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Teens Arrested For Motorized Office Chair
German police have confiscated the world's fastest office chair and arrested its 17-year-old inventors. The duo added a lawnmower engine, brakes and a metal frame to the office chair and were reported to be driving it all over the streets of Gross-Zimmern. Police did not comment on the chair's handling or acceleration but I look forward to it being profiled on Top Gear.
German police have confiscated the world's fastest office chair and arrested its 17-year-old inventors.
FAIL!
The AP story does not contain the word "arrested" anywhere, it only says that the device was confiscated and the individuals were being investigated.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I found a workable solution. I went to my user preferences -> Index -> sections and set the Idle section to display only headlines.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Spoken like a person who never got t-boned by an idiot who didn't pay attention to the stop sign.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The kid you are alluding to was Austrian, not German.
There were some really good ones I've read, but they were on government run sites and have been taken down. Here are some articles that indirectly support what I'm saying.
http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/
http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras/red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-5-studies-that-prove-it/
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
Enjoy.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Friends don't let friends install M$ junk.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
> I don't see much difference.
In Germany every motorized vehicle driven on public roads needs to pass a regular safety test*1 , has to have vehicle insurance and you'll need the right driving license.
Everything else is /very/ illegal.
The definition of "public roads" includes publicly assessible parking lots.
That's a set of laws that really makes me feel safer.
*1) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technischer_Ueberwachungsverein&oldid=230576541
http://www.hr-online.de/website/rubriken/nachrichten/indexhessen34938.jsp?rubrik=36098&key=standard_document_35004490&lugal=1&ibp=0
There is a picture of the actual vehicle on the Web. It seems that the office chair really constitutes just a minor component of it, which becomes obvious if you compare the vehicle to the racing chairs used in official championships (page in Germany, I'm sorry).
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
This is the photo released by the police.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
Bicycles are not motorized. However, they still need to have proper lighting (in the dark you have to drive with lights on) and working brakes. Since it's only a misdeamenor, if you don't have these, the fees are pretty low (<50Euro).
There' s a picture on this web site, ie. this one.
It's somewhat disappointing since it's more realistic to say they built a motorised platform, and stuck an office chair on it.
There is also a side-note describing the first German championship in office chair running, which took place in April. The paper also provide a set of increasingly disturbing images of hulking male participants dressed in various pink fluffy bunny type outfits draped in a variety of poses across office chairs... Apparently the motorised approach was not permitted during the championship, although entrants were allowed to customise their chairs with handlebars.