The good oil: Flagging parking

Google Labs has just launched an app for its Android smartphone called Open Spot that can help US customers find a parking space. It flags for fellow Open Spot users the parking spot you have just driven away from. The Flags are colour-coded: new spots (under 5 minutes) are red; spots between 5 and 10 minutes old are orange; and spots flagged 10 to 20 minutes ago show up as yellow. Flags are removed from the map after 20 minutes, because the space will probably have been taken by then. Open Spot also has a scoring system. The more parking spots you mark as "open", the more karma points you rack up. Not that the karma points mean anything, other than something you can share with your yoga teacher. That's the good news. The bad news is that Open Spot has been blamed for road rage, as handfuls of drivers converge on the same parking spot.

Dumper is back with Subaru NZ

Long-time motoring industry executive Wally Dumper is back running Subaru NZ. Or he will be come August 16. Dumper successfully steered Subaru through the 1990s and into the first half of this decade before being lured away to run Jaguar, Land Rover and Renault for a few years. Then he went to motorcycle specialist Yamaha. Now he's back at Subaru NZ as managing director. That the all-wheel-drive specialist has been the fastest growing marque in the recessionary US over the past few years won't be lost on Dumper.

Traffic as a health hazard

High-tech giant IBM has just finished a global study that points to traffic congestion as a health hazard. IBM questioned 8000 drivers in 20 countries and found that transportation infrastructure hasn't kept pace with the global economy. Cue Auckland's problems here. IBM looked at 10 factors, including commute times, driving stress, and trips cancelled due to traffic. Beijing and Mexico City topped the scale at 99 out of 100, followed by other megacities such as Johannesburg, Moscow, New Delhi, and Sao Paolo. Some slow-growth European cities made up the middle ranks (Madrid, London, Paris, Amsterdam), with Canada's Toronto. American cities that cracked the top 20 were Los Angeles, at a commuter pain index of 25; New York, at 23; and Houston, at 19. Russia has the worst traffic jams. Drivers in Moscow reported regular delays of 2.5 hours and more.

Car hire peril

Off to the US on holiday and planning to rent a car? Get one from Hertz, Avis, Budget, or Advantage, and you had better not get snapped running a red light - because your credit card will get charged. The hire car people give your data to a company called American Traffic Solutions. This company runs red-light cameras and uses the credit card data to automatically bill offending drivers, tacking a $30 processing fee on top. Many drivers have had the fine waived on appeal. Few have gotten back the $30 processing fee.

We are the world

Over 30 hectic minutes in Dayton, Ohio, Brian Horst, 35, nicked several packages of meat and a bottle of wine from a shop, rolled a stainless-steel tank of bottled gas on wheels away from a restaurant, disabled an ATM machine by pounding it with a rock - and then began yelling at the machine. He told bystanders that the person who lived inside the machine wouldn't give him any money. He was still saying that when police led him away, reports the Dayton Daily News.

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz