Transportation and Logistics

This field deals with all spatial and time-related activities involved in bridging the gap between goods and people, including their restructuring. This begins with the supplier and follows each stage of the operational value chain to product delivery and concludes with product disposal and recycling.

innovations-report provides informative reports and articles on such topics as traffic telematics, toll collection, traffic management systems, route planning, high-speed rail (Transrapid), traffic infrastructures, air safety, transport technologies, transport logistics, production logistics and mobility.

One-sided view on Public transport

When solving problems in the public transport sector, the standpoint taken is often too one-sided. These types of problems need an interdisciplinary approach. This is the conclusion of Wijnand Veeneman, who will defend his thesis at TU Delft on Monday 24 June. He researched four different cases in Switzerland, the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands. Veeneman: “An integral, gradual approach is needed.”

Scientists have many useful ideas about better public transport. Veeneman: “The content of the

Seat belts offer more protection than air bags

iver air bags offer relatively little benefit in road vehicle crashes compared with seat belts, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers in the United States identified all passenger vehicles that crashed during 1990-2000 in which the driver or passenger, or both, died. A sample of 51,031 driver-passenger pairs was analysed to estimate the association of driver air bags with driver fatality.

Having an air bag was associated with an 8% reduction in the risk of death, whether the

Pop-up car bonnets will help reduce pedestrian deaths

Road vehicles may soon be fitted with pop-up bonnets, windscreen airbags and energy absorbing bumpers to improve pedestrian safety, according to researchers in this week’s BMJ.

Collisions between pedestrians and road vehicles are responsible for more than a third of all traffic related fatalities and injuries worldwide, yet research has so far concentrated almost exclusively on increasing the survival of vehicle occupants, argue researchers at the University of Virginia, USA.

Crash

Tackling Drunk-driving

There are no in-car methods of detecting that a driver is too drunk to drive – until now. A team at Bristol University, led by physiologist Dr Dilwyn Marple-Horvat, has found a new way of detecting whether a driver has drunk too much to be fit to be at the wheel.

To assess a driver`s fitness to drive, a new device has been created that measures the degree of co-ordination between hand and eye. It uses: an in-car eye-tracker; a system that continuously monitors steering wheel movements; and

France launches in Valenciennes a new research program on transport safety

France launches in Valenciennes a 6,4 million euro research program on transport safety. It reinforces the international position of Nord-Pas de Calais and the University of Valenciennes.

The scientific council of the New Research Action “Safety in Transport Systems”, which came together at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambrésis on the 31st of January 2002, has just validated and launched a program composed of 7 projects stretched out until 2006. 6,4 million euros will b

Origami solves road map riddle

Match up folds to fight stubborn paper.

No road journey is complete without a wrestle with the map. Now a US computer scientist has worked out why the map usually wins.

Erik Demaine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge has come up with an origami algorithm that predicts when a stubborn street plan will be re-foldable. “It’s the meeting of paper folding and computer science,” he says.

The rules governing whether a sheet of paper divided into a g

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