MetaFilter posts tagged with road

Dashboard Camera + Timelapse = Drivelapse

not_on_display — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:46:57 -0800

Drivelapse: dashboard-camera footage of stretches of roadway, sped up via timelapse, often with annotations. For example, you can zoom through Zion Canyon or zig-zag down the Swiss Alps. Travel 250 miles from Beverly Hills to Las Vegas in 28 minutes. Or, Norwalk OH to Williamsburg VA: 550 miles in 17.5 minutes, approximately 1885 mph. Take a tour of Minneapolis surface roads or winding New England state highways. Or, tilt at windmills along the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar. ⚠MOTORIST WARNING: ANNOYING SOUNDTRACKS NEXT 10 MILES — PREPARE TO MUTE SOUND. ⚠ More roadtrips, condensed: ⛽ FreewayBrent covers most of the Western and Mountain timezones, but also manages to capture a few other places. • I-80 East from Truckee to the CA/NV border, thrugh the Truckee River Canyon • I-95 N from Warwick, RI to Attleboro, MA • I-15 N in AZ, through the Virgin River Gorge ⛽ Barbiepoledancer does Milwaukee to Philly in an hour plus change. ⛽ New Blue Productions drives through Cebu, Philippines ⛽ TheSolarcatcher captures the Midwest. • I-80 W through the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa, • US-20 E, the Rockford Bypass ⛽ Rockersk08: More of the Desert West. Here’s I-515 S, the Great Basin Highway. ⛽ FreewayJim covers a lot of the Eastern US. • NJ Turnpike at dusk • The Big Dig in Boston: Ted Williams Tunnel at the Eastern Terminus of I-90, and Route 1 from Peabody (where I learned how to drive), across the Tobin and Zakim bridges and into the South Station Tunnel. • US-302 from Littleton, NH to Wells River, VT. ⛽ Texas Freeways doesn’t just cover Texas, but a variety of other places • I-70 in Colorado through the Glenwood Canyon • State Highway 130 towards Austin, where you can travel 85MPH • Mt. Evans Road in Colorado, the highest paved road in the US ⛽ TheHighwayMan covers lots of road. • Crossing the Sault Ste. Marie bridge from Michigan into Canada • Downtown Seattle on I-90 • ⛽ InterstateKyle covers a lot of the West, including this drive up US-34, Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado • I-10 E driving by Joshua Tree, an elevation gain of 1700+ feet. • US-50 from Carson City, NV, to Lake Tahoe ⛽ eluko79 covers the upper midwest, including , and into a storm on US-12 • I-70 E into Saint Louis, skirting the Gateway Arch. (also features a cool zoom-in intro from Google Earth.) • ⛽ aswchris has a lot of Northwestern and Central Europe taken care of. • The N12, Morlaix, France • Documenting road downgrading in the Netherlands • The R6 ending in Prague, Czech Rep. • On Autobahn 71 through various mountain tunnels in the Thuringen Forest, Germany ⛽ CosmoPhotography likes the night tours: Miami and South Beach • NYC and Times Square . . . and the daytime, too: Cambridge and Downtown Boston, MA • I-40, the Research Triangle in Durham, NC • ⛽ Caminoandaluz has Spain covered. • The N-340 around the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar • Through Downtown Cadiz • Through Toledo Province ⛽ SoutherReadGeek does what it says on the tin. ⛽ MyDriveLapse lives up to their moniker, plus they offer a “How To Drivelapse" page. ⛽ Alaska to South Carolina! ⛽ Calais docks to Dordogne, France ⛽ User bmbsage does a drivelapse from Detroit to the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto, just so he can get some good Trinidadian food. ⛽ Pacific Coast Highway ⛽ Roadtripshoes covers a lot of Big Sky Country ⛽ Party of the Third Part takes the 101 South out of San Francisco at dawn, featuring a cool little dashboard and ok music once the narrator stops talking. ⛽ Hippies driving through backroads of Hawaii ⛽ Kootnenay National Park, British Columbia, CAN ⛽ ...And Norway by motorcycle. Anyway, you get the idea. Do a youtube search for "drivelapse" + "[placename]", strap in, and go for a ride.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense

Charlemagne In Sweatpants — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:35:07 -0800

The lack of female road narratives and why it matters Whereas a man on the road might be seen as potentially dangerous, potentially adventurous, or potentially hapless, in all cases the discourse is one of potential. When a man steps onto the road, his journey begins. When a woman steps onto that same road, hers ends.

