Police investigate the scene of a collision between an electric scooter rider and vehicle in Queens, New York, in March. New York last month made it possible to lower speed limits in the city — an effort to prevent crashes like these from becoming fatal amid a rise in deaths on America’s roads. | Shawn Inglima/NY Daily News via Getty Images Drivers don’t need to go faster than 20 mph on most city streets. Last month, a group of families whose loved ones were killed by drivers successfully lobbied the New York state legislature to pass a law allowing New York City to set its own speed limits. S ..read more

Jared Bartman for Vox Dangerous, polluting SUVs and pickups took over America. Lawmakers are partly to blame. Cars, you might have noticed, have grown enormous. Low-slung station wagons are all but extinct on American roads, and even sedans have become an endangered species. (Ford, producer of the iconic Model T a century ago, no longer sells any sedans in its home market.) Bulky SUVs and pickup trucks — which have themselves steadily added pounds and inches — now comprise more than four out of every five new cars sold in the US, up from just over half in 2013, even as national household size ..read more

Plastic covers the exterior of the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Boeing 737-9 MAX on January 7, 2024, in Portland, Oregon.  | Getty Images Noticing more problems with Boeing planes doesn’t mean there are actually more problems with aviation safety. Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of bad things keep happening to Boeing airplanes lately? Ever since the shocking January 5 incident in which a door plug fell out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 in midair, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane, many fliers have been jumpy. Their fears have been fueled by news sites t ..read more

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images From search efforts to how a ship can knock down a bridge, here’s what you need to know. The shocking collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after it was hit by a cargo ship early Tuesday morning has the region reeling as authorities continue to search for survivors who may have fallen into the Patapsco River. Thus far, two people who were working on the bridge have been rescued and six are presumed dead by their employer, Brawner Builders, given the temperature of the water and the time that has passed since the accident, the Associated Press re ..read more

National Transportation Safety Board Investigator-in-Charge John Lovell examines the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Boeing 737-9 Max on January 7, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. | Getty Images Flying is still extremely safe. But Boeing’s safety issues are real. Another week, another series of bad news stories for Boeing. On Monday, 50 people were injured (none were killed) when a 787 “dropped abruptly” midflight from Sydney to Auckland. That same day, the New York Times reported that a Federal Aviation Administration investigation into the production of the 737 Max jets found th ..read more

A BYD Seagull hatchback at the Shanghai auto show in 2023. | VCG/VCG via Getty Images Biden needs to decide if he likes the climate more than he hates China. You can’t buy the Seagull in the US. But I bet you wish you could. A small hatchback around the size of a Mini Cooper, the Seagull is a fast-charging electric car and claims a range of up to 250 miles (at least according to its home country’s generous tests); BYD, its Chinese manufacturer, claims it can go from 30 percent to 80 percent charged in a half-hour using a DC plug. It’s hardly a luxury car but it’s well-equipped, with a power dr ..read more

Cars make their way heading east out of Los Angeles during the evening rush hour on January 25, 2024. | Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images You’re paying a lot more for car insurance than you were in 2020. Here’s why. If you pay for car insurance, you’ve probably noticed that rates are really high lately. You’re not alone. Last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report — the government’s method for tracking what people are paying for goods and services and how that’s changing over time — noted that the price of car insurance was up more than 20 percent over the same time last year. What’s pa ..read more

The Ford’s Maverick Hybrid pickup truck saw a huge jump in sales last year. | Umair Irfan/Vox In the age of electric vehicles, the hybrid is still a contender. Are electric vehicles hitting a pothole? Ford announced last month that it was cutting production of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. General Motors and Volkswagen last year said they would reduce electric vehicle manufacturing. All-electric and plug-in hybrid carmakers are struggling too, with layoffs or slowing assembly lines at companies like BYD, Lucid, Polestar, and Fisker. Tesla, the world’s most valuable car company, lo ..read more

An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max-9 aircraft grounded at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, on January 8, 2024. | Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Regulators need to take in the whole picture of risk — as they do with air travel — rather than just a narrow slice. The sight of a hole in the side of a Boeing 737 Max airplane earlier this month resurrected, among other questions, an old debate: Is it really a good idea to hold your baby in your arms when you fly? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) strongly recommends that you get a separate, secured seat fo ..read more

In this National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) handout, an opening is seen in the fuselage of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Boeing 737-9 MAX on January 7, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. | NTSB/Getty Images A door plug falling mid-flight has renewed scrutiny of air travel and of Boeing’s planes. On Friday, January 5, the door plug of a commercial Boeing 737 Max 9 came off as the plane was climbing, opening a large hole on the side of the plane, alarming passengers onboard, and raising new questions about flight safety. For now, certain models of that plane have been temporarily grounded by the F ..read more