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Motorists who speed, ignore red lights or drink and drive when in a European country other than their own will be brought to book more easily, thanks to closer cooperation between European police forces and EU-wide enforcement of traffic rules, under plans approved yesterday by the European Parliament's transport committee. However, the UK and Ireland decided not to opt in to the system, while Denmark is entitled to opt out because the Council changed the legal basis of the directive from "transport" to "po

The National Freeway Bureau (NFB) of Taiwan has launched a new service that delivers instant traffic updates via mobile messaging system to freeway users in Taiwan. The new service is enabled by a Graphic Display System (GDS) that provides a communications link with government units and the Directorate General of Highways. Real-time road information, tracked by 4,000 speed monitors along the freeways, is transmitted to the GDS, the new Taipei city-based Taishan control centre for traffic monitoring and cont

Fleet management and trailer tracking system revenues will grow at a CAGR of 19.4 per cent in the next five years, rising from about US$5 billion in 2011 to exceed $12 billion in 2016. ABI Research Telematics and Navigation Group Director Dominique Bonte comments: "While commercial telematics in developed markets such as North America and Western Europe is reaching maturity, especially in the trucking segment, the major growth in future is expected to come from developing regions where safety and security r

Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns will deliver the keynote address at today’s opening plenary in Fort Washington. Two years after leading the company’s $6.4Bn acquisition of ACS, Burns provides some insights into Xerox’s expanding role in the transportation sector.

AMG Systems has announced it has been selected to supply the transmission solution for the refurbished Victorian-built Blackwall Tunnel under the river Thames in London. The three-year refurbishment programme, costing over US$113 million, is being undertaken by Transport for London (TfL) to bring the tunnel up to European safety regulations. P. Ducker Systems (PDS) is undertaking the task of supplying the tunnel systems for the project.

Transport Ministers from the 52 member countries of the International Transport Forum at the OECD gather in Leipzig, Germany today for a three day summit on the future of global mobility.

A new report released by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change examines cost-effective solutions to begin to cut US transportation emissions and oil use now and move toward cleaner, alternative fuels. From burning oil, transportation accounts for more than one-fourth of all US GHG emissions. The report, Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from US Transportation, identifies reasonable actions across three fronts – technology, policy, and consumer behaviour – that could deliver up to a 65 per cent reduction i

Wabco Holdings has entered into a long term agreement with Hyundai Motor Company, South Korea’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles, to develop and supply its OnGuardPlus system.

Volvo has developed a system that aims at solving the problem of the truck driver's blind spot on the passenger side and the results of the research were demonstrated yesterday in the Intersafe 2 EU project in Wolfsburg, Germany. In Europe, between 30 and 60 per cent of all accidents resulting in injuries occur at intersections. Intersafe 2, an EU-funded project, aims at developing and demonstrating a Cooperative Intersection Safety System (CISS) that is able to improve traffic safety at road junctions by a

Concern is growing in Europe over the safety standards for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and powered two wheeler riders. A total of 169,000 pedestrians, cyclists and users of powered two-wheeled vehicles (PTW) have been killed on European roads since 2001; 15,300 of them in 2009. The figures have been published in the new Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) report and reveal a decrease in the number of deaths by 34% for pedestrians and cyclists, and just 18% for PTW riders compared to

Finland's VTT Technical Research Centre is heading a research project into the harmful impact of weather phenomena on transport in the EU. The EWENT project will set a precedent as no previous studies have been conducted on this scale. It will investigate evidence that heavy rainfall in particular impacts on European transport as with climate change, the occurrence of extreme weather is expected to increase. Weather is a major factor in traffic flow and safety as sudden storms and flash floods can paralyse

Australia's 2011 federal government budget, announced yesterday, will provide AU$61.4 million over three years for the development of a national smart managed motorways trial to improve congestion, lower urban emissions, and expand the capacity of existing outer city road infrastructure networks.

China TransInfo Technology Group has signed an agreement with the Planning Institute under the PRC Ministry of Transportation (MOT) to provide technical development and services for a pilot project to build and operate a traffic data collection, analysis, and service system for national trunk roads in China. According to the contract, which is valued at around US$1.8 million, China TransInfo will develop software applications, build a database, provide information processing services as well as support appl

With over five months to go before the 18th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems gets underway in Orlando, Florida (from October 16-20), 89 per cent of the current exhibit floor plan has now been reserved, according to ITS America's director of business development, Barbara M. O'Connor.

Location Labs, a provider of mobile location-as-a-service infrastructure and applications, has announced a partnership with Hughes Telematics (HT) to include the Location Labs Universal Location Service (ULS) as part of HT's telematics service offering. Location Labs' cloud-based ULS API will supplement HT's connected service offerings by enabling drivers to use their smartphones to request the location of any contact in their mobile address book.