Dodge Journey's keyfob with remote starter.

Despite driving hundreds of new vehicles over the past decade, you can always be surprised by the new, random things that happen. Yesterday evening, just after my wife and I were coming back down the stairs after putting our daughter to bed, all of a sudden she said, "why is the car on?"

Huh?

Sure enough, she could see through the front windows that the Dodge Journey press car parked in our driveway was indeed idling away. The only reason why she'd noticed was because the lights came on. Didn't take me long to realize that the culprit was in my pocket: the keyfob.

Essentially, I'd done the auto-equivalent of butt-dialing - where you accidentally call someone by sitting on your cell phone - somehow double-clicking the Journey's remote car starter without actually touching it. Thankfully, the remote works equally well at shutting the engine off with another single click. And in order for the car to start remotely - theoretically, anyway - is that the doors need to be locked, so at least in my low-crime neighbourhood, there was next to no chance of someone driving off with it.

Still, an embarassing situation that took me completely by surprise.

And it leads me to today's big question: have you had similar experiences with things like remote starters or keyless ignition? Any other new technologies that left you speechless because of bad timing? Let us know by replying and commenting below.

By John LeBlanc for MSN Autos

If you’re just getting use to the idea of having to keep track of six instead of five or four gears in your car’s gearbox, you may want to stop reading this article now. More than likely, your next new vehicle will have more gears than a mechanical watch.

By Mark Atkinson for MSN Autos

For the small percentage of people who own 'pure' electric or plug-in versions of regular hybrid vehicles, one additional place you might be able to get your fill will be Tim Hortons. The coffee-'n-donuteer has decided to install high-speed charging stations for both customer and employee use at the head office and its attached restaurant in Oakville, ON.

"The electric vehicle infrastructure is in its infancy and we see a potential opportunity for Tim Hortons to help make a true difference by expanding that infrastructure in Canada," said Paulo Ferreira, Senior Director, International Design and Building Standards, Tim Hortons. "At this stage, the goal for us is to explore and understand the technology, to see how it can work at our restaurants and how we can, in turn, support our guests who choose to go electric."

Currently, the Tim Hortons clientele doesn't exactly strike us as those who would be interested in buying a Nissan Leaf or Ford C-Max Energi, but hey, what can you do? There's plenty of speculation that Timmy's is tryingto accomplish a couple things with this experiment. First, Tim Hortons' more upscale competitor, Starbucks, is obviously more likely to have that 'green' customer as a client, but Timmys is hoping to bring a few of those 'bucks home to Canada. Second, Tim Hortons is already making big waves with its expansion farther south into the United States, and at this point, any little thing will help.

There are more than 3,300 locations across Canada and depending on how that research period goes, the company might look at adding charging points across the country. How ironic that it may take a national institution to create a proper cross-country EV infrastructure?

Is Tim Hortons being smart? Waste of precious resources? Let us know!

By Mark Atkinson for MSN Autos

Talking about how recyclable new vehicles are becoming - and how little waste actually hits landfills during their construction -is a hot topic among major car companies. However, an exercise recently done by students at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University in Halifax takes that line of thinking in a whole different direction.

Students were tasked with transforming old and tired pieces of technology and giving them a new purpose: to be racecars.

Well, drag racers, really, but racing nonetheless.

Teams were given an old Walkman (a portable cassette tape player) as the must-include piece and let them brainstorm and build their little speed machines. “The idea is to take this old technology based on spinning gears and repurpose it,” explains Professor Glen Hougan, who teaches the second-year Design Studio class.

Just looking at the pictures, you can tell that there are some seriously creative students at work here. Apparently, the teams weren't only judged on which one crossed the finish line first, but also on how 'finished' the design.

The idea for Walkman races apparently originated in Germany about 10 years ago, but this is the first we've heard of it in Canada.

What other old pieces of antiquated technology do you think would make for an interesting transportation design project? I like the idea of turning old fans into helicopters...

By John LeBlanc for MSN Autos Canada

Paper road maps? They are so old school, right? What with the advent of Global Positioning System navigation systems — either built right into vehicles or as a portable handheld device — the idea of unfolding a map to figure out how to get someplace in your car has become as anachronistic as rolling down your car windows by hand.

