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Video at source. A proposed federal rule that would require black boxes or event data recorders (EDRs) in every U.S. automobile may mean “Big Brother” could be in your passenger seat for every drive. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule requires all light passenger vehicles be equipped with an EDR by Sep.1, 2014. Ninety-six percent of new cars already have them - measuring such inputs as speed, lateral acceleration, pedal effort, seat belt use, wheel spin, steering wheel turn and direction. Black box data retrieved from U.S. car accidents in a single day would provide more information than a...

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The problem with bad ideas from Europe is that they eventually become bad ideas in America too. And so it goes with the latest nitwit scheme from Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party, which is cousin to our own liberal Democrat Party, separated not ideologically or by a vast ocean, but only by accents. The Lib Dems want to outlaw gas and diesel powered cars from the United Kingdom with a goal to create a “zero-carbon” UK by 2040. No word yet whether they will allow people to “breathe,” which-- incidentally to Lib Dems it seems-- also pushes carbon into the atmosphere....

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Matchbox die-cast models, which have gone from child's toys to collector's items. I don’t like to boast, but by the time I was 10 years old I owned a fleet of Ferraris, a Lamborghini Countach and a Peugeot Paris-Dakar racer. Being a child, I would smash these motors into each other and then, at the end of a hard day’s driving, forgo the comfort of a dehumidified garage in preference to lobbing them all in an old ice-cream tub. These old Matchbox cars survive to this day, tucked away in my parents’ loft...

Hey, but if you drive one of these, I'm sure you're the exception... 10. Toyota Prius   They should have called it the Toyota Sanctimonius. That sidelong glare you get when you pass one? It means you're driving too fast. Wasting precious gasoline. Defiling Gaia. Reveling in your carbon footprint. You, my friend, are the enemy of mankind. And all Prius drivers. 9. 1990's-Vintage Modified Honda Civic   Yes, this is the infamous "Ricer", equipped with fart pipe, sub-$250 body kit, partially-finished paint job and Formula One-style spoiler. It must, of course, be lowered sufficiently to scrape the pavement like...

Last summer, California highway police pulled over pop star Justin Bieber as he sped through Los Angeles in an attempt to shake the paparazzi. He was driving a hybrid electric car—not just any hybrid, mind you, but a chrome-plated Fisker Karma, a US $100 000 plug-in hybrid sports sedan he’d received as an 18th-birthday gift from his manager, Scooter Braun, and fellow singer Usher. During an on-camera surprise presentation, Braun remarked, “We wanted to make sure, since you love cars, that when you are on the road you are always looking environmentally friendly, and we decided to get you a...

BERKELEY, Calif., July 1 (UPI) — Electric cars, despite their supposed green credentials, are among the environmentally dirtiest transportation options, a U.S. researcher suggests. Writing in the journal IEEE Spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options. Electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another, he wrote, and "most electric-car assessments analyze only the charging of the car. This is an important factor indeed. But a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impacts over the vehicle's entire life...

The New York Times ran a piece this weekend with the foreboding title "THE END OF CAR CULTURE" (and people accuse us of clickbait). Here's why you should take that claim with a grain of yellow cake uranium. What New York Times environmental reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal is getting at is what most people are calling "Peak Car." This is the idea that car ownership and usage has peaked in the United States and is never coming back. There's ample data to support this theory, although the most recent look at the data suggests that while the recession may have put...

When Americans want to buy a car, nearly one in six will consider buying a Ford. While not all buyers drive off with one, consumer consideration is a good measure of demand for the brand and sales. Edmunds.com measured the number of visitors who looked at the pricing, reviews or details of all cars on the site. Based on visitor consideration, these are the cars most Americans are shopping for.Buyers often look at multiple models before picking one. In general, though, the most commonly considered brands in the country are also the top-selling ones. The top six brands based on...

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a lawsuit against BMW on Tuesday, alleging that one of its facilities in South Carolina adopted a criminal background check policy that led