Whenever there's trouble, they're there on the double.

zarq — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:20:51 -0800

"On a good day, the street maintenance team tasked by the New York City Department of Transportation with roadway repair might fill 4,000 potholes in eight hours. In an average week, they could resurface 100,000 square yards of road. After Hurricane Sandy, their crews removed 2,500 tons of debris. And every day, on a Tumblr called The Daily Pothole, New Yorkers can take a peek inside the workings of a city system few have likely thought about." Storyboard: A Day with New York City’s Pothole Repair Crew. "One of the most popular online inventions of New York City’s government is The Daily Pothole, a blog that tracks, in gravelly detail, the milling and paving of street cavities from Midwood to Midtown. It is eye candy for the asphalt-obsessed: panoramic photos accompanied by comic captions (“Bump!” “Sneak Attack!”) and a goggle-eyed mascot named Warmy, an asphalt plug, to boot."

Pain don't hurt

Bunny Ultramod — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 00:57:25 -0800

"Was it intended as a parody?" Asked Roger Ebert in his original review of the Patrick Swayze film "Road House," which premiered in 1989. There's a case to be made for parody. The script was coauthored by screenwriter Hilary Henkin, whose work has often had a strong ironic sensibility, including the original script for Wag the Dog, as well as the stunning noir pastiche Romeo is Bleeding, and the misguided cop comedy Fatal Beauty. Whether intentional or not, the film consists of a selection of over-the-top set pieces, including Jasper's Double Deuce bar, where the clientele is exclusively "troublemakers ... Too many 40-year-old adolescents, felons, power drinkers and trustees of modern chemistry." We see the bar transform over the course of the film from a dive where blind bluesman Jeff Healey plays behind chicken wire (Blues Brothers-like) to a reasonable establishment. This is thanks to Dalton, an NYU-educated philosophy student who has taken up work as a bouncer, played by Patrick Swayze. How? A lot of face punches. Swayze manages to rent himself a $100/month room above a barn that coincidentally happens to be right opposite a pond from the film's villain, Brad Wesley, played by Jackie Treehorn himself, Ben Gazzara. They spend a lot of the film watching each other from open barn doors and three wheel recreational vehicles. (Alas, some consider Gazzara a less than ideal movie villain.) Gazzara's house is a wonder, filled with stuffed game. His minions drive monster trucks and bleed too much. He's also not much of a driver. His villainy is confined mostly to small-town political machine politics, and he boasts that he's bringing a J.C. Penny to town. So the film is mostly fights, although it does have one magnificent throat-ripping. Nonetheless, it's filled with classic quotes and its own terminology. Agony Booth offers a comprehensive recap here. And How Did This Get Made offered their own extensive commentary on the film. It boasts obsessive fans, including Bill Murray, as costar Kelly Lynch recounts in this AV Club Interview: "[S]peaking of Bill Murray, every time Road House is on and he or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV—and they’re always watching TV—one of them calls my husband and says [In a reasonable approximation of Carl Spackler], “Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now." The cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was inspired enough by the film to perform a Patrick Swayze Christmas song. Rifftrax has also tackled the film; samples begin here. WMFU's deejay (and later Monk writer/producer) Tom Scharpling once acted out the entire film on air, by himself; the episode is available at their archives. The work has been the subject of endless satires since it came out, including a re-edit that posits that Dalton is actually the villain of the film (and something of a dickhead). Squidbillies did their version, titled, simply, Swayze's Crazy. Parks and Recreation has also offered a creative reinterpretation of the film. Best still, in 2003 the film was adapted into an Off-Broadway musical with the astonishing title Road House: The Stage Version Of The Cinema Classic That Starred Patrick Swayze, Except This One Stars Taimak From The 80’s Cult Classic “The Last Dragon” Wearing A Blonde Mullet Wig. The title sums up the adaptation, albeit neglecting to mention that the film's extensive fight choreography was recreated on a stage with the help of harnesses, bungees, and trampolines. Jeff Healey lost a long battle with cancer in 2008. Patrick Swayze died in 2009. Ben Gazzara passed away in 2012. But at least they gave us road house, and there were never any sequels. Well, there was one. But we won't discuss it.

