It seems to me that you are advocating the use of air bags without using seat belts. Here are some references:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18365327
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12169939
Airbag helps to very much lessen the incidence of the neck-related injuries that are the biggest problem with seat belts. So I would rather say that air bags and seat belts are good in combination, which is a common belief as well.

Meth (speed) is a prescription drug for example: Methamphetamine is FDA approved for the treatment of ADHD and exogenous obesity. It is dispensed in the USA under the trademark name Desoxyn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine

This comment, and the other comments of this user remind me of an "Unspeakable Vault" comic strip:
http://www.goominet.com/unspeakable-vault/vault/376/

There is a 1500 electrode bionic eye already in use, or I am missinterpreting something.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120308-will-we-ever-restore-sight

Have you ever been so drunk that you just can't walk on your two feet? There your go.

Although I don't know that much about the biochemistry that the Gizmag is talking about, and I can't criticize that, the sentence that contains "memories are stored somewhere, somehow in our brains but the exact process has never been entirely understood." is suspicious - almost as if the author has actually no interest in what so ever in the subject. You are right, we do know approximately where the memories are stored. These neocortex parts+hippocampuses are called temporal lobes, left for abstract information, and right for spatial, contextual and events information and it has been established for quite a long time that they are specialized in long term memory.
"..in the 1930s whe Wilder Penfield observed that his concious epileptic patients would occasionally report "flashbacks" while the superior or upper lateral surfaces of their temporal cortices were electrically stimulated."- Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations Into Brain Function By Stanley Finger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe

You are right. No person with an adequate basic worldview of physics would write a sentence like "... is made up of just a few subatomic particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and so on." because he/she knew that protons and neutrons consist of quarks. The "and so on", seems inapropriate as well.

Also the Mike Ross's article raises some questions (although it is far from being a bad journalism when compared to many others):
- The statement that these "special electrons" had no mass was passed so lightly as it was nothing. Although, now I know that it is some special case which was found a while ago.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/23538
- "..the researchers repositioned the carbon monoxide molecules on the surface" - So, how did they do it? With a scanning tunneling microscope? I am not arguing on this one, I just didn't find it out from the article.
- The force that forced the electrons in a graphene pattern was still electromagnetic, wasn't it? So how were these particles 'fooled' ? The statement about fooling the electrons came from one of the researchers, but I would still like to know. The journalist should have asked.

I wouldn't mind if the journalist reread some of the materials about basic nuclear physics before writing an article, no problem, that's what I did just a moment ago. It is the journalists job to gather background information and it is just a fraction of the information gathered that reaches the article. I mean the journalist should have just a notch of a deeper understanding than the level he/she is writing in. Although I have to admit, It probably is a bit harder in case of the breakthrough science journalism though.

It is a question of graph theory (it is a branch of computer science), and I am sure it can be solved with some efficiency because it seems like a typical one. If you want anything more specific, then how about reading the white paper? The theory including average and worst case scenarios is all there.
Do not forget that the effects of this are cumulative. When one car frees the road quicker, then other cars can move quicker as well. The human factor seems to be a very important bottleneck in the traffic load management. If this would be in conjunction with the automatic driving system, there wouldn't be 0.2-0.4 second reaction times, uneven brakings, and keeping a safe distance from the car driving ahead would cost less time (and nerves). So my point is that when we would take the same amount of cars with (effective) AI-s and the same roads as of today, the peak hours wouldn't be the peak hours as we know them.
The paper seems to be free to download, I wonder why the Slashdot news narration doesn't include a reference to it :
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Papers/bib2html-links/AAMAS04.pdf

It is called transcranial direct current stimulation. Usually it is something like 3-9V (Why is it called electric shock in the Slashdot headline?) and probably low amperage as well because a typical 9v battery is allegedly enough. The TDCS is being considered a rediscovery, because 20 years ago psychiatrists would have been very sceptical about the current with so low voltage being able to pass through subjects skull and brain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_stimulation
AC: "A stab in the arm, prior to learning a new task does enhance memory." - No, it is believed to be depending on the physiology of the orbitofrontal cortices of the subjects whether good or bad memories will dominate. Stress interferes with human memory formation systems in a negative way (and with all other cognitive abilities as well).

Maybe they should have considered something that uses electronic ink display. The picture would remain the same when the battery ran out or even when the internal electronics circuit failed somehow.

Failure in sense of what? They are practical, but the main reason why people don't use them seems to be that people don't want to be seen riding them. I would suggest that it could be the same with these cars but... It is GM that we are talking about, I bet they would use their influence, so that decision makers would take measures to encourage the stupid majority to use them. So given that these things are said to consume less energy as well, it is a good news then, right?

Wasn't it a X-45 of some kind(maybe X-45c?). It is supposed to be fully autonomous. Just because somobody might want to try to jam it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-45