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As part of the Planet M initiative, the US Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) have partnered to test connected vehicle applications on the I-69 freeway in Lapeer County, Michigan. WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff is part of the MDOT team leading the infrastructure deployments. The test involved the installation of six road side units (RSU) at different locations to create a vehicle communications system. The system evalu

Independent road safety charity IAM RoadSmart and safety charity the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) have called for government action following the release of the Department for Transport’s (DfT) reported road casualties in Great Britain 2015. The 2015 figures show there were 1,732 reported road deaths – two per cent fewer compared with 2014. According to the DfT, this is the second lowest annual total on record after 2013. The number of people seriously injured in reported road tr

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a preliminary investigation into a fatal crash involving a Tesla autonomous car in Florida. According to a Florida Highway Patrol report, the 40-year-old driver was killed when his 2015 Model S drove under the trailer of an 18-wheel truck. In a blog post on the crash, which happened in early May, Tesla said “the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to t

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) District Two has selected Parsons to provide final design services for an expansion of FDOT’s freeway traffic management system on I-95 from north of the Jacksonville International Airport to the Georgia state line. The 17-mile project will include various intelligent transportation systems and solutions, including archived data management, automatic vehicle identification, closed-circuit television cameras, dynamic message signs, microwave vehicle detectio

Juniper Research has found that smart traffic management and smart parking initiatives, will save some 4.2 billion man-hours annually by 2021 - equivalent to each city driver saving nearly an entire working day per year. Juniper found that while the ‘smart city’ remains a relatively young concept, many cities are beginning to recognise the need to improve in terms of competitiveness and quality of life. Increasing urban populations are creating pressure on city resources, driving the need for new and eff

Following successful discussions with international automotive and mapping companies in Europe, the US and Asia, Here has now submitted the design for Sensoris, a universal data format, to Ertico-ITS Europe, which has agreed to continue it as an Innovation Platform to evolve it into a standardised interface specification for use broadly across the automotive industry. To date, 11 major automotive and supplier companies have already joined the Sensoris Innovation Platform now under the coordination of Ert

Canadian solid-state advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) LiDAR specialist LeddarTech has unveiled key insights about its LeddarCore IC roadmap, which aims to enable low-cost, high-performance solid-state LiDARs for multiple automotive safety applications, from ADAS to autonomous driving. LeddarTech has two LeddarCore IC programs are in progress: the LC-A2, targeting the automation layers 1 to 3, with the first samples scheduled for the second half of 2017, and the LC-A3, which will meet the specifi

Independent road safety charity IAM RoadSmart has responded to Transport Scotland’s release of provisional headline figures for road casualties in Scotland, saying it is good news that the long term downward trends in deaths and serious injuries on Scotland’s roads continue but the figures are still far too high. The figures for road casualties reported to the police in Scotland in 2015 show that the total number of casualties fell by three per cent between 2014 and 2015 from 11,307 to 10,950, to the lo

Data from IDTechEx claims there are many new forms of electric bus arriving in quite a rush. Last year saw pure electric double decker and articulated buses. This year there is speculation that the work by Siemens of Germany on long distance pure electric trucks being charged by short lengths of overhead catenary could also apply to buses. That should involve much lower cost than the other zero pollution option the fuel cell bus. Now Switzerland has joined other places around the world newly exploring t

Plans to convert hundreds of miles of UK motorway hard shoulder into permanent driving lanes should be scrapped while major safety concerns exist, the Government’s Transport Committee has said. In 'all lane running', the latest version of smart motorways, the hard shoulder is used as a live lane of traffic. Previous schemes have only used the hard shoulder at peak times or to deal with congestion. The Committee did not agree with Government that this is an incremental change and a logical extension of

Ticketless parking payment systems specialist Veri-park has launched an advanced vehicle counting technology that can be integrated with Swarco and third-party variable message signs (VMS) to better direct traffic through busy town centres. The system uses loop counting detection at car parks’ entrances and exits, removing the need for onsite hardware. Data is securely transmitted by Veri-park’s new system via the cloud to the VMS to give drivers up-to-date and accurate information on the availability of

New research by UK communications technology specialist BT and Frost & Sullivan finds that new urban mobility models such as ride-sharing, smart parking technologies and ride-on-demand could reduce the amount of cars needed on urban roads globally by up to 20 million vehicles per year in 2025, offering huge sustainability benefits and an improved experience for travellers. The research, Environmentally Sustainable Innovation in Automotive Manufacturing and Urban Mobility, suggests that consumer trends t

US wireless solutions provider Intuicom, in conjunction with its distributor Twincrest Technologies, is to provide the wireless traffic communications for the City of Austin’s Traffic Signal Expansion Initiative, replacing the city’s old fibre system. The system utilises Intuicom’s BroadBand Solutions (BBS) radios, augmented by the company’s EB-6 PLUS high-speed wireless transceivers providing Ethernet connectivity where line of sight is an issue. The combination ensures that the Austin Transportation De

Mexico’s toll road operator Caminos y Puentes Federales (Capufe) has awarded Spanish technology company Indra a contract, valued at US$42 million (€38 million), to develop and implement a remote toll system for the country’s public highway network, which covers almost 500 lanes over 4,000 kilometres of road. The solution implemented by Indra includes the new remote toll system and telecommunications equipment, as well as subsystems for billing, communications, customer service and back office systems, wh

Dutch company NXP Semiconductors is to supply the winner of the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Smart City Challenge with its smart city technology, including real-time vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems and secure public transportation smart cards. Columbus, Ohio’s winning proposal for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (D.O.T.) Smart City Challenge. NXP, through its partnership with the USDOT, is working with winning city Columbus, Ohio, to help de