Near the end of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” the Blanche DuBois character, who has suffered a mental breakdown following an implied rape, tells the doctor and matron who have come to take her to the hospital: “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Sadly, this is the… Read More
It must be a measure of the dim view taken of the automotive industry by Silicon Valley types that of the 294 slides in Mary Meeker’s annual Trends presentation delivered at this year’s Code Conference less than 10 of those slides refer to transportation. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner even managed to avoid… Read More
Stupid has a home and that home is in Macomb County, Michigan. It is here, we learn from The Detroit News, that General Motors Co. has decided to test the use of wireless technology in conjunction with roadside QR code signs to transmit vital traffic information to passing cars. Those messages will only be communicated to cars equipped… Read More
The U.S. State of Maryland is in the midst of a confrontation with Uber over fingerprints. Maryland wants Uber (and Lyft) to collect the fingerprints of its drivers as part of its background check process. Uber does not want to do so and is threatening to leave the state.
In the run up to a Maryland Public Service Commission hearing … Read More
Car makers, semiconductor companies and wireless carriers are all excited these days about creating cars that can drive themselves. Billions of dollars are being spent on acquisitions and investments in companies and technologies that can make this happen. But there is a fly in the ointment by the name of Waze.
To create cars capable… Read More
Alphabet is showing signs of taking over just about every infotainment function in cars except one: traffic information. When Alphabet, aka Google, arrived on the automotive scene the company and its minions quickly grasped that there was going to be a big opportunity for search, voice, navigation, maps, traffic and contextual… Read More
Waze’s Connected Citizens program, rolled out in October of 2014, was envisioned as a means for cities to create a two-way data exchange between Waze users and cities for communicating urgent traffic information as well as to facilitate the analysis of traffic patterns. In other words, Waze wanted to be part of the solution… Read More
In contrast to the opinions in a recent article here, I think Waze is extremely beneficial to the individuals who use it, other drivers – by virtue of more efficient road usage, and the various jurisdictions that oversee roads and highways. For those not familiar with Waze, it is a smartphone app that provides navigation and… Read More
Waze’s Connected Citizens program continues to get a lot of positive attention for its partnerships with cities and states around the world. The program provides free access to Waze traffic and crowd-sourced data in exchange for information about road closures and traffic incidents.… Read More
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a traffic camera video may be worth millions. TrafficLand is poised to transform forever the use of traffic camera video information with demonstrations at the CES show in Las Vegas. In the process, TrafficLand will be overcoming years of industry ambivalence toward the use of traffic… Read More
