The Oregon Transportation Safety Committee (OTSC) will meet at 9:30 am on Tuesday, August 8th, at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, 4190 Aumsville Highway SE in Salem, with a pre-meeting agenda review session in DPSST Room A254 at 9:00 am. Anyone wishing to be present for a particular item should arrive when…
Media reports of trucking companies in California forcing their drivers into debt and pressuring them to work up to 20 hours a day while paying them pennies per hour has caught the attention of a group of high-profile Democratic Senators and Representatives. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Dianne Feinstein, and Kamala Harris joined Senator Sherrod Brown in…
Nationwide, distracted drivers account for one in ten traffic fatalities and 18 percent of traffic injuries, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Because one life lost is one too many, neighboring Washington and Oregon states have recently expanded their distracted driving laws banning cellphone use. Washington Adds Any Mobile Electronic Device to its…
From the computer mouse to the Nike swoosh, many great inventions bloomed in Portland. Most recently, self-driving trucks have been developed in Rose City by a team of engineers working for Daimler Trucks North America, headquartered east of the Willamette. The group is a big piece of the automation puzzle and seeks to adapt automation…
What driver hasn’t impatiently waited to make a left-hand turn, while anxiously anticipating a quick dash between two oncoming cars? It’s a dangerous move that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says is involved in 61 percent of crashes that take place while turning. A study by New York’s transportation planners also concluded that left-hand turns…
Allstate recently released its latest America’s Best Drivers Report and by the looks of it, Portland drivers are getting worse. Allstate reviews its own claim data to rank cities according to various factors that depict their driving abilities. Last year, Portland ranked at the very top — of the very last page — at #181. The report…
If the past 30 days of traffic statistics are an indication, we could see a record number of traffic fatalities in the days up to and during July 4th, historically the deadliest holiday for fatal crashes. Predictions for Record July 4th Road Travel For the fourth year in a row, AAA is expecting record travel…
Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, the nation’s busiest ports, have been the center of a legal dispute between port trucking companies and their drivers, a dispute that has widened to include the entire nation’s port trucking industry. Nationally, there are over 2000 port trucking companies, known as drayage, running 100 trucks or less, transporting…
To be fully autonomous, self-driving cars must identify all nearby objects correctly, have perfectly updated mapping systems, and avoid all software glitches. Nearly all companies involved in producing autonomous vehicles rely on LIDAR for vehicle navigation. Can LIDAR deliver the kind of accuracy and dependability required of self-driving cars? LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection…
Racing on Friday will begin at 9:00 am and finish about 12:30 pm. For the safety of cyclists, it will be a fully closed route, with no vehicles allowed on course until the last rider finishes. The three day long Baker City Cycling Classic was created in 2002 by Nathan Hobson to showcase the sport of competitive…