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Category Archives: Transportation

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 16, 2024

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 16, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras; How Fraudsters Break Into Social Security Accounts and Steal Benefits; 10 free cybersecurity guides you might have missed; Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?; and Driving fast or braking hard? Your connected car may be telling your insurance company.

What’s Missing From Railroad Safety Data?

ProPublica – Dead Workers and Severed Limbs. “…But, as ProPublica has previously reported, railroad companies go to extreme lengths to portray themselves as safer than they really are — retaliating against workers who report defects and silencing those who get injured. Officials with the FRA [Federal Railway Administration] have said there is not much they… Continue Reading

Leaded aviation gasoline exposure risk and child blood lead levels

Leaded aviation gasoline exposure risk and child blood lead levels, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2023, pgac 285, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac285. Published: 10 January 2023. “Lead-formulated aviation gasoline (avgas) is the primary source of lead emissions in the United States today, consumed by over 170,000 piston-engine aircraft (PEA). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates… Continue Reading

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies

The New York Times – unpaywalled: “Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident. So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21… Continue Reading

6 updates to Waze to help you get around safely and conveniently

Waze Blog: “Whether it’s highlighting crash-prone roads along a route, displaying road hazards like potholes or showing the closest electric vehicle charging stations, Waze helps drivers navigate more safely and conveniently. Today, we have even more updates to help make your trips safer and more predictable. Thanks to insights from local Waze drivers, community members… Continue Reading

Deciphering the FAA’s wildly complex aviation maps

Fast Company: “Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a higher information density than the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) aviation maps. Intended for pilots, the FAA publishes free detailed maps of the entire U.S. airspace, and detailed maps of airports and their surroundings and updates them… Continue Reading

State of the Union

USA Facts: In Numbers – A nonpartisan, data-driven snapshot of the state of our union​. “Article II of the US Constitution mandates that the president periodically inform Congress about the “state of the union,” including budget reports and legislative proposals. It is also a chance for the president to review their achievements, with not just… Continue Reading

Rogue Editors Started a Competing Wikipedia That’s Only About Roads

Gizmodo: “For 20 years, a loosely organized group of Wikipedia editors toiled away curating a collection of 15,000 articles on a single subject: the roads and highways of the United States. Despite minor disagreements, the US Roads Project mostly worked in harmony, but recently, a long-simmering debate over the website’s rules drove this community to… Continue Reading

GreenerCars

“GreenerCars is an annual assessment of every new model in the U.S. light-duty vehicle market. It is based on a lifecycle assessment of the greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant emissions from the production, use, and disposal of each vehicle. Unlike other evaluations of the health and environmental impact of vehicles that rely solely on fuel-efficiency,… Continue Reading

Air pollution linked to more signs of Alzheimer’s in brain

Grace M. Christensen, Zhenjiang Li, Donghai Liang, Stefanie Ebelt, Marla Gearing, Allan I. Levey, James J. Lah, Aliza Wingo, Thomas Wingo, Anke Hüls. Association of PM 2.5 Exposure and Alzheimer Disease Pathology in Brain Bank Donors—Effect Modification by APOE Genotype. Neurology, 2024; 102 (5) “People with higher exposure to traffic-related air pollution were more likely… Continue Reading

Why car insurance rates are so high

Vox: “If you pay for car insurance, you’ve probably noticed that rates are really high lately. You’re not alone. Last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report — the government’s method for tracking what people are paying for goods and services and how that’s changing over time — noted that the price of car insurance was… Continue Reading