L.A. Streetsblog - Lite

Make cycling proficiency a compulsory part of driving licence

Every driver should have firsthand experience of what it’s like to ride a bike in the traffic. Any driver wanting to acquire an HGV licence has to get a normal driving licence first. And people wanting to take a car on the road should have the experience of cycling alongside cars and other vehicles. Drivers need to know how smaller vehicles and their more vulnerable users behave on the road, and the only real way to understand how cyclists act is to have a go at being one.

A decent idea, but the article doesn’t address those with disabilities at all. Just something to be aware of.

As the U.S. Presidential Election Begins in Earnest, a Study in Contrasts

On transportation, Mr. Ryan voted against every piece of transportation legislation proposed by Democrats when they controlled the lower chamber between 2007 and early 2010, with the exception of a bill subsidizing the automobile industry to the tune of $14 billion in loans in December 2008. This record included a vote against moving $8 billion into the highway trust fund in July 2008 (the overall vote was 387 to 37), a bill that was necessary to keep transportation funding at existing levels of investment. Meanwhile, he voted for a failed amendment that would have significantly cut back funding for Amtrak and voted against a widely popular bill that would expand grants for public transportation projects. He did vote in favor of the most recent transportation bill extension.

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Translation: All Department of Transportation programs that are not user-fee funded (like TIGER, high-speed rail, and perhaps even transit capital funding) would be eliminated. And ground transportation spending would be limited to revenues from fuel taxes, which he would not increase. Overall, DOT outlays would decline from $95 billion overall in 2011 to a low of $66 billion in 2016, rising to only $72 billion by 2020. As House Republicans showed with H.R. 7, their proposed transportation bill that would have eliminated the mass transit account of the highway trust fund and eliminated aid for bike and pedestrian projects, they are willing to sacrifice non-automobile transportation programs in favor of establishing a “targeted and cohesive” policy, which in this case appears to mean roads-only.

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A New Warning System To Keep You From Driving Into Cyclists

GM’s system integrates Wi-Fi Direct, a peer-to-peer wireless standard that lets smartphones directly communicate with each other, with driver alert and sensor systems found in many of today’s vehicles. Wi-Fi Direct allows devices to communicate within a second, while conventional systems that force smartphones to connect via an intermediary (like a cell phone tower) take seven or eight seconds.

As a result, a driver with a Wi-Fi Direct alert system that’s near a pedestrian or cyclist carrying a Wi-Fi Direct-equipped smartphone could be warned when their vehicle is inching a little bit too close. “This new wireless capability could warn drivers about pedestrians who might be stepping into the roadway from behind a parked vehicle, or bicyclists who are riding in the car’s blind spot,” explained Nady Boules, GM Global R&D director of the Electrical and Control Systems Research Lab, in a statement.

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