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Trucks from Death Race

If you’ve been living in a house with no TV or internet connection, you may not have heard that Osama bin Laden was found and killed. Actually, even if you have been living in such a house, you still probably know about bin Laden. Teams of analysts are combing through a mountain of data recovered from bin Laden’s compound, and one nugget of information they’ve found is a bit surprising; bin Laden was against a proposed plan for U.S.-based Al Qaeda operatives to weld blades to the grilles of pickup trucks and run down pedestrians.

This plan was laid out by Inspire, an English-language magazine by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The magazine stated that drivers of the customized trucks could look for crowded areas, then motor onto the sidewalk and cause major carnage. It’s a sick plan, and apparently bin Laden felt the same way. He called it “indiscriminate slaughter,” and felt it wasn’t in line with what Al Qaeda does.

Yes, seriously. And no, we’re not making this up. Read more about this aborted plan and the way bin Laden managed the terror organization from his secluded home at this link.

Osama bin Laden rejected plans for truck designed to mow down humans originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 12 May 2011 20:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Technology

We have a hard time imagining a world in which we don’t drive. Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn’t have that problem. He feels that humans should give up their right to the steering wheel and hand the keys over to a computer. At a recent TechCrunch conference, Schmidt opined that we humans aren’t very good at driving, adding that “it’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.”

It’s hard to fight Schmidt’s logic. After all, thousands of Americans die each year due to accidents that are mostly avoidable. Then there’s the matter of traffic jams; Computers could one day seamlessly route vehicles to the best possible road, virtually eliminating the Interstate parking lot. Oh, and don’t forget that drivers are becoming increasingly distracted by electronic gadgets like smartphones.

Autonomous vehicles? Nice idea, but until it truly feasible and reliable on a massive scale, we’re more than happy to drive ourselves. And while we’re at it, we’ll row our own gears, too.

[Source: TechCrunch]

Google CEO: Ridiculous that humans drive cars originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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