driving

21Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT, IN OTHER NEWS

Moms Are Driving A Push To Get More Electric School Buses On The Streets

When the Cartwright School District purchased the first 84-seat electric school bus in Arizona, it was a satisfying day for moms like Erika Cortez, who spent months volunteering time to make that dream a reality. “It was very exciting to be part of this first electric school bus in our district,” said Cortez, who, along with her eldest daughter, logged hundreds of phone calls in 2020 to help pass a school bond that would fund some of the infrastructure needed for the electric school bus. Other organizers knocked on doors and put up flyers, and Cortez gave presentations to parents explaining the dangers of air pollution — particularly how it impacted the Phoenix neighborhood of Maryvale, where Cortez lived before relocating. Cortez, a mother of four, had been working with Chispa — the L...

What’s Driving The Pandemic In Prisons – Correctional Officers

18Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

What’s Driving The Pandemic In Prisons – Correctional Officers

COVID-19 Danielle Wallace, Arizona State University Prisons and jails have hosted some of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the U.S., with some facilities approaching 4,000 cases. In the U.S., which has some of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the world, 9 in 100 people have had the virus; in U.S. prisons, the rate is 34 out of 100. I study public health issues around prisons. My colleagues and I set out to understand why COVID-19 infection rates were so high among incarcerated individuals. Using data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we discovered the infection rate among correctional officers drove the infection rate among incarcerated individuals. We also found a three-way relationship between the infection rate of officers, incarcerated individuals and the communities arou...

The Coal Power’s Demise, What’s Really Driving It

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS

The Coal Power’s Demise, What’s Really Driving It

People often point to plunging natural gas prices as the reason U.S. coal-fired power plants have been shutting down at a faster pace in recent years. However, new research shows two other forces had a much larger effect: federal regulation and a well-funded activist campaign that launched in 2011 with the goal of ending coal power. We studied the retirement of U.S. coal-fired units from January 2008 to September 2016 and compared the effects of various market factors, regulations and activism on their early closure. In all, 348 coal-fired units either retired or switched to natural gas during that time. Among the many pressures on coal power that we reviewed, a federal regulation implemented in 2015 had the biggest overall effect. The Cross State Air Pollution Rule requires states to re...

Self-driving taxis could be a setback for those with different needs – unless companies embrace accessible design now

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY

Self-driving taxis could be a setback for those with different needs – unless companies embrace accessible design now

Autonomous vehicles (AVs), like self-driving taxis, continue to garner media attention as industry and political stakeholders claim that they will improve safety and access to transportation for everyone. But for people who have different mobility needs and rely on human drivers for work beyond the task of driving, the prospect of driverless taxis may not sound like progress. Unless accommodations are built in to autonomous vehicle designs, companies risk undermining transportation access for the very communities this technology is promising to include. The promise A January 2020 joint report issued by the National Science and Technology Council and U.S. Department of Transportation paints a bright picture of an autonomous-enabled future. They predict autonomous vehicles will provide “impr...

Linking self-driving cars to traffic signals might help pedestrians give them the green light

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

Linking self-driving cars to traffic signals might help pedestrians give them the green light

The big idea Automated vehicles don’t have human operators to communicate their driving intentions to pedestrians at intersections. My team’s research on pedestrians’ perceptions of safety shows their trust of traffic lights tends to override their fear of self-driving cars. This suggests one way to help pedestrians trust and safely interact with autonomous vehicles may be to link the cars’ driving behavior to traffic lights. In a recent study by my team at the University of Michigan, we focused on communication via a vehicle’s driving behavior to study how people might react to self-driving cars in different situations. We set up a virtual-reality simulator that let people experience street intersections and make choices about whether to cross the street. In different simulations, self-d...

Driving As A Black Person In America Was So Dangerous Black Folks Had To Publish A How-To Manual For Simply Surviving On The Road

9Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Driving As A Black Person In America Was So Dangerous Black Folks Had To Publish A How-To Manual For Simply Surviving On The Road

America was a dangerous place when Jim Crow mandates ruled the land. Laws separated blacks and whites, the KKK was alive and well, and lynchings were far too common. One white woman's lie even started the 1923 Rosewood Massacre - an event that completely destroyed the lives of many black citizens. Racial discrimination after the Civil War was so severe and potentially life-threatening for blacks that Victor Green developed a book that helped navigate the racist waters. Green's original 1936 Negro Motorist Green Book was an annual pamphlet that focused on safe spaces in New York City, but it eventually expanded to include the whole country. The innovative work suggested travel destinations and establishments that weren't racist so that African Americans could avoid the danger and humiliati...