The Wall Street Journal looks at the innovations in the automobile industry that could lead to cars driving themselves or, perhaps, communicating with each other to avoid collisions. Ford Motor Company and Executive Chairman Bill Ford are leading advocates of the advances.

Mr. Ford outlined a future of what the auto industry calls “semiautonomous driving technology,” meaning increasingly self-driving cars. Over the next few years, cars will automatically be able to maintain safe distances, using networks of sensors, V-to-V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communications and real-time tracking of driving conditions fed into each car’s navigation system.

This will limit the human error that accounts for 90% of accidents. Radar-based cruise control will stop cars from hitting each other, with cars by 2025 driving themselves in tight formations Mr. Ford describes as “platoons,” cutting congestion as the space between cars is reduced safely.

This is not as far-fetched as it may sound. The electronics in high-end cars already run 100 million lines of computer code—more than the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Self-driving cars developed by Google are becoming a regular sight around Silicon Valley. Google engineers describe automating driving as just another information problem: With enough sensors and detailed digital maps of roads, algorithms should be able to make computer-driven cars safer than human-driven cars.

Photo credit Associated Press

The Washington Post examines the move towards using smaller ‘females’ crash test dummies.

Consumer advocates say the female dummy’s subpar performance in some top-selling vehicles reveals a need to better study women and smaller people in collisions. Until recently, only male dummies were used during more than three decades of government testing aimed at helping car buyers choose between vehicles. The female dummy also mimics a 12-year-old child.

In general, experts say, the smaller the person, the fewer crash forces the body can tolerate. When cars wrap around trees or utility poles, for example, smaller drivers and passengers suffer more head, abdominal and pelvic injuries but fewer chest injuries than average-size people, according to theNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Women’s less-muscular necks also make them more susceptible to whiplash, researchers say.

Graphic credit: The Washington Post

Hat tip: Aldo Baker

Via: Bolt Insurance

“Wolfram Research co-founder and author Theo Gray collects elements. [H]is real DIY masterpiece is the world’s first “periodic table table.” Within this masterfully constructed table-top lay samples of nearly every element known to man, minus the super-radioactive ones.”

The Los Angeles Times looks at new rules for the LAPD related to officer-involved collisions.

Under the terms of the revamped policy, any time an officer is involved in a traffic accident in which someone is killed or injured badly enough to require hospitalization, a team of detectives and officers trained in crash reconstruction will go to the scene immediately.

The team will preserve skid marks and other physical evidence needed to reconstruct the crash and will interview witnesses and compel the officers involved to give their account of what happened, Cmdr. Michael Williams told the Los Angeles Police Commission at the oversight board’s weekly meeting.

Until now, LAPD officers involved in crashes had not been required to speak with investigators, while witness interviews were conducted by regular officers who failed to ask pertinent questions, Williams said. Also, crucial physical evidence was often compromised because accident scenes were not secured, he said.

Photo credit: Bob Chamberlin

The FAA may soon look to change rules governing the use of portable electronics in the air, according to the New York Times.

When I called the F.A.A. last week to pester them about this regulation — citing experts and research that says these devices could not harm a plane — the F.A.A. responded differently than it usually does. Laura J. Brown, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs for the F.A.A., said that the agency has decided to take a “fresh look” at the use of personal electronics on planes.

That’s going to be welcome news to the people in the United States who, according to Forrester Research, by the end of 2012 will have bought more than 40 million e-readers and 60 million iPads and other tablets.

Yes, you read that correctly. The F.A.A., which in the past has essentially said, “No, because I said so,” is going to explore testing e-readers, tablets and certain other gadgets on planes. The last time this testing was done was 2006, long before iPads and most e-readers existed. (The bad, or good, news: The F.A.A. doesn’t yet want to include the 150 million smartphones in this revision.)

Photo credit: American Airlines

The Wall Street Journal looks at getting directions in a digital age:

Every day, Google users spend more than a million hours browsing Google Maps and Earth, and more than 750,000 sets of directions are printed from MapQuest. Since AAA launched its TripTik mobile application in spring 2010, it has been downloaded more than a half-million times.

We need help walking too. On HopStop.com, users in 68 metropolitan areas around the world give their current location and intended destination, and then select their mode of urban transportation: subway, bicycle, feet or a combination. (Driving directions start at car-rental offices or Zipcar locations.) Users of the HopStop website and smartphone app can request a stroller-friendly route.

We are giving such specific information about our current and future whereabouts that advertisers are able to fine-tune their pitches to us. The ad and mobile-technology industries even have a name for it—”location-based service.”

Image by QuickHoney

The Wall Street Journal examines the effect of new technologies on automotive safety.

On one hand…

General Motors Co. this spring will release an 8-inch, touch-screen display for online applications, navigation and music that can be activated through voice, touch or steering wheel controls.Ford Motor Co. already allows drivers to receive Twitter feeds and stream online music through its Sync technology. New Mercedes-Benz cars this spring will tap into Facebook and perform Google searches. Mercedes drivers won’t be able to enter text while the car is in drive, but prewritten phrases can be selected with a click.

Customers say they love the electronics. “I like the way it looks,” said Jamie Kaye Walters, 38, a television production company executive who recently bought a 2012 Ford with the Sync system. “It’s a little bit distracting, but it kind of allows me to do work while I am driving without having to look down at my phone. I can do the whole thing with voice activation.”

On the other hand…

Rob Reynolds, executive director of FocusDriven, a distracted driving prevention group, said greater safety doesn’t equal safe. “The attitude that auto makers are taking is that we want to make distracted driving safer than ever,” said Mr. Reynolds, whose 16-year-old daughter was killed in an accident by a distracted driver. “They are putting a big filter on your cigarette so it will take longer to kill you.”

Auto makers point to studies, including one by researchers at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which show that talking on a cellphone increases the risk of a crash or near-crash by 1.3 times over regular driving, while physically dialing a number increased the risk 2.8 times. A person is more than 20 times more likely to be in a crash or near crash while sending text messages.

Photo credit: Ford Motor Company

Tom Vanderbilt from Slate.com looks at the counter-intuitive nature of lowering speed limits to decrease travel times.

This is the thinking behind some recent trials on Colorado’s vital, increasingly congested I-70 mountain corridor. Once the number of cars on the road reached a certain level (initially, 1,100 vehicles per hour per direction), highway patrol vehicles, riding in tandem with lights ablaze, set an artificially low travel rate of 55 mph—on a highway where cars and trucks might travel 70 and 30 mph, respectively—“pacing” a series of vehicle platoons on a segment of the highway. Gone was the furious weaving, the sudden squalls of brake lights—this was a NASCAR pace lap.

Illustration by Rob Donnelly

LeBron James made waves on Twitter when he was spotted commuting to work on a custom mountain bike.

(via StreetsBlog)