Occasionally you'll luck out and climb into a taxi cab with such amenities as free tissues, discarded newspapers, or all the tourist pamphlets you can carry. But if you find yourself in New Orleans, you might end up in one of the 250 vehicles in the Orleans Carriage Cab fleet that now feature soda-dispensing vending machines.

　　It's not unlike the New York TaxiTreats concept we brought you last year, except that this is real and officially being rolled out en masse in the big easy. Using a touchscreen display patrons can order up a non-alcoholic beverage—including Coke, Sprite, Iced Tea, and orange Fanta—for just a buck that's delivered to them via an automated mechanism behind their headrest. There's no mention on how they deal with the issue of the cans getting shaken up and exploding when opened, though, because last we checked, taxi back seats were already sticky enough.