News

One in 30 UK employees have drugs in their system at any point in time within the workplace, according to new statistics released today by Concateno, Europe’s leading drug and alcohol screening provider. These findings, part of the ‘High Society: Drug Prevalence in the UK workplace’ research report, are derived from the results of over 1.6 million UK workplace drug tests over the last five years (2007-2011). In the past five years, there has been a 43 per cent increase in UK employees testing positive for

The Spanish Ministry of Development is considering nationalising the loss-making radial motorways in Madrid through state-owned company Seittsa. The plan would involve putting in place a toll-payment system to generate revenues to pay interests on debts and maintenance of the roads. The Ministry has already detected 600 locations where remote controlled payment systems could be installed in Madrid to charge those using the roads. The same plan includes a project to nationalise all motorways in Madrid at ris

The trailer telematics market is fast developing into a major growth engine for the commercial vehicles telematics market in Europe. Immense opportunities await telematics vendors as a majority of the trailer population in Europe (as well as North America) remains underpenetrated. Within the trailer telematics market, trailer location and tracking is the most developed application. However, security concerns and the need for effective mobile asset monitoring and management are creating several new applicati

The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry of Japan is about to introduce a study panel to carry out in-depth discussions concerning a vehicle autopilot driving system. The system, which is aimed to be realised in the early 2020s, will apply to self-steering vehicles that feature their own navigation capability. The government intends to build special expressway lanes for such self-driving cars. After entering the designated lanes, the autonomous vehicle can take over the driving task entirely

VitaeMobility, specialists in e-mobility for business and government fleets and consumers, and ABB, a leading power and automation technology group, have announced a partnership to install and manage 50 Terra Smart Connect DC fast chargers at multiple locations throughout Belgium. ABB’s Terra Smart was specifically chosen because it is claimed to be the only smart connected charging station on the market that supports EV charging for company fleets in 30-120 minutes. The first installations for the nationwi

Switzerland-headquartered U-blox, a specialist in positioning and wireless semiconductors, has acquired UK-based Cognovo, a company specialising in software defined modem (SDM) chip development technology. The acquisition extends U-blox’ chip design capabilities to create differentiated products for strategic markets that require 4G communications combined with global positioning.

TomTom is enabling all of its 60 million portable navigation devices to receive free daily map changes via the TomTom map share community. Map share allows drivers to personalise the TomTom map on their own device and also share and receive map changes with the community around the world. This facility was previously only available on a limited number of TomTom devices.

IBM and the Davao City Government in the Philippines have announced an agreement to help the city scale-up its existing public safety and security command centre (PSSCC) by integrating city operations into a single system. To enable Davao’s smarter city transformation, IBM’s intelligent operations centre (IOC) will integrate multiple city agencies in the PSSCC to improve interdepartmental collaboration and enhance the management of Davao’s four pillars of public safety: crime prevention and suppression; eme

Engineers in the Ford Research and Innovation labs are developing ways to help the driver stay focused in busy situations by intelligently managing incoming communications. Data from the sensing systems of driver-assist technologies can be used to determine the amount of external demand and workload upon a driver at any given time including traffic and road conditions. In addition, Ford continues its health and wellness research with the development of a biometric seat, seat belt and steering wheel that can

SFC Energy has received a follow up order from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles for equipping another 242 toll inspection vehicles, based on the T5 vehicle model, ordered by the German Federal Office for Goods (BAG). with EFOY Pro fuel cell generators. The BAG uses the vehicles all across Germany for toll inspection purposes. Volkswagen equips the T5 transporters ‘ex works’ with the fuel cells.

The US Department of Transportation has announced a Request for Information (RFI) for documents related to nomadic devices for real time data collection. The purpose of the notice is to obtain information, for planning purposes, concerning the availability of nomadic data collection devices for real time travel data with what are perceived to be unique capabilities for operating in a highly mobile environment; and to determine whether the needed capabilities exist or where there are gaps that need to be fil

Volvo Trucks has announced it has developed I-See, which operates like an autopilot and takes over gear-changing and utilises gradients to save fuel. The system, which will be available on the market next year, is linked to the transmission’s tilt sensor and obtains information about the topography digitally. The fact that the system is not dependent on maps makes it more dependable since it always obtains the very latest information. I-See can recall about 4,000 gradients, corresponding to a distance of 5,

US Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL) announced yesterday that House and Senate conferees are concluding a bicameral, bipartisan agreement on a major transportation bill. The measure focuses on unprecedented reforms by cutting red tape and consolidating federal transportation programmes.

Mobile Pay has been added to PassportParking’s suite of cloud based parking solutions to provide greater operational efficiency to operators through real-time monitoring and control of their facilities. For instance, its operations management console can now allow parking providers to simply manage their day-to-day functions such as parking rates, contract parking, ticketing and enforcement, real-time monitoring and reporting, all from the internet. Motorists can pay for parking by using a mobile app, calli

Electrification of the automobile is not limited to the electric vehicles (EVs). As a new report from Frost & Sullivan points out, conventional cars of today are partly electric in their own way, with most systems in the vehicle having electrical and electronic connections for better functionality. Certain high-end vehicles possess more than 90 electronic control units (ECUs) to control the various modules within the car, making the car both sophisticated and complicated. However, added functions such as el