For a brief period in the 1970s and early '80s, the U.S. tried to switch over to the metric system, despite objections from real Americans that it was "Communist" or an "Arab plot." Metrication didn't get very far, but one highway remains: Arizona's Interstate 19.

A Utah police chase ended with a Japanese family at gunpoint after they accidentally led highway police into a high-speed chase on an interstate near the Arizona border.

On Tuesday morning, a man driving on the Baltimore Beltway ran out of gas. So he did what anyone would do: He pulled over to the shoulder of I-695, set up his drum kit, and began to play until help arrived.

Mississippi police are warning people to call the cops if a cop tries to pull them over, following two incidents in which motorists were shot while driving down rural highways in the early-morning hours.

Five people and a dog were killed around 10 a.m. today when a small plane crashed on I-287 outside of Morris Township in New Jersey. The single-engine turbo-prop plane, which was piloted by a managing director of the investment bank Greenhill & Co., and carrying his wife, two children, and a coworker, had taken off from Teterboro Airport and was headed for Atlanta when it disappeared from radar. The Newark Star-Ledger writes that it "appeared to nosedive and disintegrate"; although no one on the ground died, the debris was strewn across a half-mile area and the wreckage was horrifying:

It's always a bummer to get stopped by cops on the highway! But if your truck gets pulled over, it's better to be the driver than the dead body on top.

Arizona Department of Public Safety officers stopped traffic on major Phoenix highway during morning rush hour on Thursday in order to save a rabbit from doom. Apparently Arizona cops don't hate all brown living things.

There are so many reasons to have kids! One of the not-great reasons is the best is probably "so you have someone to drive when you're wasted." Like Billy Joe Madden, who slept off a bender while his 8-year-old son drove his truck. On a highway. From Mississippi to Dallas.

After assuming—from the looks of it, quite wrongly—that his ex-girlfriend had gotten an abortion, Greg Fultz spent $1,300 to have this unique billboard erected along a highway in Alamogordo, N.M. Now he and his silhouette-baby are Internet famous!

[A Kansas City Scout sign warns motorists along I-70 near Kansas City, Mo. on Tuesday. I-70 was closed from Kansas City to St. Louis because of heavy snow. Image via AP]

As the Times series on India continues to douse the brown folk with love, Gawker's subcontinental intern Neel Shah — who just happens to be languishing about the homeland as we speak — writes us in response to Sunday's first article on India's highways. As we're sure you recall, the moving piece was a brooding, brobdingnagian exploration of the national highway system, one of the country's most glorious achievements. Neel reports:

We're only at part two today of the Times's four-part series on "India Accelerating," and we admit we're finding it a bit tough to continue fighting our way through. (Untold thousands of words on highways in the metro area would be tough enough; untold thousands of words on highways we'll likely never drive on becomes a much larger problem.)