Obviously, if the lights are not melting snow, motorists are going to have trouble seeing the signals after a storm. So far, this problem has resulted in dozens of accidents and at least one death. Solutions are being tested in several states that range from weather shields to heating elements to water-repellent coatings. In the meantime, city crews must continue to stay on top of the problem and dust off the lights by hand. [Yahoo]

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

Scrolling LED Message Sign With Remote: There's so much to say to your fellow drivers on the road that the finger, two signal directions, high beams and horns don't cover. Can you really put a price on the ability to articulate "YOU DRIVE LIKE SHIT", "PLEASE SIGNAL", "DO NOT TAILGATE" and "PLEASE LEAVE THE FAST LANE IF YOU ARE DRIVING 50MPH". $40 [Thinkgeek]

Valentine One Radar Detector: It's still the best radar detector. With sensors forward and aft and an increasing frequency of beeps correlating to strength of signal, you can tell if smokey was passing you on the highway, is creeping up from behind or is sitting dead forward in a speed trap. $400 [ValentineOne]

MiFi Wi-Fi 3G Wireless Router: Car internet was but a dream. Then people started cludging together routers and 3G cards, and it was a little bit more of a nightmare. The little MiFi runs on Verizon's reliable 3G network, supports a few clients and has more than enough Wi-Fi range for your car (or a giant RV). Since it fits in the palm of your hand, stashing it under a seat or in a glovebox is easy. We don't recommend hard wiring these things, either, since they run off batteries for awhile, too. $100 with two year $60 contract [Mifi on Giz]

Duracell Powerpack 450 Talking Portable Power Unit: This portable battery has enough 110v power to run a laptop for 8 hours, jump start a car and inflate tires with its built in air compressor. It also has built in voice prompts to walk you through the process of jump starting, in case you or your loved ones don't remember if its black before red or the other way around. $120 Bonus: Black and Decker's 200-watt inverter turns your 12v cigarette adapter into a 110volt plug for $35. [Duracell Powerpack on Giz]

Wagan Ergo Comfort Rest Heated Massage Car Seat Cushion: The good doctor has made this 12v car seat cover that heats and massages. Knowing the power output a 12v plus is capable of, I'm doubtful this thing will do anything but get warm and vibrate a little bit. But if you need a car cover, a few degrees and some artificially induced butt modulation never made a long car ride any worse. And for $33, it's not such a big risk. [Amazon]

Wavebox Car Microwave/cooler: I don't think this is a good idea. I just think it's kind of cool to be able to make popcorn while you drive. I mean, with the proper in-dash DVD system, I'm halfway to feeling better that drive-in movie theaters are dead. Halfway. I wouldn't rank this a do not buy, but I wouldn't want you to ignore the 1.5 star Amazon rating, either. $300 [Wavebox on Giz, Amazon]

DON'T BUY My Pee Pee Bottle: A nalgene-style bottle for peeing in on road trips. Bad idea. Just pull over — you're not on the Cannonball Run nor are you some trucker late for his interstate Ikea drop off. Just pull over! [Jalopnik]

DON'T BUY Top of the Line Garmin GPS: The Nuvi 1690 is great. It has wireless search and traffic, lane suggestion and a Bluetooth speakerphone with dialing for your cellphone. It's also $500 and is a total waste of money. Smartphones are going to replace these sorts of connected GPS. One day. For now, a good touchscreen GPS should be bought from Garmin by checking prices to see what's on sale for a little over $100. Like this Nuvi 260W that is on sale for $117. For GPS apps, we recommend the free and built-in Google Maps Navigation program on Android, and Motion X GPS for the iPhone, which is a great value at $25 per year. (But not a very visceral good gift, as an app, especially since there are subscription fees after awhile.)

Don't forget to recommend your own favorite Car Gadget in comments-include pics and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Mercedes-Benz is experimenting with this very scenario at their R&D facility in Palo Alto.

