Driving, our favorite subject, is all over the Internet. Plenty of sites out there are, well, garbage. But others I come across are informational wonders, self-effacingly funny, or so loaded with conversational fodder you can't help but forward a link to friends and family.
For a change of pace this week, I'm steering you to 10 worthwhile websites on driving laws, automotive humor, highway history, and the like. These are my personal picks, in no specific order.
If you have recommendations of your own, pass them along to ci.weekly@globe.com and I'll try to mention the best ones in a future column. Please note that I have omitted the cumbersome www. and http in each address that follows.
Memory lane
fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/history.htm.
If you like the History Channel, this site is for you. Roadways of yesteryear, highway innovations, forgotten pioneers - they're all on this Federal Highway Administration web page. The presentation is, unfortunately, extremely plain. But you'll find some curious stuff, including a comprehensive look at the creation of the federal highway system and a fun A-to-Z listing of hundreds of songs about driving, such as AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," Joni Mitchell's "Blue Motel Room," and Carrie Underwood's "Jesus, Take the Wheel."
Crazy road contraptions
blog.makezine.com
Make is a cool magazine that glorifies goofy - and occasionally brilliant - homemade contraptions. Type "transportation archive" in the site's search field to connect to an engrossing daily blog about people who do everything from strap jet engines to
Humorous research
Drivinglikeass.com
Cambridge resident Jonathan Dower's tongue-in-cheek website about Boston driving is absolutely terrific, a complete parody presented under the guise of serious, academic investigation. "Boston driving is so unique as to warrant its own research discipline," says Dower, pontificating about why he created Driving like you-know-what. "It is certain to be a monumental and, no doubt, thankless task for which I could use the support of all who love cars but remain stymied by the minds of those who drive them." Dower, whose real-life job is in technology market research, expounds upon everything from fast-lane transponders to the havoc Boston drivers could raise in India. A number of postings include enough legitimate research that you might actually believe them.
Tickets, anyone?
mass.gov/courts
This site is one of my best cheat sheets. If I need to find out, say, how much a ticket is for running a red light, I simply go to this site, type in "cmvi" in the search field for civil motor vehicle infractions, and up pops a document with a complete fine schedule - failure to yield at an intersection, $35; missing license plate, $100; improper use of a handicap placard, $500; etc. I guarantee there are fines on the list you've never heard of. (Who knew you could get a $100 ticket for "coasting"?)
Citizen's arrest
aboveaveragedriver.com
A simple site with a fantastic premise: If you see someone driving like an idiot, let others know. "For over seven years, AboveAverageDriver.com has been collecting everything from bad driving reports, bad park jobs, and even awarding good drivers from around the globe," reads the home page. The site's operators cull information into monthly reports on bad Massachusetts drivers. You can also join a forum to commiserate with other fed-up motorists. At last check, the road-rage forum had 150 messages; the good drivers, 13.
Sunday driving
byways.org
I'll never forget the car ride from Anchorage to Seward: snow-capped mountains falling off into the sea, with just a small, curvy highway in between. This website, sponsored by the US Department of Transportation, does a great job at pointing out road trips that are destinations unto themselves, such as Alaska's Seward Highway, Colorado's Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway, and our very own Jacob's Ladder Trail along Route 20 in western Massachusetts.
Legal answers - cheap!
laborlawtalk.com
Find "traffic law" under the forums section and ask away about seat-belt laws, speed limits, parking tickets, etc. Readers post questions about every state, but you can easily search for Massachusetts-only posts. With luck, someone in the know will answer your query.
You're so vain
coolpl8z.com
and www-chaos.umd.edu/misc/origplates.html
and acme.com/licensemaker
Who doesn't love a GRR8 vanity license plate? For truly inventive word play, check out these websites, which feature more than 3,000 actual (or supposedly actual) vanity plates from every state. The Globe's Living/Arts section wrote about Coolpl8z in December, calling the site the "Metropolitan Museum of Art" for license plates - lofty praise indeed. The second site listed above hasn't been updated in a while, but alphabetically lists more than 1,000 vanity plates, with a sentence or two decoding each one in case you don't get the joke. To create a computerized license plate of your own creation, try the acme site. "Pretend you're in prison and make a license!" it reads. I'm sure jail's no fun, but this site is.
rising
falling 