First, here is the video of “The Ridge”, featuring the dare devil Danny Macaskill on his mountain bike. It was the first time in one of his films Danny climbs aboard a mountain bike and returns to his native home of the Isle of Skye in Scotland to take on a death-defying ride along the notorious Cuillin Ridgeline. Danny’s ridiculous riding skills and the stunning scenery blend beautifully with the sound track, making it a great viewing experience :
And here is an interview with the film-maker where he shares how we used low-tech everyday technology to capture this breathtaking video
This is vintage gold. The Chevy sponsored short film below helps show road safety from 1930s. Chevrolet also tries to convince us the new safety features of their latest cars make them the safest place to be, showing dramatic accidents to prove their point! Interestingly, the traffic fatalities statistics shows that cars were not actually the safest places to be in that era. There were 34,494 fatalities recorded in 1935 in the United States, which had a population of 127 million at that time. With 228 billion vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and adjusted fatalities per 100,000 population 27.1, was not an ideally safe environment for travel by car. In comparison, today we have about 34,000 deaths for a population of 314 million, with an VMT of 2,954 billion and adjusted fatalities per 100,000 at 10.833. Thankfully the technology has come a long way to make the cars safer and we have a few more options than a Chevy to look to for a safer ride. Nonetheless it is pretty cool to see how things were back in the day.
