DailyDirt: Dangerous Driving

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

America's car culture has influenced a wide range of our daily lives -- from creating suburban sprawl to making cars a status symbol that many aspire to own. However, gas-guzzling vehicles don't quite have the same appeal as they used to, and autonomous vehicles may eventually suck all the fun out of driving on public roads. Before robots take over personal transportation, here are just a few examples of drivers pushing the limits of safety and driving crazy on regular city streets.

• Alex Roy drove (dangerously!) across the US (approx 2,795 miles) in under 32 hours and 7 minutes, beating the Cannonball Run record set in 1983. The new record time to beat is 31 hours and 4 minutes -- which might be beatable if EV batteries get a lot better (and no re-fueling is necessary). [url]
• The short film (just 8 minutes and 38 seconds long) C'etait un rendez-vous was made in 1976, but not everything about that film was as it appeared. The audio wasn't from the car being driven (Mercedes-Benz vs Ferrari engine noises), so some people think the whole thing was faked. [url]
• The famous car chase scene from Bullitt on the streets of San Francisco took weeks to film. Steve McQueen did some of the stunt driving, but not any of the really dangerous parts. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bullitt, cannonball run, car chase, cars, driving, film, rendezvous, speeding, steve mcqueen