Unintended Uses

By David Matthews

Mario Kart is one of the world’s most popular video game series. For decades, players have spent countless hours steering Super Mario characters through chaotic races on twisting tracks, dodging obstacles while attempting to sabotage their fellow drivers. 

So, when researchers were looking for an accurate simulation of real-world road conditions that they could use to train autonomous driving systems, Mario Kart seemed like the perfect fit.

Enter the University of Maryland, where researchers, funded by the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, are putting that logic to the test by training artificial intelligence to “play” Mario Kart on its own — letting software run laps in a virtual world before it ever encounters a real one. 

“We’re actually using these automated driving systems to figure out how to verify that the systems are correct and then make sure that they adhere to the rules of the road,” Mumu Xu, an associate professor of aerospace engineering, explained to WTOP News in October.

In this setup, the AI is trained to safely complete laps in the original 1992 Mario Kart game, and based on how well it avoids speeding, collisions and general vehicular mayhem, the system assigns a safety score that determines whether it must go back to driving school or advance to the next level.

“We can say to the designers, go back and train your car again to make sure that it doesn’t violate certain rules,” Xu said.

The research is still in its early stages, but Mario’s popularity makes him a convenient guinea pig. As Xu put it, “Using Mario is a way for us to work in simulation, to first test whether or not something is useful.” 

Whether this says more about artificial intelligence or the daily driving experience in Maryland remains an open question.

Birds of a Feather

Pigeons are supposed to be the unofficial mascots of city streets — loitering on sidewalks, judging pedestrians and aggressively negotiating for French fries. 

Yet in downtown St. Louis, they’re oddly scarce. The mystery caught the attention of Daisy Lewis, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, who wondered why she was able to move around downtown without pigeons treating her like a walking concession stand.

Along with her mentor, Elizabeth Carlen, she walked the streets of St. Louis and Madrid, Spain, counting pedestrians and pigeons in the city centers. 

“Anybody that is in St. Louis knows that we are a car-based culture,” Carlen said on NPR’s St. Louis on the Air in November. “We have a highway through downtown, and so this means that it's not very comfortable to walk around or to sit outside and meet up with friends. 

“In Madrid, there has been an active policy to ensure that there are closed off streets where people can just hang out. [Americans] did see some of this during COVID … but we don't have that as a typical part of our culture. [In America] streets are for cars and not for people.”

Their research found that fewer pedestrians in St. Louis has resulted in fewer pigeons hovering nearby waiting for crumbs and apparently a greater pigeon population in Madrid with midwestern accents.

Left Behind

England’s highways are designed to move cars efficiently from one place to another. They are not, according to official guidance, meant to double as a nationwide lost-and-found for people’s abandoned belongings. 

In 2025 alone, England’s National Highways collected more than 49,000 abandoned objects from roads it manages, a haul that included sofas, bicycles, storage containers, multiple Christmas trees and even a carnival ride. 

However, the standout was a boat discovered on the shoulder of a major highway in central England, notably far from any lake, river or body of water that would explain its presence. 

“It was a surprise to see something of this size on the side of an on-ramp,” traffic officer Cat Martin told UPI.com in December, adding that despite efforts to locate the owner, no one ever came forward to claim their missing boat. 

At this point, National Highways’ roads are so unpredictable, the University of Maryland may want to use them to train their AI.

David Matthews has been chronicling the unexpectedly humorous side of transportation news since 2000. The stories are all true.