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Man criticized for filming rather than helping road rage victim

A man from Cheshire in England was criticized on social media after he filmed a road rage brawl and provided color commentary for it instead of helping the victim. According to the Daily Mail, Alec Wall was traveling through Cheshire when he came upon a strange scene. A red Mini was stopped at a light, and standing next to it in traffic was a woman in a white dress. As Wall watched, the woman lunged for the Mini's driver's door, wrenched it open, and began fighting with the woman behind the wheel. While the women fought, Wall pulled out his phone and started recording. "Road Rage!" he shouted as he filmed. Apparently finding the situation extremely funny, Wall continued to film, giggling all the while and providing commentary on the scuffle. "Oh my God, actual road in a rage!" he shouted. Once he returned home, Wall uploaded his video to a Facebook page called Idiot UK Drivers Exposed where it racked up nearly 90,000 likes. Not everyone found it as funny as Wall did, however. Comments began piling up chastising Wall for his flip attitude and his failure to intervene in the fight. "How about instead of laughing and screaming 'road rage' like a moron you do something productive like get out of your car and try to defuse the situation? Use some intelligence..." said one commenter. "I really have failed to see what the camera man is laughing at," said another. "It looks to me like someone being seriously assaulted. Why is that funny?" There is no report on the cause of the incident, or how it ended. Related Video: News Source: The Daily Mail Auto News Weird Car News MINI road rage fight

Mini exiting WRC after just one year

There was a fair bit of hullabaloo two years ago when Mini announced a return to the World Rally Championship for this season, but the road to making that happen has been as rocky as a gravel stage. It spent 2011 developing its JCW Countryman WRC challenger, changing its mind about how it wanted to work with Prodrive, dumped a driver due to budget issues, then registering its entry after the deadline had passed in a ploy that might or might not have been a protest aimed at the WRC promoter.
Mini had stated that it wanted to win the whole championship in 2013, and spent 2011 doing six WRC rounds as development. As it stands for this year, the WRC Team Mini Portugal - paid for by Mini, run by ProDrive - scored 26 points in the first rally at Monte Carlo and has so far blanked the rest of the season. The relationship between Mini and ProDrive appeared to be an ever-contentious affair, at the end of this season, even the money will dry up along with what support there was.
Because it contested every race in the calendar, though, Mini says it has completed the FIA requirements for homologation of the JCW Countryman WRC; meaning that privateers can continue purchasing the car and run it in the WRC. BMW Motorsport is continuing development and parts supply of the 1.6-liter turbo engine, and a report in Autosport indicates that ProDrive will continue to run Minis in the series next year.

Mini goes all Occulus Rift with Augmented Vision glasses [w/video]

If April Fools' Day hadn't already passed, this might have come off as a joke. For the upcoming Shanghai Motor Show, Mini has a prototype for an augmented reality system, and the tech looks absolutely bizarre. Developed in conjunction with Qualcomm, driver's don goggles that look like a cross between Google Glass and something a World War I aviator might wear, and being behind the wheel suddenly becomes almost like a video game. Called Augmented Vision, some of its features are similar to contemporary HUD systems, with displays of vehicle speed and navigation data, but this literally puts the info right in front of the driver's eye. There're sci-fi features too, like displaying floating arrows on the road to indicate where to turn to reach a destination, and perhaps coolest of all, the X-ray view lets you look through the car's doors and pillars to see outside. As a prototype, we wonder how much of this is nearly possible today and what's pure fantasy. See Mini's idea for the future of motoring for yourself in the clip below. Hopefully, we don't all have to wear such goofy looking glasses foe future tech, though. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. MINI AUGMENTED VISION: A REVOLUTIONARY DISPLAY CONCEPT OFFERING ENHANCED COMFORT AND SAFETY. Exclusive prototype of augmented reality eyewear underlines the innovative flair and creativity of the MINI brand. Munich, Germany, April 9, 2015. MINI is revealing the shape of things to come at the Auto Shanghai show with a pioneering innovation. "MINI Augmented Vision gives an insight into how intelligent connectivity between a MINI car and eyewear into which relevant content is projected might work in the future," explains Dr. Jorg Preissinger, project-manager MINI Augmented Vision, BMW Group research and technology. "Working with several Qualcomm companies, we have created an interlinked system and augmented reality eyewear with a characteristic MINI design that revolutionise the experience both in and outside the vehicle. This prototype with its customised, interactive functions succeeds in fusing augmented reality with the brand's trademark sense of lifestyle." Using see-through technology, the AR eyewear shows relevant information in the driver's direct field of vision but without concealing other road users, thereby serving to increase safety and comfort while driving.