2022 Honda Civic Lx on 2040-cars

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Watch a motorcycle racer nearly rub the wall at Macau's track

Motorcycle racer John McGuinness is no stranger to dangerous racetracks, having scored multiple victories in the frequently deadly Isle of Man TT. In this video, he trades the Snaefell Mountain Course's winding roads for the incredibly tight confines of the Macau Grand Prix circuit. The track is like China's version of the Circuit de Monaco, and it looks barely wide enough for two bikes to fit at some points in this clip. The claustrophobic layout makes the street track famously difficult for racing and occasionally deadly. McGuinness gives viewers a great tour of the track on his Honda Fireblade, and he frequently has his shoulders nearly grazing against the wall. You really get a sense of just how narrow the course gets. The ride looks both terrifying and very fun. If you want to see more of McGuinness' skill, here's a clip of him riding at Le Mans at night. We look forward to watching him at the Isle of Man again this year, too. McGuinness not only set a new electric bike lap record there in 2015 but also won the SES TT Zero Challenge. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Petition to bring Honda Civic Type R to US picking up steam

Never mind what the executives say - we've had a sneaking suspicion all along that the upcoming Honda Civic Type R won't be coming to North America. And with good reason: both the prototype we drove in Japan and the concept unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show last week were based on the European-spec Civic hatchback - not to mention that some of the best hot hatches remain out of our reach.
Well it turns out we're not the only ones with that concern. There are legions of Honda hot hatch enthusiasts right here in the good old U S of A who want to see the new Civic Type R ripping up the Great American Road. And many of them are taking to the cyberclouds demanding that Honda bring it Stateside, post haste.
As of the time of writing, this online petition has gotten over 6,000 digital signatures, needing less than 1,500 more to get to the author's target of 7,500 votes. Of course, if and when the petition reaches its target, that still won't mean that Honda will bring it over, but it could mean that extra bit of encouragement the Japanese automaker's executives would need to tip the scales in our favor.

Takata airbag victim looked like she had been stabbed

We generally take certain principals for granted. The more water you drink, for example, the healthier you'll be. The more time you spend reading car news on Autoblog, the better informed you'll be. And the more airbags your car has, the safer you'll be. Because airbags equal safety. But that's not what some unfortunate drivers of vehicles equipped with Takata airbags are finding, and tragically finding out the hard way.
In what could be the most startling incident resulting from the airbag debacle so far, a woman named Hien Tran of Orlando, FL, was killed by what looked at first like stab wounds on her neck. It later emerged that the fatal injuries could have been inflicted by the faulty airbag on her Honda Accord. Tran bought her Honda secondhand, and may not have been aware that the airbag issue had not been addressed by its previous owner in a previous recall in 2009.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department is investigating the death, but it wouldn't be the only injury resulting from the malfunctioning Takata airbags. The units, employed particularly by Japanese automakers like Honda (which owns part of Takata) and Toyota, are the subject of a massive recall involving some 14 million vehicles from 11 different automakers.