Using a smart intersection, the light essentially communicates with the car. And if the driver still isn't responsive to, say, brake after several warnings of a red light, the car can stop itself. (Start the clip around 50 seconds in for the full demo.)

Mercedes-Benz admits that, though the technology is "almost there," we're still a decade out from its deployment. After all, every stoplight in America would need an upgrade to smart intersection status (for which there are no agreed standards). Plus, given that these intersections would cost money that would surely be lost through less tickets, it's hard to imagine where the money will come from.

So what do you think? Is this a handy safety feature or a limit on our human rights to break the law? [BBG]

Powered by a diminutive solar panel on the roof, the car glides over air without the hindrance of friction thanks to electromagnetic propulsion, like you might might see in a high speed rail.

And herein dies the fantasy, as our infrastructure is one of pavement and concrete, not awesome magnet tracks of The Future.

But we'd still accept a gift of this non-functional car of tomorrow, if only to park it in the driveway, wax it every Sunday and obsessively open/close the front hatch until the hinge broke. [Yanko Design via ubergizmo]

Look beyond the cheesiness of the music, smug actor and his Oakley Thumps for a moment and actually examine the incredible practicality at work—highlighting/identifying parts of an engine and offering step by step instructions for completing complicated procedures. Give me a world UI like this, and I won't just change my own air filter. I'll be able to remove my own appendix.

Oh, and my brain will never memorize how to do anything ever again, but let's forget that part... [BMW via MediaIte via Jalopnik]

While most aftermarket cigarette-to-USB charging solutions protrude a bit from your dash, iLuv's iAD115 promises to be so small that you won't even notice it. At just 1.7-inches long, the Micro Size USB Car Adapter will squeeze into car power ports while offering a means to recharge any USB devices you've got around (one at a time, of course).

It's vailable this September for $15. [iLuv]

It's the product of 10 years and $20,000 worth of custom work, a combination of a Kawasaki 1000 RX the and a Citroën Xantia...along with who knows what else (though Laverda is name-dropped, too). And it reminds us how wonderful the world would be if only more of our transportation were designed by the M.A.S.K. team. [Snaefell via Auto Motto via DVICE]

Combining the TuneCast Auto Live transmitter and the ClearScan app for the iPhone users with OS 3.0 can tap into the GPS functionality to locate the best radio frequency to play music in the car (along with the recommendations of other users). In addition, both iPhone and iPod Touch users can use their devices to manually change frequencies and set favorite channels as presets. The device will be available in the early fall for $80, but I'm waiting for streaming Bluetooth. [Belkin]

As you'll see in the clip below, the sculpture created a bit of a phenomenon, causing traffic jams and a small media sensation. But I included the video for the fun time lapse construction that you can see about a minute in. I just love watching a small army of people complete a several hour project over a matter of seconds. It feels like I'm getting a ton accomplished, just by sitting here. [CR Blog via The Daily What]

TechEBlog says that the car was handmade and is street legal, but they offer few details beyond that. Then again, when you're talking about a DIY Batmobile with a motorized roof, do you need many more specs? [TechEBlog via Oh Gizmo via Engadget]

The rumored MR2 Hybrid is said to be built around the Prius design, but would go 0-60 in under 7 seconds and come equipped with paddle shifters. Jalopnik thinks that the engine would be similar to the FT-HS's 3.5-liter, V6 Hybrized innards from a few of years ago. The price? Supposedly it's would only be around $24,000. I think I'm starting to get hot flashes. [Auto Express via Jalopnik]

Maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit, but the tech here is really cool. Sentience will analyze the best route to get you to your destination, and then will handle all the acceleration and braking for the trip. Using GPS and mapping data, It recognizes roundabouts, speed bumps, corners and even speed limits. Sentience will know when a light is about to turn red and slow down accordingly.