By Rory Carroll, AutoWeek

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sent out a press release earlier this month in which they claim that by 2040 75% of the vehicles on the road will be autonomous.

As much as I love driving, I have to admit that I won't bemoan the death of the traffic jam.

I'll happily give up the crowded freeways and city streets if it means cheaper gas and abandoned back roads. I don't fear the automated car, because I don't anticipate that my legal ability to drive a non-automated car will go away--at least in my lifetime.

But, the dawn of the self-driving car seems like a good time for driving enthusiasts to ask a question that will shape the experience of driving for the sake of driving in the years to come: Is driving still about going faster?

By Mark Atkinson for MSN Autos

Studying for a driver's test is usually a pretty low-tech affair. You read the actual physical driver's handbook from your local ministry office, and when it comes time to take the test, it's done with a pencil and paper. For the 'in between' parts, a new smartphone app is trying to become a trusted study partner.

DrivingTests101 offers questions about road signs, driver safety and more from all 10 provinces and three territories, and should you be interested in seeing questions from other countries' tests, they're available too. The free online tests are more general driving trivia, while the more robust app - available for both Apple iOS and Google Android - costs $1.99.

They certainly aren't perfect; when going through a 20-question test online, there were a couple of repeats. Hard to complain when it's free, though. The app occasionally does that too, and sometimes words get cut off in the answer boxes. A little polishing would go a long way.

Other features include access to electronic scans of the official provincial handbooks so you don't have to drag the book around with you.

Overall, we'd give it two thumbs up and call it a great Canadian success story.

By Mark Atkinson for MSN Autos

More details and a real first look at the latest Forza game were shown off earlier this week at the E3 gathering in California. Forza Horizon looks to take all the great things that made the franchise famous - fantastic car detail, crash modeling, vehicle dynamics and more - but this time, applying them to an 'open-world' setting. Getting away from the precisely rendered racetracks and onto 'real' roads is a bit of a departure, and it'll be interesting to see how the developers differentiate Horizon from other games in the genre.

Anyway, the initial launch trailer and game art features the new SRT Viper, so it can't be that bad, right?

Also, if the trailer proves correct, we'll also see night racing and perhaps gravel roads - and the associated rally-driving - for the first time in a Forza title.

So gamers: what do you think? Would you be interested in playing Forza Horizon or do you wish they'd just worked at incorporating some of the technical changes into the traditional series?

Click through to see the official E3 trailer.

By Chad Halcon, AutoWeek

Competition is heating up to win a contract for a vehicle that will replace nearly 18,500 aging military Humvees for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps starting in 2015.

Six proposals are in play, with little time left before federal contracting officials decide on development of the $5 billion-plus program. Suppliers are lining up for an opportunity to be part of the production teams with various contractors.

Up to three winners in the current round could receive up to $65 million for the preproduction engineering, manufacturing and development phase of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

Last month, AM General LLC unveiled its Blast-Resistant Vehicle-Off Road, or BRV-O, in suburban Detroit.

By Mark Atkinson for MSN Autos

For those of us who grew up playing Pole Position and evan Ivan Stewart's Off Road Challenge in the arcades of our youth, 3D physics engines are amazing things. They control every aspect of how the car works, how it handles and how it interacts with the environment. Plus, the more 'realistic' the engine, the more realistic the damage.

Rigs of Rods is an open-source simulator that's been meticulously crafted to offer 'soft-body' physics (whatever that means). When the crew decided to mix ROR with the 'king' of video-game beauty, the CryEngine3 that's used in the system-straining Crysis series, the results are simply amazing.

Watch this mid-'80s GM pickup run through a series of mind-boggling tests and crashes over various terrain, and you can totally see how they have things just right. The way the suspension works over bumps, how the separate bed and body flex in different ways depending on the forces exerted.

My favourite bit is how much attention to detail is put into the side mirrors, something that's usually ignored or forgotten - watching them hang forlornly after getting shmucked against a wall is a thing of beauty.

Click through to see the video.