Don’t text and drive says Volkswagen – very effectively (video)

Cinema goers in for a shock in VW’s don’t text and drive campaign We’re not the biggest fans of putting drivers in a bubble of concentration behind the wheel, which is what law makers seem to be trying to do. Don’t take a sip from that water bottle, don’t change the channel on the radio, don’t have a conversation with your passengers, don’t smoke, don’t take hands-free phone calls – in fact, don’t do anything but drive. But it’s a foolish trend as it’s the little things going on that keep drivers alert; focusing just on the driving is a sure fire way make drivers’ brains go in to a fug and lose concentration.

Adaptive steering for big Fords arrives on new Edge

By Tim Pollard Motoring Issues 30 May 2014 17:43 Ford today announced all its future large cars will have adaptive steering as standard - letting reps flick their wrists on the way in to the Welcome Break on the M4, yet tip their fingers when changing lanes on the London orbital. It's a further sign that what was once the high-tech preserve of the German brands is now firmly in the mainstream. BMW was one of the brands which pioneered variable-ratio power steering; in essence, it changes the ratio between the driver's inputs at the wheel and the rate at which turns are made at the rack.

Chris Bangle's ‘Illustrate the Future’ competition winner announced

Renowned designer Chris Bangle announced the winner of the ‘Illustrate the Future' design competition as Luis Fernando Peña Delgado at the end of the Interior Motives China conference yesterday. 22-year-old Delgado, a student of design at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia, was chosen by the judges under the direction of Bangle on the basis that his entry best followed the criteria of closeness to the original text, the quality of the illustrations and the creative content. The global competition's brief asked for students from any design discipline to examine excerpts from the eBook "Peter Teuful, A Tale of car design in Three parts" – written by Bangle himself – and translate them into a series of images.