Engadget looks at the new Cordon photo-radar technology.

Developed by Simicon, this new speed sensor promises to take highway surveillance to new heights of precision. Unlike most photo radar systems, which track only one violator at a time, Simicon’s device can simultaneously identify and follow up to 32 vehicles across four lanes. Whenever a car enters its range, the Cordon will automatically generate two images: one from wide-angle view and one closeup shot of the vehicle’s license plate. It’s also capable of instantly measuring a car’s speed and mapping its position, and can easily be synced with other databases via WiFi, 3G or WiMAX.

Wired.com looks at ‘what the media are calling “the world’s most expensive car accident” and the cops are calling “a gathering of narcissists.”’.

The massive mess destroyed about $3.85 million worth of lustworthy cars and a Toyota Prius late Sunday morning on rain-soaked Chugoku Expressway. The supercars were part of a 20-car convoy heading from Kyushu to Hiroshima when the lead driver, a 60-year-old businessman in a Ferrari F430 Scuderia, lost control on the wet pavement.

“The accident occurred when the driver of a red Ferrari was switching from the right lane to the left and skidded,” Mitsuyoshi Isejima, of the Yamaguchi Prefecture Expressway Traffic Police unit, told Bloomberg. “It was a gathering of narcissists.”

The convoy speeding through the western prefecture of Yamaguchi included an assortment of Ferraris, a LamborghiniDiablo, a Nissan GT-R and a Mercedes-Benz CL 600. These weren’t kids, either. Police said the drivers were all between 37 and 60, and you know they had money — even a used Ferrari runs six figures in Japan, and no more than 500 Ferraris were sold in the country last year.

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Fast Company looks at when vehicles communicate.

Traffic is generally accepted as a necessity of modern life, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have traffic because there are too many cars, we have traffic because people are bad drivers and don’t have enough information to make smart decisions. If even just a fraction of vehicles could communicate and override poor driving decisions, we could virtually eliminate traffic. So regardless of whether you believe that autonomous vehicles and road trains are in our future, cars that talk to each other are coming sooner than you think–and they might just get rid of some of the most pesky (and dangerous) traffic-related problems.

Clemson’s Integrated Intelligent Transportation Platform proposes using DSRC to create a “true connected vehicle ecosystem” that leverages the technology to do everything from reporting vehicle crashes on the road ahead to notifying EV drivers that they’re about to enter a traffic jam, and their charge won’t last through it unless they turn off certain systems in the car–for example, the onboard TV in the backseat.

The Connected Vehicle Proactive Driving entry, submitted by Sakura Associates, aims to use DSRC to make the roads safer for drivers–and in turn, reduce the amount of traffic jams caused by accidents. The system would gather information on the type and location of accidents in different areas to give drivers guidance based on a so-called Accident Probability Index, which could advise drivers to avoid (or take extra care on) routes with high accident rates, “dangerous road geometry,” and adverse weather conditions.

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The Wall Street Journal looks at the debate regarding traffic cameras.

Nationwide, red-light traffic cameras have surged in popularity. More than 550 localities—including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago—have installed them since the early 1990s, according to a spokesman the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The cameras have resulted in millions of tickets, which often carry fines of about $100. Fans call them a cost-effective tool for keeping drivers in line and intersections safe.

Critics, though, portray the cameras as Big Brother devices that allow cities to generate revenue from traffic offenses so minor that police might not have bothered to write them up if they had seen them with the naked eye. Others say the cameras raise constitutional concerns, penalizing many violators before they have had an opportunity to explain extenuating circumstances or even whether they were driving the car captured on film. Depending on the community, the cameras also can be used to detect speeders.

City officials in Los Angeles, Houston, and Colorado Springs have recently deactivated the red-light cameras.

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The IEEE released a new study that says 90% of traffic accidents could be eliminated if current technologies were adopted by all vehicles.

