Photo: Arizona DOT. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration plans to revise four specific areas of current hours-of-service or HOS rules governing commercial trucking operations in the United States – change that could impact state department of transportation fleets, especially if those fleets use the 100 air-mile short-haul exemption clause within those regulations. The agency […]

Photo: Wildlife Highway Crossing Structure/Jeff Burrell A study conducted by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Oregon State University using Wyoming Department of Transportation crash data confirmed that efforts to protect migrating pronghorn deer by installing eight “crossing structures” in combination with 8-foot-high roadway fencing along a nearly 12.5-mile long stretch of U.S. Highway […]

The winning team, left to right: Mehdi Zamanipour, National Research Council; Joseph Vincent, University of Kansas; Britton Hammit, University of Wyoming; Rachel James, University of Texas. The National Operations Center of Excellence and the USDOT Intelligent Transportation System Joint Program Office co-sponsored a first-ever “transportation technology tournament” at the Institute of Transportation Engineers 2018 annual […]

Photo: Uber. A poll of 1,250 U.S. consumers conducted by research firm Vital Findings on behalf of Cox Automotive found that self-driving vehicles are now viewed as “less safe” compared to a similar survey conducted two years ago,  with 49 percent of those polled saying they would “never buy” a fully-autonomous Level 5 vehicle, up […]

Photo: Embark. According to a new report commissioned by the American Center for Mobility and conducted by Michigan State University with support by Texas A&M Transportation Institute, “significant numbers” of fully-autonomous vehicles are not projected to be deployed until the latter half of the 2020s. At that point, “some displacement” of passenger car-based driving jobs […]

The USDOT’s Office of the Inspector General announced on Aug. 20 that it would audit the Federal Aviation Administration in terms of its compliance with the Buy American Act and FAA-specific “Buy American” provisions when purchasing manufactured goods and equipment, steel, and other construction supplies in the United States. The OIG said this audit comes […]

Photo: North Carolina DOT The Resilience Innovations Summit and Exchange being held Oct. 9-10 in Denver, Colorado, will seek to gather together transportation experts, elected officials, and others to share ideas and tactics for designing, building, and operating infrastructure that can better withstand the impact of natural and man-made disasters – everything from wildfires, hurricanes, […]

Photo: University of Toronto A recent naturalistic driving study conducted by the University of Toronto found that more than half failed to make vital “visual scans” for bicyclists and pedestrians when making right turns at intersections – a problem based on “attention failures,” blocked line-of-sight, and road infrastructure design. The study’s researchers used eye-tracking equipment […]

Photo: New Jersey Transit According to a new survey by the American Public Transportation Association, 34 percent of the 30 or so commuter railroads in the United States are testing, demonstrating, or fully operating their equipment using positive train control or PTC systems; technology that must be installed by Dec. 31 this year and fully […]

Photo: Utah DOT A new report issued Aug. 15 by Consumer Energy Alliance expressed concern that recent “geopolitical turmoil” and “global oil price instability” could negatively affect both U.S. consumers and the nation’s transportation sector going forward. Despite a report from the Energy Information Administration in July that projected a decline in gasoline prices for […]