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Univ of Utah studies find up to 27 seconds of mental distraction for drivers after using new hands-free technologies

Green Car Congress

Potentially unsafe mental distractions for drivers can persist for as long as 27 seconds after dialing, changing music or sending a text using voice commands, according to a pair of new studies for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety by University of Utah researchers. It’s better not to use them when you are driving.

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Honda announces second plug-in vehicle testing program; Japan joins US, China may follow

Green Car Congress

In the US program, the city of Torrance, California along with Stanford University and Google Inc., Study the low noise impact of electric vehicles in residential neighborhoods. In addition to Japan and the United States, Honda is considering the possibility of conducting a similar program in China. Click to enlarge.

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Researchers use Google Street View cars for high-resolution air pollution mapping

Green Car Congress

The team equipped two Google Street View vehicles with the fast-response Aclima Ei measurement and data acquisition platform and repeatedly sampled every street in a 30-km 2 area of Oakland, CA, over the course of a year, developing the largest urban air quality data set of its type. —Joshua Apte.

Google 170
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Who Really Invented the Thumb Drive?

Cars That Think

Yen Meng Jiin/Singapore Press/AP Tan, the third of six brothers, was born and raised in a kampung (village) in the neighborhood of Geylang, Singapore. After a caning for truancy in his third year of high school that served as a wake-up call, Tan settled down to his studies and completed his O-level exams.

Singapore 145
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Update: 10 Best Car Sharing Programs

Clean Fleet Report

Each vehicle has a home location: a reserved parking space located on a street, driveway, or neighborhood parking lot in the member’s area, to which it must be returned at the end of the reservation. Investors in RelayRides included Google Ventures and GM Ventures. I expect Zipcar to soon have over one million members.

Cars 99
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Can We Identify a Person From Their Voice?

Cars That Think

Each recording is studied in its entirety, and all conclusions are based on quantitative measures obtained from complete signals,” she said. Perhaps the best-known case began in 1965, when a TV reporter for CBS went to Watts, a Los Angeles neighborhood that had been besieged by rioting, and interviewed a man whose face was not depicted.

Personal 108
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Coming Soon – The Electric City

Revenge of the Electric Car

And at the headquarters of Pacific Gas and Electric, utility executives are preparing “heat maps” of neighborhoods that they fear may overload the power grid in their exuberance for electric cars.&#. If you just allow willy-nilly random charging, are we going to have neighborhood blackouts?” asked Mr. Tang, the utility executive.