In a recent Wired post, Aarian Marshall makes the point that there are several ways of accomplishing the goal of making roadways safer for the people in them. Many jurisdictions have adopted "vision zero" plans to reduce traffic injuries. That is, they aspire to reducing traffic fatalities to none through various safety measures.
In a recent post about telegraph delivery boys, I noted that their employers were reluctant to take responsibility for collisions between them and pedestrians. This, and many other points about the history of cycling on the roadways of the United States are related in "Bike battles" by James Longhurst of the University of Wisconsin.
John Metcalfe of CityLab points out an interesting video shot on a street in New York City recently. The video is a time-lapse recording of activity at a City Bike dock featuring rentable bicycles and curbside parking across the street. Voilà!
The point, says videogrpaher Luke Ohlson, is that the bike dock is much busier than the car parking.
There has been much dicussion of self-driving cars and their pros and cons. How will they handle impending accidents? Who will own them? How will they affect traffic?
Logan Koepke has written an interesting article at Slate about the nature of predictive policing. Predictive policing involves the use of computer algorithms to assign police coverage to a given region on the basis of anticipated risk of crime.