Transportation news, curated through an EECS lense. Special interest and emphasis on autonomous vehicles, scalable solutions, cost-efficient transit (e.g. busses), innovations in infrastructure, security, IU/UX, and insights into the behavioral/legal/ethical aspects.
The Neuroscience of Car Dependence – Eric Jaffe – The Atlantic Cities 2014-05-04 The researchers cite recent research on the nature of drug habits: they’re suggesting you’re addicted to your car. Perhaps more intriguing is recent work on the role that stress plays in shifting cognitive function from flexible parts of the brain (in the hippocampus) to procedural ones (in the striatum). In brain imaging studies, test participants ...
Who Is at Fault When a Driverless Car Gets in an Accident? – John Villasenor – The Atlantic Cities 2014-05-04 Design defects are another commonly asserted theory of liability. Suppose that the software for controlling braking in an autonomous vehicle doesn’t sufficiently increase braking power when the vehicle needs to stop on a downhill slope. If, as a result, a vehicle causes a frontal collision i.e., impacts a car in front of it, a person ...
Waze under attack: Israeli students fake traffic jam on popular map app – National Israel News | Haaretz 2014-04-10 A software program the two wrote created a fake traffic jam that lasted for hours, causing many fake drivers to take detours. To avoid causing real traffic jams and affecting real drivers, the two manufactured a backup on the quiet main road through the Technion campus in Haifa. But according to their faculty advisor, Prof. ...
The Practical Path to Driverless Cars – Richard Morgan – The Atlantic Cities 2014-04-06 Nobody dies when Siri doesn’t understand what you’re saying. But what if Siri were your chauffeur? … Would you trust Google Translate at 100 miles per hour? via The Practical Path to Driverless Cars – Richard Morgan – The Atlantic Cities. Tampa, FL seeks to lead the driverless car movement. They have traffic infrastructure from the 70s ...
The War Between Uber and Lyft Will Be Won With an Algorithm – Rachel Feltman – The Atlantic Cities 2014-04-06 He also hopes to make an algorithm that predicts the likelihood that someone nearby will need a car in the next three minutes. via The War Between Uber and Lyft Will Be Won With an Algorithm – Rachel Feltman – The Atlantic Cities. And there we have it, what am I doing here?
If Savanna Animals Took the Subway – Jenny Xie – The Atlantic Cities 2014-04-06 Quite a few creatures have wound up on our trains over the years. In a new digital photo project called Animetro, photographers Clarisse Rebotier and Thomas Subtil imagine an even wilder Paris Metro, roaming with animals from the savanna. via If Savanna Animals Took the Subway – Jenny Xie – The Atlantic Cities. Millesime Gallery in Paris.
The War Between Uber and Lyft Will Be Won With an Algorithm – CityLab 2014-04-04 Lyft’s new VP of data science, Chris Pouliot, previously led the data analysis team at Netflix, which is known for utilizing the heck out of its user data. He’s got big plans for Lyft, too. "We can use data to provide more accurate when a passenger requests a ride, to set high expectations ...
Image credit: Neil Kremer