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Car thief caught in McDonald's drive-thru after placing order with owner

If you're going to drive a stolen car in a town of roughly 77,000 people - about the same size as Scranton, Pennsylvania or Ogden, Utah - you want to be very careful about where you drive that stolen car to eat. That's the lesson Katherine York of Kennewick, Washington learned when she was arrested for being in possession of a stolen Toyota 4Runner that also happened to have a bunch of stolen clothes from JC Penney and Sears in it.
Virginia Maiden woke up Tuesday, May 14 to find her 1995 4Runner - that she thought she forgot to lock - swiped from her apartment building. At 3 PM that afternoon, while working her shift at the drive-thru at McDonald's that day, she saw her truck in line. York hadn't even gone far - the McDonald's is not even five miles from Maiden's apartment. Maiden called the police, they showed up just as York was leaving, and York made another vehicle switch, this time into a black-and-white for a trip to the Benton County jail. They don't have McDonald's there, but she won't have so far to go to eat.

Student driver backs over motorcycle at intersection

You always have to be vigilant on a motorcycle. Take this helmet cam video as an extremely unfortunate example of that. While waiting at an intersection, the rider has to watch while a Toyota RAV4 backs over his cycle. He was lucky not to suffer any injuries in the freak occurrence, but the bike sustained serious damage. The rider laid out the whole story on Reddit and explained that the person behind the wheel of the RAV4 was a student driver. The motorcyclist says that he was aware of the crossover, but never expected it to reverse at high speed through of the intersection. With no time to really think, he chose to bail off the bike, and the decision might have saved his life. "The video ends where it does because there is absolutely nothing exciting happening afterwards," the rider wrote on Reddit. There wasn't any yelling afterward; they just talked. Police gave the student driver a ticket when they arrived. The bike might be finished, though. In a separate post on Reddit, the rider says that the accident "pierced the engine and the gas tank," bent the radiator, and did a lot of other damage, too. Related Video: News Source: Reddit [1], [2], sebo666666 via YouTube, Jalopnik Toyota Crossover Motorcycle Bikes Videos viral video motorcycle accident helmet cam

Toyota's $1.6B unintended acceleration settlement approved

Toyota is now one step closer to putting its unintended acceleration woes behind it as it has received approval from the US District Court for the Central District of California to settle loss-of-value claims to vehicles associated with the 2009-2010 recalls.
As we reported back in May, the Toyota settlement is worth $1.63 billion, which, according to Bloomberg, includes a payout of $757 million to affected owners, $227 million to attorneys and an additional $875 million for vehicle upgrades. (We did the math, too, and that totals $1.859 billion, but there is no justification for the discrepancy. Fuzzy math, eh?)
Based on the estimated 22.6 million vehicles said to be included in this suit, that would make the average payment about $33.49 per vehicle, but the article says that owners, lessees and even renters will receive varying amounts ranging from $9.74 up to as much as $10,000. This settlement does not affect suits filed for personal injury or wrongful death.