Even better is that this new intelligent cruise control can save anywhere from 5%-24% of fuel on any given trip. And the best part is that it could be available as soon as 2012 for "minimal additional cost." [Sentience via Gizmag]

Yanko says the Dynamic Augmented Wheel System are guided by a magnetic guide rail on the inside that hold's the wheel in place while driving straight, and moves to let it shift with the car's center of gravity while turning. The current design is inspired by motorcycle wheels and the human foot, making uses of servos, a drive gear and embedded magnets in each segment to pull this feat off.

Currently, the prototype wheel works on a 1:2 scale, but no word on actual implementation plans. [DAWs via Jalopnik, Yanko]

Instead, Ford uses full-sized balloon vehicles—inflatable pretend cars that can be crashed into with no resulting damage (to either the crasher or the crashee). They've been custom made for the company, which is no big surprise since they aren't exactly off the shelf toys (yet).

Each of Ford's dozen or so balloons cost $10,000 and manage to weigh but 40 pounds. When splattered with a bit of metal paint, Ford's collision detection system sees the balloon as any other car to be avoided on the road—and if for some reason the system fails to see anything, well, you have another fun game of car soccer. Hopefully Ford hasn't been scoring too many goals, if you know what I'm saying. [detnews via NewLaunches]

Tesla basically "unlocked" the prices of their electric vehicle options, forcing customers to re-select or lose their spot in line. All-in-all, the price of a fully loaded Roadster has increased by the aforementioned $9,300—so it is either pony up or deal with a car equipped with less features.

According to Tesla, the reason behind the price increase was to make the car's margins appear healthy to the next round of investors, and in order to do that, making the move now was unavoidable. With all of the negativity surrounding the company, you would think that investors and customers would shy away—but according to the company not one of the 600 people on the delivery list have requested a refund so far. [Saxton via Jalopnik]

Dimples are a proven method for reducing wake turbulence on golf balls, and that's what creator SkinzWrapz (you know, ads on cars?) think will happen with cars, too.

In fact, they boast an 18-20% boost in gas mileage. Of course the boast comes without any kind of supporting research, but what else is new from a product that will undoubtedly be hawked by Billy Mays in the near future.

If there's one thing going for these skins, sorry skinz, it's that they're hard to notice from a distance. At least with the white paint job. [FastSkinz via DVICE]

Synopsis: Late one night, a mysterious car is brought into the Chicago police impound garage after a deadly traffic accident. The garage's female mechanic, Tilda, and her young, hip fellow mechanics soon discover the car has a mind of its own: it morphs into different cars to confuse them and instead of needing an engine to run, it breathes. It's a killing machine that is capable of outrunning and outwitting humans.

Hybrid is an upcoming film by Voltage Pictures. If only a Prius were the antagonist, I'd be lined up for a ticket right now. [shocktillyoudrop via ohnotheydidnt Thanks Peter!]

Nikkei explains that following their first operating loss in 70 years, Toyota wants to make an aggressive move in the market with a solar car. But to make it work with current solar efficiency, some of the car's energy comes from solar panels on the vehicle, but some of the energy also comes from solar panels on one's house. (Does that imply it'll plug in to the wall as well, sans solar?)

According to the report, Toyota also hopes to release a real 100% solar car (not needing the house part) in the future. And we hope so, just to watch all those haughty Prius owners be usurped. [AP via Jalopnik]

Called Attention Assist, the program is the result of some meticulous study by the fine folks at Mercedes. By studying the brainwaves of sleepy drivers and the physical behavior that accompanied them (like sluggish or delayed steering, for example), they were able to design a car that literally knows when you're about to fall asleep at the wheel.

When the system notices that, thanks to sensors in the steering wheel, it will sound an obnoxious alarm to startle you into consciousness. Then, as mentioned above, the display will suggest you "pause" and take a break.

Meaning, if you purchase a new E-Class when they come out in 2009, you'll probably be driving in one of the safest cars on the road. That is, until some schmuck driving a beat-up old '95 Ford falls asleep at the wheel after working three jobs and kills you. Until that day though, super safe. [Autoweek via DVICE]