say “Well, she can’t really handle driving between other vehicles on the freeway, but thanks to Nissan, I am very comfortable being a passenger here.” Things are bad enough without…

One of the Mayday! TV show episodes dealt with this case, as I recall. One thrust reverser deployed at takeoff and rendered the aircraft uncontrollable.

Blacked out lights.

Look at all the idiots who are not IFR certified who fly into instrument flight conditions, become spatially disoriented, and auger into the ground. Look at all the private pilots who fly past perfectly good airports only to run out of fuel short of their destination and die a spectacular death.

And yet, hundreds, if not thousands, of people forget that travelling at high velocity on roads can be fatal every day. If I lived in a city with a million people, and most of those people were airborne, I would invest in an underground bunker.