5 Gadgets Guaranteed To Get You A ‘Darwin Award’

The Darwin Awards honour individuals whom die or are sterilized by their own stupidity. Taking its name from the move, ‘The Darwin Awards’ , those individuals are posthumously rewarded for ensuring the successful continuation of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool.

Here at Gadget Freaks we love motorcycles and fast cars and crazy gadgets but some people really go to extraordinary extremes with extraordinary devices or vehicles in the name of fame, fortune and fun. So lets take a look at ‘5 Gadgets Guaranteed To Get You A Darwin Award’.

1- 3800 Horsepower Jet Motorcycle.

Looking at this motorcycle several words come to mind some of which I will not write here. Imagine riding this insane creation. Fitted with a Rolls Royce Viper MK 202 Turbo Jet engine it whacks an amazing 3800 horsepower plus a further 1200 ponies with the afterburner. With a wheelbase of 3.4 metres, it runs double disc brakes and has no chain or sprockets ( unlike the Y2K Jet Bike ) making it a true Jetbike!! Ironically the bike was built by Ron ( Mad ) Laycock who resides in of all places Darwin, Australia! This IS the Gadget Freaks top pick for a sure Darwin Award for the rider of this thing!

2- Turbo Pocket Bikes

Now if you’ve ever riden a pocket bike you’ll know how insanely dangerous they are. Not to be dissuaded some future Darwin Award candidates have made the decision to turbo charge these things. That makes an insane power to weight ratio coupled with the procarious centre of gravity with a grown man atop makes these babies a definite sure fire gadget to get you an award.

3- Car Visor DVD Player and Game Station.

If you like playing computer games or watching DVDs while you are driving then you must be in the running for potential ‘Darwinian Stardom’. This neat Car Sun Visor DVD and Game Player  will keep your eyes off the road so much that you can get an award without hardly trying. Imagine doing 100 mph down the highway and playing Mario Kart! Go on buy one, your posthumous 15 minutes of fame are calling!

4- Jet Engined Volkswagen Beetle.

Jet engines and terrestrial vehicles just don’t mix. The legendary Jato Rocket Car ( jet assisted take off) which won the 1995 Award was a fine example. Combining a jet engine and a 1967 Chevy Impala equates to car and driver experiencing speeds and G-forces usually reserved for fighter pilots. It can, and in this case did, result in the vehicle becoming airborne for 1.3 miles and impacting 125 feet up a cliff face! Not pretty. I wonder if the owner of this ‘Street Legal’ Jet Engined Beetle is aware of this! Hold on Gadgeteers, we may have a winner! 

 

5- Rocket Powered Speedway Bike.

Just to show that folk have been ‘chlorinating the gene pool’ for considerably longer than the awards   have been running we have this blast from the past. In 1947 90,000 people in Wembly Stadium saw an attempt to increase the performance of a speedway bike by attaching 4 rockets to it. Check out the article here and there is even an historic news reel from the occasion.

 

Gadgeteer Weekly- The Week in Gadgets!

The highlight from this week in gadgets and technology for us here at Gadget Freaks would have to be seeing the footage of Fusion Man flying his jet pack. We have posted here about the Gryphon Flying Wing and seen all manner of this type of gadget but at last someone actually flyng one. On May 14th 2008, Yves Rossy became the first man to fly a winged jetpack strapped to his back. Rossy, a Swiss pilot, has spent $285,000 on his creation and jumped out of a plane at 7,550 feet. After unfolding the wings he fired the 4 jet engines and flew for 6 minutes high above the Swiss Alps performing 360 degree turns and figure eights. Although the first flight with the prototype was a huge success there is no word on a production model at this time. I want one!!!!!

Regular readers to Gadget Freaks will already know how much we love motorsports. So not surprising that when we saw this Race Simulator we had this sudden feeling that our lives were not complete. If you have a spare $20,000 you might want to buy the Virtual GT model but hey, why fanny about when you are shelling out this much cash! You might be better off with the Motion Pro 2 at a cool $25,995. Then there are the upgrades which include a panoramic display ($12,995), a six-speed gated shifter and progressive clutch ($1,049) and even enhanced on site set/training ($2995). I can just picture one in the Gadget Freaks office! 

Another slightly less expensive gadget spotted this week are these neat Spy Camera Sunglasses. The glasses have 2 in-built cameras on the side arms and transmit video to a wireless receiver. The receiver has a 2.4″ screen with an internal memory of 128MB and supports an SD card up to 2 GB.

 

Here’s one that will surely qualify for the Darwin Awards! This Pulse Jet powered bicycle looks rather lethal in our book. It is the creation of Robert Maddox, a 47 year old American who designs and builds the largest pulsejet engines in the world. This contraption runs on kerosene and can thrust power between 14-1000 lbs. Time to start chlorinating the gene pool we think!