Blondestar goes from internet joke to reality.

A while back there was a video and audio clip doing the rounds which was a spoof of the OnStar commmercials. It was called "Blondestar" and the woman's call for help was "Help - I'm locked inside my car and the keys are on the outside".



Well - life imitates art : Blondestar for real.

In case the link vanishes, here's the story. The best part of it is the pictogram they made for the story. It's classic.


Automatic car features are supposed to make life easier for motorists, but they may be leaving some people without the know-how to do things the old-fashioned way. That’s what happened to a driver in Utah County who became trapped inside her own car.

A woman called Orem police Friday afternoon needing help because her battery died and she was locked inside her car.

When police arrived, they found the woman sitting in the car, unable to get herself out. She couldn’t hear the officers instructions through the rolled-up windows so she motioned to them to call her on her cell phone, according to police.

Once officers were able to talk to the woman on the phone, they were able to tell her how to manually operate the slide lock mechanism on the inside door panel to open the door and free herself.

“I'm just glad she had a cell phone to call for help,” an officer said.

HOV Lanes

There was a time when HOV lanes meant just that - High Occupancy Vehicle. Around here they've come up with a brilliantly misconceived scheme to turn the HOV lane into a profit-making venture. It's so corrupt it could almost be the work of the UK government.

So rather than just allowing multiple-occupancy vehicles, buses and motorbikes, they now allow driver-only vehicles as long as they have paid for a permit. The shining jewel at the top of this plan is that the permit has to ride inside the vehicle with the driver rather than be displayed somewhere prominently.

In between dodging certain death at the hands of Utah drivers on the motorway now, I also have to contend with drivers who might or might not have an HOV permit, who decide that it's their own personal overtaking lane.

It's all a bit mad.

Big Oil could be profitable at $35 a barrel.

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil, the U.S. arm of Royal Dutch Shell, said his company could be successful with oil prices at $35 to $65 a barrel. "I think in a range — somewhere between 35 and 65 dollars a barrel — is what has been consistent in our ability to run a successful company," Hofmeister said.

That does rather make a mockery of the $135-a-barrel price today. The Big 5 are in front of the senate judiciary committee again today. They've been sworn in which means a high chance that they're going to commit perjury. The excuses so far today have included the same old "it's supply and demand" scratched record along with the usual lies. The simple truth of course is that it's mostly profiteering.

Exxon's compensation for it's CEO is $12.5M annually and they turned over $40.6bn profit last year. That's an increase of 400% in 5 years. Exxon still maintain that their profits are down and that the current price at the pump is nothing to do with their profits.

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Rain-X Latitude wipers

So the 42°C summer and -20°C winter finally got the better of my wiper blades today. My wife and a colleague of mine had both mentioned seeing ads for Rain-X Latitude blades so I thought I'd give them a go. They're different to normal wiper blade replacements in that they don't have the usual steel frame with all the hinges and pinch points. Instead they have a solid but flexible frame with the blade attached to it, and the whole thing is pre-bowed into a curve. That means (they say) no pressure points and a better contact all across the blade. From my point of view it means no snow and ice jammed into the hinges to freeze the blade into a useless shape at low temperatures. But being May, I'll have to wait a few months to see if that works out. They also have a small aerodynamic widget on them too which will allegedly prevent aero lift at speeds.

They snapped into place with the standard 'J' connector with no problem. I tried them on a dry windscreen - a good test for new blades - and they swished back and forth without a skitter or twitch. Trying them with the washers worked nicely too. We're expecting rain for the next few days so hopefully I'll get a chance to try them in anger.

We'll see how well they last and perform but they certainly look the part. They cost about $6 more than regular replacements.

Rain-X Latitude wiper blades

From a motorcyclist to car drivers - thank you.

I'm the first in line to have a go at blind car drivers who cause 90% of motorcycle fatalities and accidents. But there are those who do see us - as rare as it seems - the alert ones who compensate for the occasional idiotic maneuver.

Ask any motorcyclists - we all do stupid things from time to time whether intentional or not. And once in a blue moon, we're saved from certain injury or death not by our skill, judgment or luck, not by some miracle of engineering or clever bit of technology, but by an alert car driver who saw us coming and got out of the way. If you've had this happen to you, I understand how angry you probably are at having been presented with an over-zealous motorcyclist who took a corner too wide and ended up in your lane coming towards you - but thank you for being alert. We all really do appreciate it even though to you we're "just a bunch of bikers".

Traffic aggravating measures

'Traffic calming measures' is one of those misnomers that has become common in the English language now. You know the things - bollards, speed bumps, narrow sections of road, stripes - all manner of stuff to divert your attention away from the matter at hand -- driving. As far as I can tell, these things just serve to aggravate the average driver. I can tell you it works for me.

If I'm driving down a road with a 20mph speed limit and I see speed bumps, I'd like to believe that I'd be able to drive over them at 20mph. In most cases of course, even the biggest Chelsea tractor couldn't make it over a speed bump at 20mph without rearranging the litter of kids in the back and causing untold damage to the suspension. Surely it can't be that difficult to make a speed bump that you can navigate at the intended speed limit?

Then there's road-narrowing and bollards - both items which typically take me by surprise and cause me to brake because the illusion is that the road is becoming too narrow to drive down. The person following me brakes too - if he's seen me - and suddenly you have a street full of erratic slow-down-speed-up driving. It's all so very unnecessary.

I pity the poor soul who has to ride in an ambulance down one of these hump-ridden streets when they're in cardiac arrest.

I would argue that traffic calming measures typically make those streets more dangerous than they were before. When the neighbourhood kids run out into the street in front of us now, are we going to be concentrating enough to see them, or worrying about the next Everest-sized speed bump?