Safety

A “foreign” Swedish driver who was caught speeding at 290 kph in the nearby country of Switzerland could be given a world-record speeding fine of SFr 1,080 million, equivalent to US$ 1 million.

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Portugese driver Francisco Carvalho went off the track at a recent World Touring Car Championship event. Competing in the Seat Leon Euro Cup Race, he got nudged by another racer, which quickly made Carvalho’s car a shining example of what happens when you lose control at high speeds. However, unlike most “accidents” on public roads, no one was injured in this track incident thanks to a racing rollcage and vigilant marshals.

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New test results show that some automakers are doing a good job of designing vehicle roofs that perform much better than current U.S. federal rollover standards require. But the roofs on some other vehicles need improvement. In the first U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) roof strength tests of so-called midsize SUVs, six earn the top rating of ‘good’ for rollover protection, one is ‘acceptable’ and five others earn the second lowest rating of ‘marginal.’

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U.S. magazine Consumer Reports, a respected publication that has no advertising and buys their own test vehicles, has come out with a scathing report saying that the Lexus GX 460 is a “safety risk” and put it on their “do not buy” list. They came up with the recommendation because they believe the electronic stability control does not react in time during loss of control at high speeds. As a result, Toyota has temporarily stopped sales of the GX 460 in the United States. We believe the story is being blown out of proportion.

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It is a given that most people do not use child-safety seats while driving with their kids in the GCC. It has mostly to do with the cultural mindset that will be hard to overcome in the short term, although the cost of child seats can also be a deterrent. When I was a kid growing up in Dubai, I rode in the back seat of my budget-minded father’s craptastic 1988 Honda Civic, with a broken rear-door latch that used to fling the door open on occasion at highway speeds. In the front seat, my mother refused to belt up until it became law.

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Suddenly, the rainy season is upon us, and as usual, no one has any idea what to do when it’s pouring hard in a storm. There isn’t much that needs to be known beyond some common sense.

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