With the introduction of non-traditional sports to the Summer Olympics like skateboarding, trampoline and breakdancing, it’s hard to believe that auto racing has never made the cut.
Fortunately, we still have The Ocho.
Each summer The Ocho features the finest in unique and obscure sports from around the world, including pillow fighting, air guitar and speed puzzling.
It has also become the premiere destination for a variety of unconventional auto sports, including:
- Ultimate Tire Wrestling: Two skilled wrestlers compete to stuff 51% of the other into a stack of tractor tires.
- Adult Big Wheel Race: Teams compete in an adult big wheel relay race to win the coveted Hamlin Golden Wheelie Trophy.
- Carjitsu: It’s Jiu-Jitsu inside of a car, where every seatbelt and steering wheel can be used for leverage, and rounds can only be won by submission.
The Ocho debuted in 2017 as a 10-hour marathon on ESPN, taking its name from the 2004 sports comedy movie “Dodgeball” starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller.
In the film, a group of misfits compete in a dodgeball tournament aired on the fictional “ESPN8: The Ocho” to win $50,000 to save their local gym from being taken over by a fitness chain.
An ESPN8 tagline from the film also sums up The Ocho: "If it's almost a sport, we got it here."
Lower Your Voice
A recent study by Fudan University in Shanghai revealed that navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze may have an unexpected downside for male drivers.
The study found that using female voices in these apps can encourage men to take more risks while driving.
The conclusion builds on previous research showing that risk-taking behaviors are often linked to mating-related cues. For example, men have been found to be more likely to cross a busy street when they are with or observed by women.
Similarly, a high-pitched female voice in navigation apps can be perceived by men’s brains as “seductive,” leading them to take more risks behind the wheel.
The study showed that male drivers were 40% more likely to run yellow lights when their navigation app used a female voice. In another part of the study, drivers with female-voiced navigation were more likely to cross a bridge faster, taking more risks compared to those getting directions from a low-pitched voice.
Interestingly, the study found that female drivers were not influenced by the navigation voice, as their driving behavior is generally not affected by the presence of men.
An About-Typeface
A decades-long battle has been brewing among federal highway authorities over how to make highway signs safer.
The central issue isn’t the messaging or placement of the signs – it’s the font.
The conflict began in 1948 when the Federal Highway Administration adopted Highway Gothic as the standard font for road signage.
While the font was easy for drivers to read at a distance and at high speed, it became an issue in the 1980s with the advent of reflective highway signs.
The reflective surfaces were supposed to make signs easier to read at night, but an optical effect called “halation” made the edges of lowercase letters appear blurry under the glare of headlights, making the signs difficult to read.
To address this issue, design firm Meeker & Associates collaborated with researchers at the Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute to create Clearview, a font designed to improve legibility by 20% without increasing the sign size. Clearview was approved by the FHA in 2004 and began appearing on road signs in several states.
Despite Clearview’s initial success, a study by the Texas Transportation Institute later claimed it was no more readable than Highway Gothic, leading the FHA to rescind its approval of Clearview in 2016.
Then after further review and pushback from designers, the FHA reversed its reversal in 2018, allowing states to use Clearview again but without officially endorsing it over Highway Gothic.
As a result, U.S. roadways today feature a patchwork of signage, with some states using Highway Gothic, others using Clearview, and some displaying a mix of both fonts, depending on when the signs were installed.
Despite this compromise, the debate over fonts continues. One of Clearview’s creators, designer Don Meeker, told CityLab, “Helen Keller can tell you from the grave that Clearview looks better.” RB
