Fighting Wildfires With Autonomous Vehicles To Save Lives Regardless of the underlying causes of wildfires, the fact is that the United States is trending to experience more acres burned this year due to wildfires than at any time in our nation’s history. Not only does this general trend upwards impact our economy and civilian life, but it also puts theRead More
When Disney Announced Self-Driving Car Tests The tech community was rocked in 2017 when Disney World announced that they would begin testing self-driving shuttles for Cast Members and employees. Upon the release of this news, many experts started seeing evidence that Disney would use autonomous shuttles to transport thousands of Cast Members and support staff from the parking lots andRead More
Public Perspective Of Roadway Safety It is no surprise that many drivers are wary of giving up control of a moving vehicle to computers, algorithms, and artificial intelligence even though the NHTSA shows that 94% of auto accidents are due to human error. In 2016 the U.S. DOT reported that we saw 37,461 deaths resulting from traffic accidents. Compared toRead More
Bumps In The Road: Biggest Obstacles Preventing Self-Driving Cars Since the beginning of motorized vehicles, our infrastructure, laws, and insurance systems have been developed around the idea that humans would be in control of cars and trucks. This is important because the responsibility of drives are set around human’s liability. Lawyers hold human drivers responsible for crashes. Laws hold driversRead More
What Is The Zipper Merge? The zipper merge is one way that drivers can merge from one lane to another if they notice a lane closure is coming up. Often times lanes close on highways or city streets due to construction or traffic accidents, and these areas can cause headaches for all drivers on the road. With this merged system,Read More
Is Traffic Congestion A Human-Made Mistake? In 2004, the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA) named Katy Freeway the second worst bottleneck highway in the nation. This infamous nickname was given to the road because commuters were wasting 25 million hours each year sitting in traffic as they traveled during their daily commutes. Not only is the amount of time sittingRead More
The Future Is Speeding Towards Us There has been a lot of buzz around autonomous car technology. From the advancements shown by Tesla, Ford, and other auto manufacturers to the ongoing tests by Waymo, we are seeing self-driving cars speeding towards reality faster than ever before. Just a decade ago driverless cars seemed like a sci-fi fantasy that we couldRead More
Power Consumption Is An Important Consideration The future of self-driving is exciting, and as we dream about what tomorrow’s public roads will look like there are many promises beyond the horizon. From the ability to travel without having to worry about poor driving conditions or reckless drivers causing a collision on the road, autonomous technology promises a brighter and saferRead More
Recent Acceleration Of Self-Driving Cars While self-driving technology is nothing new and this area of study has seen years of experiments, the general public has only recently started seeing the technology in the news as companies like Tesla, BMW, and Waymo publicize their successes. There has been a leap in self-driving technology that is allowing their complex systems to takeRead More
Americans Sitting In Traffic No matter what city you live in or your line of work, you likely spend a lot of time throughout the year sitting in traffic. According to a recent study by the United States Census Bureau the average American driver spends 26 minutes driving to work each day, and that daily commute time has increased byRead More
The Job Market And Driverless Cars As the autonomous car revolution continues to roll forward, many experts foresee a future where self-driving cars destroy a lot of jobs. Even though most people imagine a world where cars drive around our city streets on their own and reduce accidents and deaths, many anticipate a society where unemployment skyrockets due to economicRead More
U.S. drivers are putting in more miles for their daily commutes than ever before, and as more drivers travel on our public roads engineers are using a range of design strategies to reduce accidents and deaths. Transportation experts have found that vehicle interaction at higher speeds and intersections are the leading causes of vehicle damage and fatalities. These factors areRead More
City streets are not just pathways for vehicles, because public roads play a vital role in how civilians shop, walk, and meet throughout the city. Each year traffic accidents kill more than 1.2 million people each year world wide, so making city streets can become safer by making better decisions for urban design. While most traffic initiatives tend to focusRead More
The History Of The Roundabout When the topic of roundabouts is brought up, most people think of a city in Europe with traffic whizzing around a circular road. However, roundabouts have their roots in America and grow in popularity throughout the United States in 1905 when William Phelps Eno designed a circular intersection for New York City. As traffic speedsRead More
What Is Artificial Intelligence? The roots in artificial intelligence can be found when classic philosophers attempted to map and describe how humans process information and think about manipulating symbols in their environment. As technology continued to advance, engineers and philosophers were able to apply programmable digital computers to address complex mathematical reasoning. The process of having computers understand more profoundRead More
