Ford Truck Drops Through Bridge, Cruise Ships Duck Underneath Bridge And Sailing Slang In This Week's Beyond Cars Roundup

Americans have a real issue with restrictions on their roads, whether it’s speed limits that nobody sticks to, height restrictions that all kinds of tall vehicles miss or weight limits that certain bridges can’t sustain. Case in point, a driver in Maine crashed through a historic crossing last month after attempting to drive over in a Ford truck that was 30,000 pounds overweight. - Owen Bellwood Read More

With oceans covering 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, it’s easy to assume that cruise ships never have any issues maneuvering. However, the world’s largest all-inclusive cocktail dispensers must take extreme measures to sail underneath suspension bridges. Ships are designed with features to duck under the road deck and crews are encouraged to punch it, helping the boat get as low as possible. - Ryan Erik King Read More

If you want to buy this airplane (or one like it) and travel in the lap of luxury, it’ll cost you at least $80,000,000. The average American worker would have to spend approximately 1,200 years laboring in order to buy this plane, assuming they never spend a dime on anything else. It’s cool and chill that any one of America’s 759 billionaires can just trot down to their local airplane dealership and drop the annual GDP of a small island nation on a single transportation device. Is this the kind of thing you’d spend your money on if you were an overpaid union busting dipshit CEO? Go inside and check out what it looks like before you decide. - Bradley Brownell Read More

Back in the 1970s, there was a specific bike you could buy from Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, or Yamaha: The Universal Japanese Motorcycle. It was a successful formula, successful enough to get the attention of the entire Big Four, yet it’s a bike you can’t go out and buy today. Why? - Amber DaSilva Read More

Urban explorers have uncovered all kinds of fascinating finds this year, including an abandoned international airport in Greece and a stash of hidden Volkswagens in the side of a mountain. Now, an aquatic explorer has headed to Staten Island’s ship graveyard to get up close and personal with some of the vessels rusting away off the east coast of the U.S. - Owen Bellwood Read More

Boats are pretty cool, as are planes. But do you know what trumps both of them? A flying boat, especially if it’s the world’s largest operational flying boat. However, today I have some sad news about the world’s largest operational flying boat, as the Hawaii Mars has just taken its final flight to a transport museum in Canada. - Owen Bellwood Read More

Modern day Anglophones are descended from generations of seafaring explorers, traders, naval military conquerors, and imperialism. The core of the anglosphere is found in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, all former colonies of the British Empire, and all heavily water-based geographies. What I’m saying is, we used to spend a whole lot of time on boats, and the language developed over hundreds of years to incorporate sailor slang into everyday use. Do you ever wonder why you can be “overwhelmed” but never “whelmed?” Watch this quick video from PBS to get your bearings. - Bradley Brownell Read More

Gray airport security trays are the modern silver platter for social media influencers this summer. Photos of luxury goods artfully posed in the checkpoint bins took over certain corners of Instagram and other platforms. While the “TSA tray aesthetic” portrays an elevated level of status, it also spotlights one of the most germ-infested surfaces inside an airport: the security trays. - Ryan Erik King Read More

With NASA announcing that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return to Earth next March on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, the focus quickly shifted to what will happen to the beleaguered Boeing Starliner. The space agency plans to autonomously undock the craft from the International Space Station but fears the Starliner could drift out of control and potentially crash into the station. - Ryan Erik King Read More

The Boeing Starliner has been, in technical terms, a bit of a clusterfuck. Its development was hamstrung by Boeing’s greed, and now the spaceship is stuck on the International Space Station unable to transport its astronauts home. The ship is now scheduled to undock and head home later this week, but a new issue has cropped up since that announcement: The Starliner is haunted by unexplained noises. - Amber DaSilva Read More