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In this Saturday March 29, 2014 file photo, a woman drives a car on a highway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a campaign to defy Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving. Saudi Arabia authorities announced Tuesday Sept. 26, 2017, that women will be allowed to drive for the first time in the ultra-conservative kingdom from next summer, fulfilling a key demand of women's rights activists who faced detention for defying the ban.

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Saudi Women Win the Right to Drive

Next June, women in the ultra-patriarchal society will become the last in the world to receive driver’s licenses

Don’t overlook immediate safety in a search for something better.

Some of the Best Parts of Autonomous Vehicles Are Already Here

Consumers with high hopes of driverless cars improving safety might be looking past the boring near-term advances that could make a real difference

An experiment on how humans reacted to the sight of a truly driverless car was revealed by an intrepid TV reporter

Man Dresses Up Like a Car Seat for Science

After a dramatic confrontation with the costumed driver, it turns out it was all a test

An Electric Vehicle Company cab.

Henry Bliss, America’s First Pedestrian Fatality, Was Hit By an Electric Taxi

The driver was arrested but released after hitting Bliss

This is what a touring car looked like in 1915.

Before She Was an Etiquette Authority, Emily Post Was a Road Warrior

Post didn’t drive herself, but she laid claim to her own authority on the road in other ways

This Minor Parking Violation Revealed the Son of Sam Killer

The tip that led to the arrest of the Son of Sam killer came in unusual circumstances: a Brooklyn woman saw him near his car, which was parked illegally

Once the tablet-like tool is plugged into an individual’s cellphone, it can detect if the device was in use before a crash.

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Can the ‘Textalyzer’ Stop New Yorkers From Texting and Driving?

The device would allow police to check if phone usage could be to blame for a car crash, but critics have raised privacy concerns

Henry Ford and Mohandas Gandhi exchanged tokens of mutual admiration during World War II.

The Unlikely Bromance Between Henry Ford and Mohandas Gandhi

Both men had complicated ideologies but bonded over pacifism

A family walks towards the entrance of Disneyland, circa 1960.

Disneyland’s Terrible First Day Didn’t Stop the Crowds From Coming

Nothing was ready. But by the end of the first week, more than 100,000 people had visited

It looks a bit like a blimp–unsurprising, since Fuller meant it to fly.

Buckminster Fuller Was Good at Ideas, Terrible at Car Design

Fuller held more than 30 patents during his life, but many of his ideas didn’t make it off the page–or not for long

Paris may still be congested in 2040, but fossil fuel congestion will fall with a new ban on gas- and diesel-burning vehicles.

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France May Say ‘Au Revoir’ to Fossil-Fueled Vehicles

It’s a bid to dramatically reduce the country’s carbon emissions

Despite Road-Closing Landslides, You Can Still Take a Big Sur Road Trip This Year — Here’s How

This gorgeous stretch of coastline is harder to get to these days, but it’s not impossible

Traffic on Interstate 405, Los Angeles, California, 2012.

Three Ways the Interstate System Changed America

The idea of a national highway system stretches back to the 1930s but wasn’t put into place until the midcentury

Dr. John Cushman with the flow battery

Pour to Recharge Your Electric Vehicle

Purdue University scientists have created a liquid-based battery that could one day be recharged at a gas station pump in just minutes

With the idle set at 54 percent of full throttle, drivers could unleash the car by merely stepping off the brake.

When a Jet-Powered Car Raced in the Indianapolis 500

The racecar tore up the track and dazzled fans at the legendary competition—and then vanished

One autonomous car in this group was able to reduce stop-and-go traffic flow.

Just a Few Self-Driving Cars Could Fix Phantom Traffic Jams

A new study suggests they can help get rid of stop-and-go traffic on highways.

The unassuming face of one of twentieth-century America's most dangerous men, even to himself

The Innovative Spirit fy17

One Man Invented Two of the Deadliest Substances of the 20th Century

Thomas Midgley Jr.’s inventions have had an outsize impact—not all of it good—on humankind

Cool Finds

Nanocars Will Race Across (a Very, Very Tiny Bit of) France

Ladies and gentlemen, start your molecules

A woman marks a bombardier enclosure for a B-24 Liberator bomber at the Ford Willow Run plant.

How Detroit Went from Motor City to the Arsenal of Democracy

Detroit already had car manufacturing capability: that turned into war production capability in the early 1940s

The 1973 Cadillac Eldorado convertible was driven on stage for the big superstar tribute concert for Chuck Berry in the 1987 film Hail! Hail!

The Wild Rock and Roller Chuck Berry Dies

In 2012, Berry donated his red Eldorado Cadillac to the Smithsonian

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