Waterslide: The YouTube video looks very fake. The trajectory doesn't look real -- I figured it was digitally altered or simulated, which of course it was. Also, the pool was too shallow; had that really happened, he probably would've broken his legs or something. So it was pretty clearly a fake just from looking at it. And even if that distance could be achieved in theory, how would they have safely "dialed it in?"
I loved it when Adam lost that roll of duct tape down the ramp. So that's one thing duct tape can't do: hit the brakes. And another thing it can't do: float.
I find it amusing that the way they measured flight distances of dozens of meters was by using a GPS device getting data from a satellite over 35,000 kilometers away. It seems overcomplicated. Though GPS is so ubiquitous that it's become one of the simplest ways to measure location and distance. It's not something we really think about, how wild that is.
Right vs. left turns: The problem with their initial test was that they used the same route each time. It seems to me that the benefit of a right-turns-only policy would be cumulative; on some routes you'd use more gas going only right, but your savings on other routes would outweigh that. Also they didn't take traffic into account sufficiently. I've only been driving for two and a half years, but I've come to loathe making left turns into traffic (though I'm talking about coming out of a side street or parking lot and turning onto a busy street, not being on a busy street and waiting for oncoming traffic to clear before you turn onto a different one). There have been times on busy streets where I've gotten so frustrated waiting for a chance to turn left that I've just given up, gone right, and driven blocks out of my way to find a place I could turn into a parking lot on the left side of the street, turn around, then make a right turn back into the street. (These were cases where doing three right turns around a block wouldn't work.) At least on intersections with traffic lights, you have a controlled opportunity to turn, eventually. But if you're coming out of a side street or parking lot with no traffic light, it can take forever to get a shot to turn left. So in some cases, having a traffic light to deal with is actually preferable.
Anyway, their van test confirmed my expectations, that it would make more difference with a range of different traffic/route scenarios as opposed to the same one over and over.
But doesn't going down Lombard Street constitute making a bunch of left turns, alternating with right ones? Well, technically, but not for the purposes of the myth, I guess, because it doesn't affect idling time.
Wow, how cool would it be to just be walking down a street and have Kari Byron come up to you and randomly give you a package as part of a myth test in progress? I wouldn't have been as calm as that guy, that's for sure.
