Google hits a home-run with this real-life demonstration of its autonomous vehicle by putting a vision-impaired person behind the driving wheel in the regular streets. Steve Mahan, the man behind the wheel, is legally blind (95% gone) and he goes about what most of us drivers do in a normal day – runs errands, stops by a drive-through window for a burrito, picks up his dry cleaning, etc – all this without touching the steering wheel. For people like him this self-driving car should feel like a god-sent and the level of autonomy it offers should be priceless.
Moral of the story is clear as a crystal: Never mess with folks on Brazilian roads. These are some crazy drivers who will go to any extent to prove a point..Scary stuff! Glad neither party did not have a lorry or a freight truck (for that matter a gun) else this could have turned into a nightmare for many involved. Interestingly, the driver of the car is a woman, a fact that I did not even realize until I started reading the comments below the video. Drivers of Brazil, spare the poor motorcyclists.
Interesting to know how Chilliwack, Canada enforces its no-cell-phone-use-behind the wheels law. True story! Redditor mlane201 shared this picture and reading through the comments he shared, I came to know how it is done – Constable Martell will be on the watch holding this sign by a roadside, looking for drivers using their cellphones while operating the vehicle. Once Constable Martell spots an offender, he will radio in his colleagues who are sitting a little father up the road and they will comfortably pull over the offending driver and issue the tickets. Pretty nifty strategy there, right?
Seriously, I did not know people went to this extent – printing cards and carrying them around to stick them on windshields of those bad parking jobs. Funny, yet on point!
Found this interesting graphic on Grist in an article titled “How high do gas prices have to get to trigger behavior change? “. So, do Americans really change their driving habits when the gas prices rise? According to the graph, the answer is an emphatic yes. The article quotes AAA saying, ” A AAA survey conducted at the beginning of the month found 84 percent of respondents saying they have changed their driving habits or lifestyle in some way in response to recent gas-price increases, and 87 percent would change driving habits further if prices remain this high for long. The most common change adopted so far is combining trips and errands, which 60 percent of respondents say they’ve done. And 16 percent say they’ve purchased or leased a more fuel-efficient vehicle.” Read the entire article here.
Note: If the gas prices continue to rise with the drum beats of war getting louder and louder by the day, we can expect to see many drivers ditching their cars and opt to taking transit to work and to other places. I hope the transit agencies do everything in their power to demonstrate the conveniences of riding a bus/train and entice these flocking masses to continue using transit as a primary option for getting around. Oh, the big question I have in mind – Are the American transit agencies equipped to handle this sudden spike in ridership? Many transit agencies are hobbled by poor funding patterns over the years and it will be hard to meet this new segment of ridership arrives to what is an already exploding demand. Let’s see what happens. (Oh, no matter what the scenario is, one can expect to see a decline in VMT numbers again).
No technology in the transportation domain gets the general public in a tizzy as much as the red light enforcement. Though the technology has been in use for over a decade and raked up some impressive stats in terms of lives saved, the sight of cameras at the intersection continue to remain a point of contention in many communities across the country. For the naysayers, here comes an infograph highlighting the dangers of red light running and how enforcement technology has helped address this problem. Also check out the one-page Get The Facts (PDF document) that accompanies this infographic.
In line with its tradition of producing many of the safest cars on this planet, Volvo is once again upping the contributions towards road user safety. Mind you, this is not just occupant safety but also one that cares about the most vulnerable of all road users – the pedestrians. The video below explains how this tech. feature will help save pedestrians during a collision.
The brilliance of this image lies in exposing the hypocracy surrounding the escalation in gas prices. Too bad such political ploys have become the norm at Capitol Hill. Can we let the President focus on solving the nation’s problems and spare him these silly distractions? Compelling enough for a web post.
A local news agency’s investigation shows countless red light violations by Metrobuses plying the streets of Washington, DC. Some of the incidents caught on camera show how crazy these bus drivers are to do what they do on the roads. This video below should become an integral part of WMATA’s training for bus drivers, esp. for repeat offenders.
Too bad WMATA’s communications team now looks like a deer caught in the headlights. They really do not have a strategy in place to handle this PR nightmare and could not come up with even a single example of how it reprimands such careless drivers when asked what disciplinary measures they undertook to stem this problem.
Though I’m a bit alarmed by the cognitive distraction (for drivers) potential associated with this technology, it is awesome to see the collaboration between the vehicle manufacturers and the app developers to put together an “intelligent” vehicle. For sure, Secretary LaHood and his staff at USDOT will be spending a lot of time thinking about how to accommodate these tech advancements in the vehicle environment while prioritizing the safety of drivers on the road. If you have not already seen this, the USDOT has recently proposed the first-ever federal guidelines to encourage automobile manufacturers to limit the distraction risk for these in-vehicle electronic devices. The proposed guidelines are voluntary and would apply to communications, entertainment, information gathering, and navigation devices or functions that are built into the vehicle and are not required to safely operate the vehicles. In any case, it is safe to say that the vehicles of today will look a LOT dumber compared to these SMART cars that will roll out of the assembly lines in Detroit a few years from now.
