Hyundai/Kia and VW/Audi each had 9 vehicles earn Top Safety Pick honors from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. A total of 66 vehicles were tabbed for the award, including 40 cars and 25 SUVs.
The number of drivers involved in fatal accidents who were eating, talking on a phone or otherwise distracted rose 42% from 2005 to 2008. But that's just one way to read a new study of highway deaths. Another way is that "inattentive" or distracted driving was recorded as a "primary" factor for just 7% of the 50,430 drivers involved in fatal accidents in 2008.
Based on early success, Daimler will expand its Car2go service to more cities in Europe and North America. The plan rents Smart vehicles by the minute, which differs from other car-sharing services that rent by the hour. It's already up in Austin, TX, and Ulm, Germany.
An alliance of automakers, California regulators, and technology suppliers have launched the California Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative to simplify the process of installing home chargers and will seek to ease restrictions on apartments and condominiums. The collaborative says this is being done to handle a million pure electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that will be on California roads within the next 10 years.