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Ford-sponsored survey says a third of Brits have snapped a 'selfie' while driving [w/videos]

Talking on the phone while driving isn't advisable, and texting while driving is downright dangerous. Considering those truths, the fact that we even need to point this out this is incredibly disturbing: taking "selfies" while behind the wheel is exceptionally stupid. But, it's a thing that a third of 18- to 24-year-old British drivers have copped to doing, according to a new study from Ford.
Ford, through its Driving Skills for Life program, surveyed 7,000 smartphone owners from across Europe, all aged between 18 and 24, and found that young British drivers were more likely to snap a selfie while behind the wheel than their counterparts in Germany, France, Romania, Italy, Spain and Belgium.
According to the study, the average selfie takes 14 seconds, which, while traveling at 60 miles per hour, is long enough to travel over the length of nearly four football fields (the Ford study uses soccer fields, but we translated it to football, because, you know, America). That's an extremely dangerous distance to not be focused on the road.

Ford wants smart cruise that's speed and grade sensitive

Ford is working to make adaptive cruise control even smarter and more economical for future vehicles. The automaker now has a patent (pdf link) on a system to use information on the grade of the road, traffic data, and a driver's preferences to eke out better fuel mileage over a journey. This solution would essentially put a little hypermiling right into a model's software. The Blue Oval's patent refers to this tech as "route navigation with optimal speed profile," and the system starts by splitting the way to the driver's ultimate destination into many smaller pieces. Each one is analyzed based on GPS data, and traffic info is also constantly updated. Based on the occupants' preferred travel time, all this info is combined to figure out the most efficient speed for each leg of the journey. All of these calculations are actually more than the car's computers can handle, so some of the math is offloaded to a cloud-based network. According to Ford, some of the benefits come when tackling hills while diving. Maintaining a single speed when going up and down steep grades isn't the most efficient method, but current technology can't easily make the necessary adjustments. This system uses the GPS data to adapt the vehicle's speed and leave the situation with better fuel economy. Ford is currently making major investments into autonomous driving technology and has some prestigious partners. While the patent documents don't specifically mention the optimal speed profiles for driverless vehicles, they seem like a natural fit. Over the course of an entire trip, the fuel economy gains would likely be even greater than over a few miles on a relatively flat interstate.

Chris Harris drives the 2015 Ford Mustang Over There

Ford makes some cars for America, and some cars for overseas. Sometimes those models cross over the ocean in one direction or another, but the Mustang has historically been a pony car meant for America. That all changes with the new model, though. It's not that Ford didn't design the new Mustang for American customers – it's just that it also refined it for markets overseas that aren't quite used to the live-axle brutality to which muscle car enthusiasts in the US have grown accustomed. Now that the Mustang is being offered in Europe – and in the UK with right-hand drive – it was only a matter of time before Chris Harris got his hands on one. And that's just what he's done for this latest video clip, taking a Mustang GT for a spin on both road and track in Wales. That's right, Harris is piloting the V8 model, not the EcoBoost four. So what does he think about an American expat shipped to the British isles? You'll want to watch the ten-minute clip yourself to gather his full impressions. But the long and short of it is that, while Harris doesn't think it's quite the match for something like a BMW M3, the Mustang doesn't cost anywhere near as much as the Bimmer. And that goes a long way, especially with all that rubber laid down on the track in the process.