1 . The Intelligent Transport team at Newcastle University have turned an electric car into a mobile laboratory named “Drive LAB” in order to understand the challenges faced by older drivers and to discover where the key stress points are.

Research shows that giving up driving is one of the key reasons for a fall in health and well-being among older people, leading to them becoming more isolated and inactive.

Led by Professor Phil Blythe, the Newcastle team are developing in-vehicle technologies for older drivers which they hope could help them to continue driving into later life.

These include custom-made navigation (导航) tools, night vision systems and intelligent speed adaptations. Phil Blythe explains: “For many older people, particularly those living alone or in the country driving is important for keeping their independence, giving them the freedom to get out and about without having to rely on others.”

“But we all have to accept that as we get older our reactions slow down and this often results in people avoiding any potentially challenging driving conditions and losing confidence in their driving skills. The result is that people stop driving before they really need to.”

Dr Amy Guo, the leading researcher on the older driver study, explains, “The Drive LAB is helping us to understand what the key stress points and difficulties are for older drivers and how we might use technology to solve these problems.”

“For example, most of us would expect older drivers always go slower than everyone else but surprisingly, we found that in 30mph zones they struggled to keep at a constant speed and so were more likely to break the speed limit and be at risk of getting fined. We’re looking at the benefits of systems which control their speed as a way of preventing that.”

“We hope that our work will help with technological solutions to ensure that older drivers stay safer behind the wheel.”

4 . Traffic Management

Traffic lights are key tools for regulating traffic now.They are not, however, perfect.Drivers exchange the traffic jams that would happen at unmanaged crossings for a pattern of stop-go movement that can still be annoying, and which burns more fuel than a smooth passage would.

Creating such a smooth passage means adjusting a vehicle's speed so that it always arrives at the lights when they are green.That is theoretically possible, but practically hard.Roadside signs wired to traffic lights can help get the message across a couple hundred metres from a crossing, but such signs are expensive, and are not widespread.Margaret Martonosi and Emmanouil Koukoumidis at Princeton University, and Li-Shiuan Peh at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, have an idea that could make the process cheaper and more effective.Instead of a hardwired network of signs, they propose to use mobile-phone applications.The driver must load the team's software, named SignalGuru, into his phone and then put it on a special thing attached to the inside of his car's windscreen, with the camera lens （镜头） pointing forward.SignalGuru is designed to detect traffic lights and track their status as red, yellow or green.It broadcasts this information to other phones in the area that are fitted with the same software, and — if there are enough of them, the phones thus each know the status of most of the lights around town.Using this information, SignalGuru is able to calculate the traffic-light schedule for the area and suggest the speed at which a driver should travel in order to avoid red lights.

Tests in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where five drivers were asked to follow the same route for three hours, and in Singapore, where eight drivers were asked to follow one of two routes for 30 minutes, revealed that SignalGuru was capable of predicting traffic-light activity with an accuracy of 98.2% and 96.3% respectively, in the two cities.This was particularly impressive because in Cambridge the lights shifted, roughly half-way through the test, from their unbusy schedule to their afternoon-traffic schedule, while in Singapore lights are adaptive, using detectors fixed under the road to determine how much traffic is present and thus when a signal   should change.In neither case was SignalGuru fooled.

Fuel consumption fell, too —by about 20%.SignalGuru thus reduces both annoyance and fuel use, and makes going back and forth to work a slightly less horrible experience.

In 1863, the first underground passenger railway in the world opened in London. It     1    (run) for just under seven kilometers and allowed people     2    (avoid) terrible crowds on the roads above as they travelled to and from work. It     3    (build) using an interesting method. This included digging up the road, laying the track and then building a strong roof over the top. When all those had been done, the road surface was replaced.

9 . We are fortunate to live in a city that encourages bicycling as a means of transportation.Our local government has promoted bicycling by improving bike lanes and increasing the number of them. The growing number of cyclists, however, brings this question to mind: should bicyclists be required to share the responsibilities of the road? Automobile drivers have to take competency tests, follow established regulations, and accept punishment for breaking rules. The city requests drivers to register and license their vehicles to ensure accountability (责任）. Bicyclists who use public roadways should be held accountable, too.

Let's look at what sharing the road means. For one thing, it should involve cost sharing.Auto registration and license fees are used, in part, for building and maintaining roadways. It seems only reasonable to ask bicyclists to contribute to transportation funding as well.

More importantly,sharing the road includes accountability. When drivers ignore the rules of the road, the police and other motorists have the opportunity to identify them by their license plate number and report their offenses (违法行为）。 This isn't true for bicyclists. I've seen bicyclists moving quickly between lanes.Because they show no identification, they feel protected by anonymity(匿名）。What good would it do to report to the police “I saw a guy on a red bike blow through the stoplight"? The simple act of making bicyclists identifiable would encourage safer, more responsible riding.

Of course,I've heard arguments against asking cyclists to register and license their bikes. Some people might say, “Little kids ride bikes. Would you require a six-year-old rider to take a test and pay a fee?" Obviously, the city could determine an age when cycling would be considered a "means of transportation on public roads." Other people argue that bicycle fees are unfair because bikes don't damage the roadways as cars do. Bicycle registration fees could be comparatively modest, and the method for displaying a license number could be simple.

Many U.S. cities and towns now implement bike registration and licensing. A statute(法规）from one. California town states that the laws regulating bicycles have a dual purpose, antitheft and safety. I'm eager to see more bicyclists on the road, and I'm hoping for riders who take their responsibilities seriously.

An Unforgettable Trip