Use this tag for question about cars, trucks and other road transport.
Road vehicle with four wheels and an engine intended to be a means of transport.
Questions tagged [road-vehicles]
190 questions
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Does 'Rubber Necking' happen after an accident?
When two cars get into an accident the cars around them need to slow down to avoid hitting the cars involved in the collision. This causes a backup in traffic. People have often told me that traffic around an accident is caused by people 'rubber…
TurqMage
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Does 80-90% of the environmental and health damage a car causes come from manufacturing?
Claim from the video The First 3D-Printed Supercar:
How we make them [cars] is much more important than how we fuel them and whether they have a tailpipe or not. 80 to 90 percent or more of the damage, the environmental damage and the health…
Ben
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14
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Can you puncture a tire with a Swiss Army knife?
On films and TV you always see characters puncture a regular car tire with something like a folding knife or a swiss army knife. How hard would it be in real life to do this?
fab
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14
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Do black cars consume more fuel?
Some time in 2009, California passed new regulations, banning black cars (here's one source) on the grounds that black cars have higher emissions than other colors of cars. The theory is that black cars absorb more heat from the sun, so their A/C…
Flimzy
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14
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Can you improve a car's engine by driving the car fast?
Many car enthusiasts claim the following:
take 2 identical cars (equal horse power, torque etc).
give one car to an old person who only drives it slowly
give the other car to the car enthusiast making this claim
If you put both cars on a test…
BaGi
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14
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Is it possible to detect a laptop inside of a car boot?
Recently someone at a party told me thieves could detect a laptop in the car boot, even when turned off. At first I thought this was ridiculous, but I found some google queries provided a theory, the thieves used an inductive amplifier to detect the…
Davy Landman
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14
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Is the apparent drop in insect deaths on windshields due to a decline in insect populations?
The "windshield phenomenon" is a
term given to the anecdotal observation that people tend to find fewer insects smashed on the windscreens of their cars now compared to a decade or several decades ago".
This effect has received coverage…
bondonk
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Did unrestricted speed limits lead to fewer deaths in the Northern Territory of Australia?
Drive reports that a section of highway in the Northern Territory has has been switched back and forth between no speed limit, and 130 km/h speed limits over the past decade or so, with some dispute between the politicians about which is safer.
(It…
Oddthinking
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Is a car's fuel consumption increased when the headlights are on?
I have read in many sites that a car with lights on will consume more fuel that with lights off. The (hand-waving) justifications that I see tend to mention that "energy has to come from somewhere" and so they deduce that more fuel should be used.…
Martin Argerami
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Platinum fuel saver
I've heard on the radio advertisements for a product called the Platinum Fuel Saver, that they claim that if you use it, you will increase fuel efficiency by 25%. What kind of data is there to support this claim. Bonus points if you figure out the…
PearsonArtPhoto
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Did vehicle registration occur before automobiles?
I found an article online that makes the claim: "... registration plates having been used on carriages and wagons in the U.S. as far back as the early 1800s." The article can be found here: A License to Collect. Unfortunately, as it's always the…
David G.
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13
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Did Henry Ford ever say "any color he wants as long as it’s black"?
It's a common quote to attribute to him. Did he ever actually say/write it?
A customer can have a car painted any color he wants as long as it’s black.
espindolaa
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13
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Are American standards on automotive turn signals demonstrably less safe than European ones?
In most countries outside North America, vehicles have separate turn signals which are amber rather than red. In the USA (and probably Canada) this is not part of the standards and a flashing brake light is used as the turn signal in the majority of…
matt_black
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13
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Has Pokémon Go caused hundreds of deaths?
This article in The Register claims that Pokémon Go may have a bad side effect on road safety. The headline is:
Pokémon GO caused hundreds of deaths, increased crashes
And the article summarises the research:
...the game caused “a…
matt_black
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Do Jet Skis produce in an hour equivalent pollution to 100,000km of a new/small car?
I recall this claim being published in a newspaper a while back but time has buried it in the Interwebs, though it does come up from time to time as e.g.
Driving a jet ski for one hour will produce the equivalent amount of pollution as driving a…
Brian M. Hunt
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