One of London’s most famous icons got retired in 2005 to international dismay—the Routemaster bus. Seen on the roads since 1956, they were replaced by bendy-buses that almost everyone despises. Until now! Meet the new Routemaster.
A niche market, yes, but when you reach a certain age and the idea of going on a cycling-and-camping holiday in a foreign country appeals, you’ve got to consider how to transport your bike over.
You just know that the kid who gets pushed around in this stroller will grow up to become a boy-racer. At $US2000, it’s almost karma for the parents who decided buying a Roddler was a good idea.
I don’t care that the Contortionist bike looks like it would crumple at the first curb hop, or that toting a 26-inch wheel isn’t that much more convenient than wheeling a bike. I just want to watch it fold, forever.
Your MacBook Air or whatever is a sharp machine, sure. But it’s not timeless, handcrafted Italian leather that’s transformable into one of eight different styles.
The United Arab Emirates is planning a bunch of “personal rapid transit” devices: driverless taxis that run on electricity and could hit the streets of Masdar as early as this year.
Mixing suction-cups with the chance of a high-speed death: sounds like fun, and exactly what designer Robert Nightingale has come up with in his “Hitch” concept. It’s a smidge like the free-ride skateboard Kouriers in Snow Crash and a smidge like bad building-climbing gear from B-movies. The idea of Hitch is simply to sucker onto a vehicle that’s about to move off, using the belt and hand suction cups, thereby gaining yourself a free journey. But Robert also suggests aircraft hangers as a good hitchhiking location, which I’m pretty certain is a one-way ticket to a Darwin Award. [Yanko Design]
All joking aside, there are plenty of places in the world where getting speedy medical attention is difficult. And that’s where the Jaambaaro concept from designer Benoît Angibaud comes in. It’s a two-person pedal-powered ambulance, designed to get the sick and wounded to hospital in areas where motor vehicles are rare. It would have solar panels to help generate some energy, and be made of locally-salvaged materials. Great idea, though I have to admit the first thing that came to mind when seeing the stretcher’s blister canopy was a short dude in glasses, shouting “Choppers!”… [Yanko Design]
The director of the TSA, Kip Hawley, has spoken to the New York Times and confirmed that X-ray-friendly laptop cases will be accepted by the agency as soon as they hit the shelves, potentially bringing an end to the panic that your laptop will go astray in all the fuss at airport checkpoints. We brought you first hints of this back in May, but it looks like the process of getting the bags approved is well underway. And both Targus and Pathfinder Luggage are hoping to have products on sale as soon as September or October.
Let’s say someone put a bomb on your bus and it can’t go below 75 kph or it will explode. If that were to happen on a NYC bus you would probably be incinerated because the city has installed a new GPS device in thousands of local commuter and tourist buses. If the authorities get wind of a hijacking in progress, they can slowly stop the vehicle and prevent it from restarting via remote control. It may not work for “Speed” style situations, but for conventional hijackings, it could prove to be an effective weapon.
