Driving around the city of Bradford, the Google driver spots a shortcut through a road clearly marked as Buses, Taxis and Cycles only. But hey, no one will notice right?

After nipping down the road, the driver is stopped at a red light. Clearly in the wrong, he’s probably urging the lights to change so he can get out of there sharpish.

But what’s this in the distance? Yup, it’s the cops. Quick Google driver, floor it!

Anticipating a tussle, the policeman even pauses the dramatic chase to pick up his partner!

But eventually our driver sees that there is no escape from West Yorkshire Police, and pulls over (into the car park of the former police station).

Let that be a lesson kids, you always get caught. This epic chase was also photographed from the pavement and the story is document on Neatorama.

Many thanks to We Are Dave

Time for a break from the World’s Largest trivia, lets take a look at the World’s Fastest … the location of the land speed record¹ is the Holloman High Speed Test Track in New Mexico.

South End:

North End:

The track stretches for almost 16km across the desert – you have to zoom out a long way to see the whole thing!

It is used by the Holloman Air Force Base to test new vehicle, munitions and missile technologies by propelling rocket-powered sleds at ever-increasing velocities. The current speed record, set in 2008, is 10,604km/hour – that’s Mach 9 or about 3km per second!

From a standing start, the sled with multiple-stage rockets travelled 6km of the track in just six seconds! The track was enclosed in a helium-filled tent to reduce drag, but this YouTube video gives a pretty good idea of how awesome it must have been to witness!

There’s not much to see along the track on the Google Maps view, other than a slight image overlap problem, but Live Maps does show some kind of vehicle on one part of the track.

It’s worth reading the before and after of the record attempt, and some of these pictures of previous tests are fascinating.

Thanks to Ryan C.

The longest staircase in the world can be found on the slopes of Mount Niesen in the Swiss Alps.

The 11,674 steps run alongside the Niesenbahn funicular which travels from the side of the Kander river in Mülenen (altitude 693m) to the terminus near the 2362m summit of Mount Niesen.

During the 28 minute ride, the funicular – which opened in 1910 – travels through lush Alpine woods, passes through several tunnels and across some elevated sections.

While the staircase is only used by service personnel, it is opened to 200 people for one day a year for the Niesenlauf stair run. The Galerien pages of the race’s German site give you some idea of what an ordeal this must be – running through cloud, rain or even snow, though the race takes place in June.

The record for the event is 1h2m for men and 1h9m for women, which I find remarkably fast considering the number of steps is equivalent to climbing the CN Tower 4.5 times, or Taipei 101 almost 6 times or the Empire State Building more than 7 times, though it does look like some sections are somewhat less steep than others.

There appears to be a more conventional hiking trail for public use, with the number of switchbacks along the way giving some sense of how steep this pyramid-shaped mountain really is.

The mountain’s visitor guide has some great pictures and information, and YouTube has a fast-forward trip up the funicular and a high-speed stroll to the summit.

Here in Rome, scooters are an extremely popular way of getting around the city, and Italian drivers are generally considered to be a bit crazy.

This combination inevitably results in the occasional accident, and as the Google car approaches this corner a man can be seen getting out his car, although we can’t yet tell why.

As the Google car draws nearer we see that the inevitable has occurred – a scooter rider has been struck from behind and thrown from his bike! It seems that this is such a frequent occurrence however, that the passers-by barely care that a man has been run over.

Our Google driver is equally considerate, and drives around the fallen scooter driver like he was a misplaced traffic cone.

As the car drives on, we can rubberneck back around to see that there appears to be some disagreement taking place! Is another street fight about to kick off perhaps?

Oh dear, it seems that our unfortunate car driver may have a dent in the bumper of his Mercedes.

This is it, it’s all going to kick off now! Get ready for a pounding!

Suddenly however, things seem to have cooled off. Perhaps our scooter rider saw sense and decided it wasn’t worth it. He returns to his bike and tries to get it back up on its wheels. He doesn’t appear to be doing very well however!

Fortunately our car driver decides to put their disagreement aside, and just before the imagery changes to a different day, we can see the two men working together to get the toppled scooter back on the road.

Oh, it gives you a kind of fuzzy feeling huh?

Thanks to Edward Betts.

Update: Post corrected to say he was driving a scooter, rather than a moped, which would usually have pedals.

While driving along Telephone Road in Waikato, New Zealand, you may notice that someone appears to have tried to park their car on top of a large tree stump.

This doesn’t seem to be an officially sanctioned public artwork, but rather the work of either a kindly local patron of the arts (or possibly just the result of incredibly bad driving).

This mysterious artwork reminded me of Spindle in Illinois, a sculpture consisting of 8 actual cars impaled on a 15m spike, which we looked at from above way back in 2006, but which has since received an inspection by the Street View camera.

Back in 2006, locals informed us that this work of utter genius was under threat from those who, incredibly, felt it was an “eyesore”! The debate raged on until May 2008, when Spindle was sadly dismantled and scrapped.

All may not be lost however, as the top two cars (a 1967 Beetle and a BMW donated by the man who commissioned the artwork) were actually saved from being scrapped – in the hope they might one day be re-used as part of “Spindle 2″!

Is there a petition we can sign somewhere?

Thanks to John Burns