Category: Driving

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From Ars Technica: DEA installs license-plate recognition devices near Southwest border

This story was produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Learn more at www.cironline.org. Contact the reporter at gwschulz@cironline.org.

In their unending battle to deter illegal immigration, drug trafficking and terrorism, U.S. authorities already have beefed up border security with drug-sniffing dogs, aircraft, and thousands more agents manning interior checkpoints.

Now, the US Drug Enforcement Administration has decided it wants more, and the Justice Department agency doesn’t care whether someone has even set foot in Mexico.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Autoblog: Video: This is how good car crashing in video games is about to become

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It is evident even with the most realistic car games that crashes have mainly been left off of the realism menu. Sure, hit a wall or another car and there will be some damage and crumpling, but it usually doesn’t look like a genuine car crash. A start-up company called BeamNG is working to change that, developing a physics modification for the Cry Engine 3 to create wrecks that appear to be lifted from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash-test video.

They team has been at it for a while, and the latest multicore version shows off one- and two-car collisions that feature shattering glass and more realistic deformations. They’re still at work on it and have promised more improvements, but the video belowshows off just how real things are about to get in the world of video games. Well, once a game maker decides to use the Cry Engine 3 for a driving game, that is…

 

from Autoblog

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From Engadget: Carnegie Mellon smart headlight prototype blacks out raindrops for clearer view of the road

DNP Carnegie Mellon headlight prototype blacks out raindrops for clearer view of the road

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon have developed a prototype smart headlight which blots out individual drops of rain or snow — improving vision by up to 90 percent. Made with an off-the-shelf Viewsonic DLP projector, a quad-core Intel Core-i7 PC and a GigE Point Grey Flea3 camera, the Rube Goldberg-esque process starts by first imaging raindrops arriving at the top of its view. After this, the signal goes to a processing unit, which uses a predictive theory developed by the team to guess the drops’ path to the road. Finally, the projector — found in the same place as the camera — uses a beamsplitter like modern digital 3D rigs. Used in tandem with calculations, it transmits a beam with light voids matching the predicted path. The result? It all stops light from hitting the falling particles, with the cumulative process resulting in the illusion of a nearly precipitation-free road view — at least in the lab. So far, the whole process takes about a hundredth of a second (13 ms) but scientists said that in an actual car and with many more drops, the speed would have to be about ten times quicker. That would allow 90 percent of the light located 13 feet in front of the headlights to pass through, but even at just triple the speed, it would give drivers a 70 percent better view. To see if this tech might have a snowflake’s chance of making it out of the lab, go past the break for all the videos.

 

from Engadget

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From Autoblog: Report: Texas toll road to get 85 mph speed limit?

80 mph speed limit

Oh, Montana, how we miss your speed-limitless ways of the mid-1990s. We were carefree and young then, driving a 10-year-old Chevrolet that in no way, shape, or form was designed to travel at its top speed for hours on end. But that didn’t stop us, we the “reasonable and prudent,” and neither did it stop our digital dashboard from just flashing “85” over and over and over again. We’ll never know how fast we were really going, but suffice it to say, we were traveling at the speed of youth.

Today, the search for fast, legal roads pretty much starts and ends in Germany, with Texas a distant second. But the one-time Republic may have just cut the distance between it and the Autobahn-wielding Germans by five miles per hour. A new toll road, part of State Highway 130, is under construction near Austin, the state’s notoriously traffic-clogged capitol, and it may have its speed set at 85 when it opens. The Texas Department of Transportation made the decision, according to the Fox News report, in the wake of the legislature passing a law in 2011 to raise the maximum limit from 80 to 85 mph on approved highways.

 

from Autoblog

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From Autoblog: Report: Texting Mass teen found guilty of vehicular homicide

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Texting while driving court ruling video

If for some reason you still don’t think that texting while driving is a bad idea, here’s a story for you. Aaron Deveau, age 17, was allegedly composing a text message when his car crossed the center line of a Massachusetts street, hitting a car head-on. In that car was Daniel Bowley, Jr. and his girlfriend, Luz Roman. Bowley Jr. suffered massive injuries in the crash, and after spending 18 days in a Boston hospital, died as a result of the injuries.

According to Boston.com, a Haverhill, Massachusetts judge sentenced Deveau to “concurrent sentences of two and a half years on a charge of motor vehicle homicide and two years for a charge of negligent operation of a motor vehicle causing serious injury while texting” earlier this week.

After noting Deveau’s age and lack of any criminal record, the judge later ordered the 17-year-old to serve one year in the Essex County House of Corrections, suspending the other sentences. Deveau was originally arrested in 2011, following the crash that took place in February of that year.

“If I could take it back, I would take it back. I just want to apologize to the family,” Deveau stated during the trial. During his testimony, Deveau reportedly claimed that he was not texting during the time of the crash and could not recall texting while driving.

Luz Roman (pictured above), who survived the crash, spoke out during the hearings, and spoke to Boston.com after the sentencing, which you can see in the video below. “This has been giving me a lot of pain, there are no words to describe,” Roman told Boston.com. Scroll downfor the rest of her commentary, as well as some thoughts from Bowley’s son.

 

from Autoblog

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From Autoblog: Video: ABC: Thousands of rejected/condemned gas pumps in use, could cost you $$$

gas pump measurement

Most of us likely assume that the gas pump that is providing petrol is giving you the fuel that you pay for – no more or less. While that may be true in most cases, ABC News in Baltimore, Maryland proves that sometimes pumps do bad things to good people.

The report details Maryland state gas station inspections that have revealed over 4,000 defective pumps over the last four years. In all, that’s between five and six percent of the 40,000 gas pumps in Maryland, or way too many error-prone pumps for our tastes.

While our primary concern is that customers aren’t getting what they pay for, it seems the gas station owners are more likely to get the short end of the stick. The report claims that station owners are three times more likely to lose money than the customer. Scroll down to watch the ABC Newsreport.

 

from Autoblog

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From Droid Life: Nevada Gives Google License to Test Driverless Cars in Their State

Google isn’t giving up on their vision of seeing cars driving themselves and passengers in the near future. After Nevada passed legislation regarding the requirements for driverless cars, Google has been granted a license to test their new pet project out in the desert. There are a few rules however, to make sure that these Priuses (Prii, Prioria, Priores?) don’t go rogue and cause some major damage.

Nevada has said that if you want to test these cars you need to have an insurance bond of $1 million and that the testing time and area for these cars must be laid out thoroughly. Don’t expect to be driving down the highway and seeing one next to you in rush hour anytime soon. The cars even get their own license plate, featuring a red back with an infinity symbol on it. Nevada DMV Director Bruce Breslow says, ”I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future.’” Anyone ready to give up their lead foot to let the car drive itself?

Via: Arstechnica

from Droid Life