Google has been in the new with their robot car that uses software and a set of cameras to act as the driver. Fast Company looks at “How Google’s Robot Cars will Revive Sprawl”.
Google’s test cars had traveled 140,000 miles with only one accident. (A car was rear-ended while stopped .Read more...
Eric A. Morris looks at the strange things that cause traffic:
It’s hard to calculate precisely, but estimates I’ve seen suggest that incidents account for perhaps 50 percent of all roadway congestion. The most common incidents (80 percent) are breakdowns, stalls, flat tires, empty gas tanks, etc. In transportation lingo these .Read more...
Los Angeles is considering pulling the plug on their red light cameras (RLC’s). Freakonomics blogger Eric A. Morris weighs in:
Do we need RLCs? First off, yes, there is a problem. Intersections are dangerous places. The Federal Highway Administration has estimated that red-light running caused 676 deaths and 113,000 injuries in .Read more...
Daniel Machalaba looks at the developments in train technology in the Wall Street Journal:
Major railroads are installing digital communications, global positioning receivers, sensors and computerized controls on their trains and tracks. New systems can gather intelligence on locations, size and speeds of trains and make automated decisions about when the .Read more...
USA Today discusses the growing trend towards flashing yellow left turn signals to improve safety and keep traffic moving.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that the signals — which allow drivers to make a left turn after yielding, even when the light is red for traffic going straight and cross traffic has .Read more...
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website maintains important information about transportation safety. In particular, there is a valuable introduction to EDR’s (or Event Data Recorders). Here is an excerpt:
What is an EDR? What is its purpose?
An Event Data Recorder (EDR) is a function or device installed in a .Read more...
I worked for a man that had served in Iraq and was responsible for guarding transport trucks across the desert to various military installations. Now that the withdrawal in Iraq is in full effect, the issue of protecting the movement of troops and goods is in the news again. Currently, .Read more...
Just outside my first apartment was a ‘Slow Children At Play’ sign and every time I walked past I would think about the ‘slow children’ in my neighborhood and hoped for punctuation that would call out to passing motorists to reduce their speed instead of judging these children.
Over at Slate.com, .Read more...
Tom Vanderbilt writes at length about merging philosophy in his book, Traffic. It seems that the Illinois Department of Transportation is now experimenting with some new ideas in merging.
The Quad-City Times writes about the new Illinois DOT signage:
There’s a new sign in town, and it may just change everything.
The Illinois .Read more...
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times weigh in on the recent study from the American Academy of Pediatrics on child safety and car seats:
Madonna Behen from the New York Times:“People cheer when they turn their kid around at one year, but hopefully some day they’ll cheer at .Read more...
Traffic guru Tom Vanderbilt discusses Twitter and traffic at Salon.com:
On an early Friday morning rush hour last month, a Seattle-area web designer named Michael Micheletti was driving his BMW, “check engine” light blazing, to his dealer to be serviced. In some kind of disharmonic convergence, the car gave out a .Read more...
Humorist P.J. O’Rourke takes aim at bicycles:
The bicycle is a parody of a wheeled vehicle—a donkey cart without the cart, where you do the work of the donkey. Although the technology necessary to build a bicycle has been around since ancient Egypt, bikes didn’t appear until the 19th century. The .Read more...
