The Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway(HSR) started official operation on October 17. It’s the first HSR project that China     1     (independent) completed overseas. It also shows that China and Indonesia have achieved results under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI,”一带一路”倡议).

The railway is called WHOOSH. It’s the first of its kind in Indonesia. The 142.3-kilometer-long line has four stations,     2     (connect) the country’s capital city Jakarta (雅加达) and its fourth largest city Bandung (万隆). For now, 14 trains run between the two cities. The frequency will be increased if market demand     3     (grow).

The railway can carry up     4     600 passengers. It has a top speed of 350 kilometers per hour,     5     cuts the journey between the two cities from 3.5 hour to just 46 minutes. The shorter journey will create more job     6     (opportunity) along the line.

In 2017, Indonesian President Joko Widodo     7     (speak) highly of the BRI. It’s not just empty talk. Instead, it’s a real effort     8     (make) to the world. With the operation of the Jakarta Bandung HSR, a new     9     (economy) zone is taking shape. That is already happening along the China Laos Railway. The China Thailand HSR project is also underway.     10     it’s completed, it will bring more benefits to Southeast Asia and beyond.

Today you could get a ticket if you don’t drive on your side of the road. Worse yet, you could have a head-on collision(正面碰撞). But in 1917, Dr. June McCarroll could not get drivers to understand what seems so obvious today.

June McCarroll was born in New York in 1867. Unlike most young women of her age, she attended medical college in Chicago. After her husband became ill, the couple moved to Southern California in 1904.

In 1917, while driving down a familiar road near Indio, California Dr. McCarroll had a driving accident. In order to avoid a head-on collision with a truck going in the opposite direction, her car was driven off the road and into a ditch (沟). This gave Dr. McCarrolla new idea—paint lines on the road, separating lanes(车道) with a center line.

“My car and I found ourselves face-to-face with a truck on the highway. It did not take me long to choose between a sandy ditch to the right and a ten-ton truck to the left! Then an idea struck me.”

McCarroll wrote to the local government. However, the government didn’t take McCarroll seriously. After receiving no response to her letters, McCarroll took her idea and matters into her own hands. She painted a white line down the center of the street to make two separate lanes of traffic as a way to prevent future collisions.

Dr. McCarroll then asked women’s groups through the state of California to organize letter writing campaigns to state and local politicians and in 1924 California approved of the practice of painting traffic lines on highway roads. The safety practice quickly spread to other states, then other countries. By virtue of the lines, thousands of accidents are prevented and an untold number of lives are saved each year.

Technology is constantly advancing.     1     we imagined it years ago cannot keep up with its pace of development. In the past, autonomous vehicles were just a part of movies,     2     these technologies are now successfully coming into being. An autonomous car, also     3    (know) as a self-driving car, can perform all functions related to everyday driving and parking. It is a technology that senses the environment and, upon entering the destination,     4    (find) its way without human intervention.