Products

An American cyclist suffered a road rage attack from a rather unusual source recently. The cyclist went to retrieve his bicycle and was intrigued to see that a squirrel was sitting on the saddle and sizing up the handlebars. The cyclist was amused but when he got too close, the squirrel sprang at him and the man retreated accordingly. Bicycle-riding animals are rare although chimpanzees and even dogs have been trained to do so. Quite how the squirrel intended to ride the bicycle away is unclear.

A German driver has had a rather abrupt reminder as to why it is necessary to look properly before pulling out at a junction. The driver, a young woman, drove her small VW from a side road and straight into the path of an oncoming British Army tank, which was on its way to military manoeuvres. Luckily for the woman, the tank driver was rather more attentive and he managed to halt his heavy-armoured vehicle before it completely crushed the car. Fortunately the VW’s driver was unhurt in the incident, although

Many motorcyclists are well aware that car drivers do not look properly before manoeuvring, which is borne out by analysis of crash results. But one lucky biker in Australia found to his surprise that one car driver was even less aware than usual. The motorcycle rider was waiting at a junction when a 4x4, which had come to a halt ahead of the stop line when the lights changed, suddenly reversed. Seeing the car about to impact, the biker jumped aside from his motorcycle. The 4x4 driver, a learner, ignored th

A quick-thinking excavator operator managed to come to the aid of an elephant in danger in Kenya. The fact that the animal was both large and strong did not prevent it from facing death when it became trapped in a mud pool. Such incidents are not uncommon and generally result in death for a trapped elephant. But hearing the elephant shrieking in distress nearby, the excavator operator quickly drove his machine to the side of the mud pool and by carefully digging around the trapped animal, was able to help i

A methane-powered bus has set a speed record of nearly 124km/h at a test track in the UK. The bus, from the southern city of Reading, was converted to run on compressed methane from cow manure and was painted black and white like a Friesian cow. Mechanics removed the bus’s engine governor that restricted the vehicle’s speed to 90km/h. The bus then broke the record on the banked high-speed circuit at Millbrook Proving Ground, near the city of Bedford. The cow waste was broken down by anaerobic digestion to p

It seems that people will park in the smallest of places, despite the efforts of urban street designers and town planners to ensure an orderly arrangement of suitably spaced cars. The advent of smaller-than-small cars has meant that drivers will park in smaller-and-smaller spaces. Surely some spaces are just too small to attract drivers of even the smallest car. But the city of Bristol, in southwest England, has taken no chances and has painted the double-yellow ‘no parking’ lines in areas where no one in t

Paver hire business MAC Surfacing, based at Tipton in the England’s West Midlands, has chosen two new Volvo wheeled P6870C pavers for its hire fleet. Established back in 2004 as a paver hire business, MAC started with mini pavers. It is now a nationwide hirer offering pavers, planers, transport and other equipment along with labour. The latest Volvo P6870C machines bring the total number to 20. The P6870C is powered by a Volvo D6 Stage IIIB compliant 130kW engine and at its heart features the EPM II –

The latest Bobcat S550H high flow skid-ster loader is ideal for surface pavement repair work, according to one user in northern England. Hemswell Surfacing, near Gainsborough in the county of Lincolnshire, recently purchased a new generation Bobcat S550H high flow together with Bobcat sweeper and bucket attachments from AMS Bobcat, the local authorised Bobcat dealer. The machine has controls that allow for precise movements even in the tightest of spaces, said Alan Jennison, head of Hemswell Surfacing. “

Swedish company Nibu Borr is using one of the newest developments in rock drills from Sandvik Construction, the RH460 hammer. This is the latest member of the down-the-hole range which continues Sandvik’s extensive portfolio of rock tools. Nibu Borr is focused on water well and energy drilling along with drilling for piles and reinforcements on construction projects. "You never really know what you’re going to encounter until you start drilling,” says Daniel Knutsson, head of drilling activities for Nibu

A brand new Dynapac SD2500CS tracked paver is building a bypass road around the town of Essen (Oldenburg) in northwest Germany. Traffic has to pass through the town centre, leading to traffic jams and unsafe situations. A bypass road will relieve the town centre of this traffic and will increase the comfort of living in the city centre. The old B68 highway is a narrow two-lane street, where, according to residents, two trucks struggle to pass each other. The SD2500CS is being run with a V6000TVH v

A sophisticated system to evaluate in-vehicle safety has been developed by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) in the UK. The protocol is based around four key categories of assessment: Relevance, Deployment, Usability and Resilience. A product is scored in each category with an overall score determined to allow a TRL recommendation status to be given to the product. The evaluation protocol can be used to provide independent support for the claimed benefits of the evaluated product and/or to provide exp

A novel system is now available that allows a smartphone to be used to measure road defects. Developed by Grimmer Software, the RoadBump Android application can be used to measure the roughness of a road. This tool can provide estimates of International Roughness Index (IRI) in metric or standard units, without requiring high-cost laser profilers.

Evonik has developed a simple but effective concept to reduce the risk of wrong-way drivers. The company’s cold plastic, one-sided rumble strips have been developed following a string of incidents in Germany in which drivers have travelled in the wrong direction on stretches of high-speed autobahn. The marking system has undergone successful initial tests and the concept has been received well by German police, looking for a system to deal with the problem. There are around 75-80 crashes/ year in Germany