Nearly every traffic accident caused by driver error – up to 90 percent of all crashes – could be eliminated if existing intelligent transportation technologies were implemented in our vehicles and roads, say experts at IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional association. These include electronics and computing technologies such as in-vehicle machine vision and sensors to detect drowsy drivers, lane departure warning systems, and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications for safety applications. However, costs of such technologies need to continue to fall so the average consumer can afford these vehicle safety features.

“Today’s advanced embedded systems, sensors, microprocessors and control technologies have made our vehicles and roads significantly safer, but integrating them into our vehicles and roads has been a slow process,” said Dr. Azim Eskandarian, IEEE member and director of the Center for Intelligent Systems Research at The George Washington University. “However, within 10 years, as technology costs continue to fall and implementation of these technologies increases, we could see significant improvements in vehicle safety, efficiency, and energy conservation – especially in developing parts of the world where high-end cars are not yet affordable by the general public.”

Dr. Eskandarian says other challenges include market acceptance and potential liability concerns surrounding technologies that take total or partial control of the vehicle, such as collision avoidance and driver assistance programs like automatic braking. However, these technologies may follow the path of driver- and passenger-side airbags and anti-lock braking systems (ABS) or electronic stability control (ESC), initially offered as optional features but today considered proven and often standard safety measures in nearly all vehicles.

The United States Department of Transportation proposed to eliminate a mandate for replacing traffic signs based on the potential costs related to ‘menu costs‘.

The Washington Post reports:

Although the order came from Washington, the burden of paying for hundreds of thousands of new signs — at costs ranging from $30 to $110 — would have fallen to state and local governments. Fairfax County estimated that it would cost $1.75 million, New York City pegged it a $27.6 million, and officials in small towns felt particularly burdened by the expense.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation dropped the deadline, saying instead that bigger, brighter street signs should be installed whenever current signs need to be replaced.

“A specific deadline for replacing street signs makes no sense and would have cost communities across America millions of dollars in unnecessary expenses,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said. “After speaking with local and state officials across the country, we are proposing to eliminate these burdensome regulations. It’s just plain common sense.”

The original mandate was churned out by George W. Bush administration regulators in 2003 as part of a routine update of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, an 816-page guide for traffic signs, signals and the like that seeks to set common standards nationwide.

Image: dot.gov

Gizmodo, of all blogs, reports on the expanded use of 3D laser scanners by police in the UK.

In the UK as in the US, a car wreck involving injuries or fatalities must be painstakingly recorded and preserved for insurance and court proceedings. Police investigators might block off the roadway for several hours as they take pictures of the scene and record measurements to log what happened. In the US, accident reconstruction is also big business, with experts retained by lawyers to discuss speeds, trajectories and impact physics.

The laser scanner will capture a 360-degree image of a crash scene, the BBC reports. Mounted on a tripod, a laser scans the horizon and records up to 30 million separate data points, down to sub-millimeter resolution. Each sweep takes four minutes, and investigators will typically make four sweeps, the BBC says. The image can then be processed into a 3-D computer model, allowing investigators to see where the vehicles are located relative to each other, tire skid marks, and other evidence.

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A new paper looks at the effects of external costs of vehicle weight. An extra 1,000 pounds increases crash fatalities by 47%.

Here’s the abstract from Pounds that Kill: The External Costs of Vehicle Weight:

Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for the occupants of other vehicles. In this paper we estimate the increased probability of fatalities from being hit by a heavier vehicle in a collision. We show that, controlling for own-vehicle weight, being hit by a vehicle that is 1,000 pounds heavier results in a 47% increase in the baseline fatality probability. Estimation results further suggest that the fatality risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan). We calculate that the value of the external risk generated by the gain in fleet weight since 1989 is approximately 27 cents per gallon of gasoline. We further calculate that the total fatality externality is roughly equivalent to a gas tax of $1.08 per gallon. We consider two policy options for internalizing this external cost: a gas tax and an optimal weight varying mileage tax. Comparing these options, we find that the cost is similar for most vehicles.

H/T: Freakonomics