The good oil: Dunlop Targa NZ rally heads to Wellington

The 15th Dunlop Targa NZ rally leaves Auckland for Wellington tomorrow, but without some big-name drivers. Motorsport legend and Targa ambassador Chris Amon is crook and has had to take himself and the Lexus IS-F he was going to drive out of the event. Former Targa winner Neil Tolich will take over Amon's role, behind the wheel of an Aston Martin. Owen Evans and his son Mitch were going to drive the new Porsche Panamera - until Owen learned he needs minor surgery this week. V8 Supercar driver Shane van Gisbergen will join the event on Tuesday, after Sunday's round at Surfer's Paradise. He and his dad Robert will drive a go-fast Ford Falcon. The Targa finishes with a prize-giving breakfast in the Wellington Town Hall next Sunday.

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Motorcycling Events Group NZ will hold a media day at the Hampton Downs Motorsport Park on Wednesday, when guests will be able to test the track on their own bikes or a handful of Suzuki GSX-R600s. The 2.8km circuit has now been completely sealed and is ready for limited use. Tony Roberts, managing director of Hampton Downs Ltd, says the first race day will be a car club meeting next month "to test out all our systems".

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An American study into cellphone use at the wheel found it declines as soon as bans are introduced but goes up over time. The US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety looked at states where handheld use of cellphones is banned. In New York, useage initially dropped by 47 per cent, before rising again. Same with Connecticut, where it plummeted 76 per cent before drivers returned to old habits. In Washington DC, however, an almost overnight decline of 50 per cent after a 2004 ban continues to fall. The institute's president Adrian Lund says the overall effect can't yet be measured in terms of safety. "Many drivers still use their hand-held phones, even where it's banned, and other drivers simply switch to hands-free phones, which doesn't help because crash risk is about the same," he said. Texting, he says, boosts the risk of a crash 23-fold.

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Car theft in the US has dropped by more than 50 per cent over the past 20 years, despite the number of registered vehicles doubling over the same period. According to the FBI, there were 956,846 motor-vehicle thefts in 2008, down from 1,095,769 in 2007 and 1,237,851 in 2004. Thefts reached a peak in 1991, when about 1.66 million vehicles were stolen. Overall, the rate of vehicle thefts per 100,000 people has gone from 659 in 1991 to 315 today.

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Alexander Kabelis, 31, was arrested for slashing tyres on almost 50 vehicles in Boulder, Colorado. He told the judge he did so because he was overwhelmed by radiation from a nearby nuclear plant and was forced by his mother to wear braces on his teeth as a child.

In Mesa, Arizona, a 27-year-old man who rigged a short sword to his steering wheel and drove into a brick wall in an effort to kill himself, didn't figure on the driver's airbag. It inflated, blew the sword out of the way, cushioned the would-be suicide ... and car and driver ended up in a backyard swimming pool.

The cheap-drink Tuesday night special at the Attic bar in Newcastle, England, was a money-back guarantee at the end of the night to anyone who could still legally drive, measured by the bar's breathalyzer. The Newcastle City Council soon convinced the bar it was a bad idea.

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz