It is clear that the object of romantic interest in the Beatles’ song never anticipated a self-driving (“autonomous”) car; but as that technology gets closer to becoming a commercial reality, minds are starting to boggle about the insurance and tort liability implications. A recent Wall Street Journal article1 opines that self-driving cars have “crossed an […]
It is hard to think of any public safety issue that has received more attention over the last few years than the use of smartphones while driving…
Oakland and Berkeley residents have an exciting new mobility option after the launch of GIG, a one-way car share service by AAA and Ridecell.
Earlier this week, GM CEO Mary Barra said she believes self-driving vehicles should continue to include steering wheels, brake pedals and accelerators as the technology develops. The state of California has already taken this position, requiring a licensed driver at the helm of all self-driving cars.
As long as bikes and cars share the same roads there’s inevitably going to be conflict. As much as we’d love to see protected bike lanes become more ubiquitous, the reality is many of our roads have been designed specifically with cars in mind and cyclists are often lucky to be considered an afterthought. So, […]
For the vast majority of people, signal timing is not an exciting subject. Apart from traffic engineers and a select group of superwonks, few people pay attention to or advocate for better signal timing. Whereas the physical designs (and deficiencies) of streets are tangible, signal timing is less discernible. It’s not uncommon for communities to […]
A key challenge in planning, funding, and implementing bicycle and pedestrian projects is the lack of good data to guide policymaking. As Janie Nham notes on the NRDC Switchboard, bicycle and pedestrian data collection is generally limited to the American Community Survey (ACS) and the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). Each of these surveys has […]
As technology continues to become even more integrated into our everyday lives, existing laws can become fuzzy when it comes to how emerging technologies should be treated. Case in point, “Glass Explorer” Cecilia Abadie recently received a ticket from a California police officer for driving while wearing her Google Glass. The kicker, she insists it […]
One of the most common objections to wearing a bike helmet is that it’s simply not portable. Once you’ve arrived at your destination and chained your bike to the rack, you’re still stuck lugging around a helmet that’s often clunky enough to become a real nuisance. Now, a Kickstarter project from Closca is attempting to […]
Despite offering a good starting point, there’s still plenty of information missing when you look at the Walkscore of a specific location. As has been pointed out plenty of times there are some serious limitations when it comes to the most prominently cited rankings of a neighborhood’s walkability. In addition to not considering factors like […]
