News

Smart street lights dim when nobody's about

February 21, 2018

Highway 155 near Hole in Norway is no ordinary road. At night, 220 of its lamp posts operate at 20 per cent of their strength - increasing to full capacity only when radars detect approaching road users. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi8eE_NEfHM Norwegian company Comlight has developed the Motion Sensing Street Lighting system to reduce...

Driving

Guerrilla zebra crossings: Then and now

February 15, 2018

Faced with dangerous traffic outside their campus, and armed only with pots of paint and a healthy disregard for authority, students at UCL in 1959 daubed the road with zebra crossing markings. Within months, the local authority had installed a real one. It's more than a little depressing that over half a century later, getting zebra...

Cycling

Electric barges to tackle 'hidden' pollution from shipping

February 15, 2018

Over 50,000 ships ply the world's oceans to carry an estimated 90 per cent of everything we buy, sell and consume. And yet shipping remains a 'hidden' polluter - the only sector of the European economy not covered by the EU’s existing emissions reduction target, which is surprising given emissions from international maritime transport have...

Environment

Let's raise fuel duty to pay for free public transport

February 14, 2018

Germany is planning to reduce road traffic danger - and especially pollution - by making public transport free. According to German environment minister Barbara Hendricks, “We are considering public transport free of charge in order to reduce the number of private cars. Effectively fighting air pollution without any further unnecessary...

Driving

How cycling became a kinky vaudeville act

February 14, 2018

Somewhere in a German forest 200 years ago, during the darkest, wettest summer for centuries, the story of cycling began. The calls to ban it were more or less immediate. Re:Cyclists is a beautifully written account of the following two centuries. It tells how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it was the basis of an...

Cycling

Height of discretion: Cooper electric bicycle

February 9, 2018

There's something undeniably cool about bicycles that offer no clue that they're electric. We're not talking about the mechanical doping antics of some pro riders, but rather the super-discreet town bikes that do such an clever job at hiding their batteries and motors. Take, for example, the Cooper E, which features a fully integrated...

Cycling

The Big Lemon - A new form of public transport

February 9, 2018

Imagine if community transport was owned and operated by the community. The Big Lemon is owned and run by members of the community and actively encourages local people to buy shares in the company during regular public meetings where people can come and discuss their thoughts, ideas and concerns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJuQ36y3_k...

Bus Travel

The future is here: Automated taxi drone now carries passengers

February 6, 2018

If you can use a satnav, you are already fully qualified to take to the skies aboard the world's first fully-automated, passenger-carrying taxi drone. The EHANG 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle this week achieved a series of manned flight tests carrying one and two passengers, including the company's chief executive. The internet is awash with...

Driving

Words are powerful. Choose them carefully

February 2, 2018

If you accidentally spill coffee on your trousers, that’s one thing, but if a driver's speeding car slams into a bus stop, killing a child in the process, it’s clearly different...so why does the language we use rarely distinguish between the two? While one can be dismissed as an accident, the other deserves to be described more carefully -...

Driving

Airbag hip protector

February 2, 2018

The proliferation of airbag technology has seen it move from car steering wheels to dashboards...and now belts. The Hip'Air is the first wearable airbag to prevent people from injuring their hips should they fall. If sensors within the device decide that the wearer is falling, bags that protect the hips are deployed in milliseconds. The...

General News