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The achievement of the Center’s mission will be through the use of automated collision avoidance technologies that fundamentally go beyond crash mitigation, the principal conventional focus of highway safety, to crash avoidance.
By Dr. Alain L. Kornhauser
After more than three years of planning and several major meetings, the substantive launch of the Center for Automated Road Transportation Safety @ Fort Monmouth (CARTS@FM) occurred this week with the creation of the governing non-profit (501(c) (6)) New Jersey Corporation.
The mission of this Center is to substantially improve safety on our existing conventional roadway infrastructure through the use of inexpensive automated collision avoidance systems installed on individual vehicles operating harmoniously with conventional vehicles throughout most, if not all, existing roadways. The scope of CARTS’s mission is across all modes that utilize the nation’s conventional road system: trucks, buses and cars.
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Sometimes, it seems, there’s nothing that even the smartest cars can do. Yet again, a Google autonomous vehicle was rear-ended, apparently due to a distracted driver. The 14th accident involving one of the self-driving vehicles, it also marked the first involving injuries.
The July 1 crash occurred near the tech giant’s home of Mountain View, California, and saw three employees in the autonomous vehicle go to the hospital due to what’s been described as “minor” whiplash. The driver of the other vehicle also suffered some minor injuries.
“The clear theme is human error and inattention,” Chris Urmson, head of the Google autonomous vehicle program, wrote on his blog. “We’ll take all this as a signal that we’re starting to compare favorably with human drivers.”
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We’ve already seen systems that detect driver fatigue via steering wheel movements or by analyzing drivers’ faces. German engineering firm Hoffman and Krippner, in cooperation with Guttersberg Consulting, has now developed what its designers believe is a better alternative – a fatigue-sensing steering wheel add-on that tracks the driver’s grip.
The technology is based on the fact that when people drive and are reasonably alert, they’re constantly applying pressure to the wheel and/or moving their hands along it. If someone should fall asleep, have a heart attack or otherwise lose consciousness, that pressure will lessen and their hands will move less.
The actual device consists of a thin strip of sensors developed by Guttersberg Consulting that is applied to the inside rim of a manufacturer’s existing steering wheel, beneath the leather (or other) covering. That “Sensofoil” strip is made up of thin layers of foil, that have a weak electrical current running through them.
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Once autonomous driving cars become prevalent in the not-too-distant future, we’ll all be able to read, watch videos and text message to our hearts’ content – safely, that is – while en route to a given destination, and probably enjoy lower insurance rates due to the resulting drop in accidents caused by human error.
Though the numbers couldn’t be verified elsewhere, according to the venerable Statistic Brain Research Institute, American drivers pay over $6 billion a year in speeding tickets alone.
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Development Committee to lead NAFA and its members with execution of Sustainable Program
NAFA Fleet Management Association announces the formation of an Accreditation Development Committee to oversee NAFA’s Sustainable Fleet Accreditation Program. The Association, in collaboration with CALSTART, launched its Sustainable Fleet Accreditation Program in April at its Institute & Expo conference in Orlando, Florida.
“We are excited to have these invaluable members take the lead in overseeing our Sustainable Program,” said NAFA Chief Executive Officer Phillip E. Russo, CAE. “NAFA’s Board of Directors and I are certain that they will ensure the program’s success.”
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By Mike Sheldrick
At the recent NAFA I&E in Orlando, we got a chance to sit down with CALSTART senior vice president Bill Van Amburg to learn about the NAFA Sustainable Fleet Accreditation Program, developed in collaboration with CALSTART.
Van Amburg says, “It will really give fleets the tools, the recognition and the way to measure their progress. This is what will help drive continuous improvement in the fleet world both for being more efficient and in having a smaller environmental footprint. This program gets you in at the ground floor if you are just starting out, shows you where you are and then equips you to make some smart choices to start improving both your bottom line and your environmental footprint.”
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Easing Traffic Congestion
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The Detroit Bureau
Traffic and parking have become troublesome issues for motorists in many cities and the impact of these growing problems on buyers, particularly younger ones, is a rising concern for carmakers. The issues are also attracting the attention of technology companies.
The city of Boston, in an effort to curb the problems created by double parking on the city’s narrow streets, has teamed up with Waze, an app-based GPS system that provides real-time traffic updates from users.
Besides helping commuters navigate city traffic, Waze data is now helping Boston target that most annoying source of slowdowns – the double-parked car.
Read more of the original article in The Detroit Bureau.
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