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Poor road safety worldwide is a serious cause for concern, with thousands being injured or killed across the glove every single day. The issue is highlighted by a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This indicates road traffic deaths continue to rise, with annual road fatalities now reaching 1.35 million, compared with 1.25 million just three years ago. The WHO Global status report on road safety 2018 highlights that road traffic injuries are now the leading killer of children and young pe

WSP USA has appointed Patrick McGowan, former head of ITS World Congress 2011, as mobility operations director. Based in the company’s Virginia office, McGowan will oversee the marketing, management and development of mobility operations such as ITS and tolling. McGowan has three decades of experience in leading national programmes, teams and major initiatives in the ITS industry. He designed and led the operation of TransGuide – the Texas Department of Transportation’s advanced traffic management operat

Kapsch TrafficCom is to deliver 30 roadside co-operative ITS (C-ITS) devices over two years in support of a connected vehicle trial in Australia. This project, led by the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, will seek to develop C-ITS technology to reduce road and pedestrian deaths in the Australian state. From late 2019 onwards, the roadside units will be located along a distributed roadside ITS station network in and around the city of Ipswich in Queensland. Around 500 public and fleet ve

A partnership between data and car-share providers has been formed in the US city of Seattle to help improve parking utilisation. Data solutions company Populus will receive real-time GPS data from Lime’s free-floating car-share fleet, LimePod, which launched last month in the city. The Populus platform will then deliver reports to the Seattle Department of Transportation in a bid to evaluate the use of curb space and develop parking strategies that will help reduce vehicle ownership. Populus says its

Luxembourg is to become the first country in the world to allow free travel for everyone on public transport.

Loughborough University in the UK is leading a three-year initiative which aims to assess the impact of introducing connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) in Europe. The £5.7m project, called Levitate, is funded by the European Union and will help European cities to plan for the effect C/AVs will have on infrastructure and society. Levitate began this month and will consider how AVs might improve safety, congestion and the environment, while looking at key policy decisions which would maximise thei

Waymo has launched a driverless taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, where riders will be charged for the journeys they take. In a blog post, CEO John Krafcik says the commercial self-driving service – called Waymo One - is available to early riders who have already been using Waymo’s technology. The company hopes to make the service available to more members of the public as it adds more vehicles and drives in more places, he writes. “Self-driving technology is new to many, so we’re proceeding carefully wi

Redvision has launched its outdoor Vega 2052 camera which it says is waterproof and resistant to vandalism. The company says the bullet camera does not require a junction box and is made from die-cast aluminium. It features a marine-grade plating as well as durable powder-coating. The camera’s cabling is routed through the housing and inside its walls or pedestal mounting brackets. Vega 2052 features a 2MP camera module with a Sony Exmor low light sensor.

Videalert’s CCTV cameras are being used by Blackburn with Darwin Council in north west England to tackle dangerous parking at a nearby red route. The cameras are located on the A678 at Copy Nook on the Furthergate Link Road, a route which was widened under the Pennine Reach Scheme to help improve the flow of bus traffic between Hyndburn, Blackburn and Darwen. Videalert says its low-cost Digital Video Platform will deliver this enforcement via a single lamp post-mounted processor which is equipped w

Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud (CVC) platform is being used by Volvo Cars to further develop its digital services. The five-year deal is expected to allow Volvo Cars to provide drivers with services such as automation, fleet management, telematics, navigation and infotainment. Ericsson says its platform takes account of legal, security and privacy obligations – such as compliance with the European Union general data protection regulation. Åsa Tamsons, head of business area technologies & new business

Marysville has become the latest urban area to join DriveOhio’s programme to test connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs). The suburb of Ohio state capital Columbus has plans to equip 1,200 vehicles with on-board units as part of the AV pilot created earlier this year by state governor John Kasich. Columbus itself has just been the recipient of a smart cities award for its ITS programmes and is among several cities to have signed up already to DriveOhio, along with Athens and Dublin. “Self-drivi

Feig Electronic has deployed more than 600 radio frequency identification (RFID) readers in India to allow drivers to pay for tolls without stopping at toll booths. The delivery is part of the National Highway Authority in India’s (NHAI) Fastag programme, an open road tolling method that relies on open ISO standard RFID technology. In a statement, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways says Fastag enabled vehicles can pass through dedicated lanes without stopping at toll plazas on national highways.

Lens manufacturer Tamron and visions system integrator Macq have signed a deal to produce a new camera. Tamron is providing the lens, while Belgium-based Macq is providing the housing and the electronics boards – and will sell the camera as its own product. Powered by artificial intelligence, the traffic sensor can be used for all kinds of applications, Macq says. These include: traffic monitoring, automatic make and model recognition, speed control, parking and automatic number plate recognition.

Israel-based cybersecurity firm SafeRide Technologies has joined the Genivi Alliance in a bid to secure connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) from hacking threats. Genivi is a non-profit alliance focused on delivering open source, in-vehicle infotainment and connected software. Hilik Stein, chief technology officer at SafeRide, says the Vsentry cybersecurity software will be available on the Genivi development platform.

Keolis has launched an on-demand shared mobility service in Bordeaux, France, in a bid to reduce congestion and the impact on the local environment. The Ke’op service operates in a 50km2 area and provides connections to the public transport network of the metropole, including tram lines A and B. Jean-Pierre Farandou, executive chairman of Keolis, says the service should enable the company to meet the needs of transport authorities in areas where density does not justify the installation of major transpor