just some blokes mucking around in the studio

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 03:39:13 -0800

Whoever let the tape roll on at a Beatles recording session at Abbey Road studio, 47 years ago, deserves our gratitude for several reasons. For reminding us that these exalted and almost absurdly famous musicians could sound like rank amateurs trying to teach themselves their newest song. For giving non-musicians a window onto the utterly mundane reality of the recording process, i.e. the endless waiting around for the engineer to get the tape cued up into the right spot. For giving us an audio glimpse of Lennon and McCartney's continual nutty banter, which can be quite entertaining. All that and more to be heard in The Beatles in Studio - Rubber Soul (1965) and Rubber Soul (Think For Yourself) 1965 Session.

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS

The Whelk — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:55:51 -0800

Spend an hour tooling around 1920s-Era NYC via the magic of video

Invisible People

Artw — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:24:59 -0800

He was methodical, he rode the highways, and he preyed on teenage girls. Girls who'd run away. Girls no one would miss. In the summer of 1985, the author was such a girl. One night on I-95, she hitched a ride from a stranger and endured the most terrifying moments of her life. Now, years later, she returns to the scenes of her fugitive youth looking for clues to that terror—and the girls who lost their lives to it - The Truck Stop Killer

The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway

netbros — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:23:55 -0800

Driving through Time features roughly 2700 photographs and 76 interactive maps of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The website allows students, researchers, and digital tourists to uncover hidden stories, hear forgotten voices, and understand the often wrenching choices that the construction and preservation of a scenic parkway in a populated region have necessarily entailed. In addition to making Parkway materials from several different archives available and searchable online, "Driving Through Time" includes two features that organize the materials in space as well as in time: To the extent possible, each item included in the collection has been assigned a geographic coordinate, linking the historical document to the Parkway location to which it pertains. This allows many of the collection’s items to be found via the geo-browse function that identifies clusters of items relating to specific locations. Additionally, many of the historic maps have been georeferenced, or aligned with their proper location on the present-day landscape, a technique that permits users to "see through" historic maps, compare past and present, and visualize how the Parkway might have looked had alternate plans been carried out. These maps are also available for download in a format suitable for use in Geographic Information System (GIS) software.

Every death on every road in Great Britain 1999-2010

Dim Siawns — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:47:06 -0800

The BBC has put up a page presenting statistics dealing with deaths on British roads between 1999 and 2010. A slightly older page presenting mostly the same statistics (up to 2008) can be visited here; this earlier version was published in conjunction with several other articles, including one looking in-depth at a single crash and its aftermath in Stevenage in 2007.

Car Wars

fearfulsymmetry — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:57:48 -0800

Nearly a decade of US road accident casualties mapped by location across America from ITO World via the Guardian (they have also done the UK)

Canopy Roads

twoleftfeet — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:24:43 -0800

Canopy roads are awesome, iconic features of rural Florida, beautiful, red, bright, green, yellow, normal.

Don't Drive Fast on the Storseisundbrua

bwg — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 06:06:12 -0800

Storseisundet Bridge, along Atlantic Road, the Atlanterhavsveien in Norway, is a mind-bending (at certain angles) cantilever structure guaranteed to thrill you.

Gimme three feet, gimme three feet mister

klangklangston — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:47:51 -0800

Six animations from Commute Orlando on cycling and pedestrian safety.

The World is Still Smiling

zarq — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:58:06 -0800

Global Slacker (One Day) (YouTube: One couple's drive across two continents, from Chengdu to Capetown. A compilation video.) Main Site. (Via) Additional videos from Eoin "Flinnster" Flinn, on Vimeo Also: * One Year * One Glance * One Line Root-Stat is a fun volume of statistics about their trips.

Party On, Weird America

Miko — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 10:11:20 -0800

The American Festivals Project takes you along on two guys' National Geographic-funded 2008 tour of the "small, hidden, and bizarre" festivals celebrated all over the United States. Through photos, video, and a blog, discover Rattlesnake Roundup, Okie noodling, an American Fasnacht, the Idiotarod, and plenty more. These whippersnappers stole my dream, but I'm posting it anyway.

Where we're going we don't need...actually, we'd benefit from some attractive brick paving.

maxwelton — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 02:28:04 -0800

Tiger Stone is a Dutch company (site is in Dutch) which is promoting a technology which allows you to "print" 300-400 meters per day (roughly a mile every four days) of attractive brick roadway. This seems to be everywhere on the various design and urban planning blogs (all with essentially the same blurb) but I haven't seen a discussion of cost of this surface versus asphalt or concrete, or possible advantages/disadvantages of the surface. A google translation of the bullet points on Tiger Stone's web page for fellow dutch-language-challenged folks:

What can Tiger Stone do for you? * Better working conditions. * Motivated and enthusiastic staff. * High daily production: 300 m² possible. * High quality work produced. * The edging is made right away, so no cutting work afterwards! * Several factors may simultaneously process. (?) * Partially disabled employees productive again. * Short payback. * Simple operation. * Low maintenance.

The Diverging Diamond

jefficator — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:21:34 -0800

"The Diverging Diamond reduced traffic accidents by a remarkable 60 percent. The only complaint is the strangeness of being shifted to the wrong side of the road."

Tree:Kite::Tunnel:Van

_dario — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:56:02 -0800

A tunnel in Paris becomes famous Just a few meters from Place Charles de Gaulle, better known as Place de l'Etoile, at the bottom (or top, depending on your direction) of the Champs Elysées, there's the entrance to a tunnel, called Tunnel de l'Etoile, which passes under the square, to relieve the 6-lane roundabout (or, ronde-point) from some of the traffic. Everything's ok except for one small detail: the entrance is just 8 feet high, and van drivers zipping across Paris apparently don't have much of a feeling for signage. (link above is in French, machine translation to English here)

Why did the Chicken cross the road?

nam3d — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:45:02 -0800

The Beatles 'most famous' album cover inspires dozens of imitations

Huh. Kinda reminds me of that guy in Casino Royale.

miss lynnster — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:36:55 -0800

Bleeding billboard. Yeah, that's what I said.

old, weird america

mwhybark — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:38:17 -0800

Roadside Architecture. "I have been passionate about commercial architecture and roadside related things all my life. I grew up in California but New York City has been my home since 1980. I started this website in 2000 simply as a way to organize my own photos. Since then, it has become a bit of an obsession and grown to well over 1,000 pages." flickr. blog. For example: Mini Golf. Seattle's Walker Rock Garden. Fairy Tale Parks of New Hampshire. Please note, for whatever reason the site author uses a redirect on the primary domain name to here. Also, previously.

"I can name that tune in 300 yards..."

maudlin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:10:53 -0800

"I can name that tune in 300 yards ..." Not for much longer, though. Honda prepared for an upcoming commercial by cutting grooves in a road in Lancaster, California. These grooves, if driven over at just the right speed and in just the right car (one guess!) should play something resembling the William Tell Overture. But once filming was done (and I'm sure the commerical will be as impeccably produced and successful as Honda's other ads), locals and tourists were left with the driver's equivalent of that huge floor keyboard in Big, with some drivers lining up to play over and over again. Result? The city will pave over the road today. But hey, we'll always have Anyang. And Japan (previously). And Denmark.

Ice Road Truckers of Canada

rongorongo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:57:09 -0800

For about two months each year Nuna Logistics operates the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road in Canada's Northern territories. The road is nearly 600km long and is predominantly constructed over frozen lakes. At this time of year the Ice Road Truckers take on the cold and the risks inherent with carrying loads of up to 40 tons over it (home page for a History Channel series about the drivers with some interesting video). The road one of several worldwide - it has some travel news. Also previously.

Road Trippin'

dersins — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:03:59 -0800

"Road Trip is a short film composed of 12,397 pictures taken automatically from the back seat of a car while driving accross [sic] America from Portland, Oregon to New Hampshire."

Respect speed limit, get free music from...asphalt ?

elpapacito — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:11:00 -0800

Respect speed limit, get free music from...asphalt ? When driving in Japan remember to respect the speed limits , you may be instantly rewarded by hearing a tune as played by...your car and the road.