Balfour Beatty says it’s in “strong position” despite Covid challenges
Construction group Balfour Beatty says it’s order book is more than 20 per cent higher than it was a year ago, despite having to close around one in six sites due to coronavirus social distancing rules. The company says a contract to work on significant parts of the HS2 project has boosted orders to £17.4 […]
Fixed speed cameras could be coming to the Isle of Man
An area in the southwest of the Isle of Man could become the first on the island to introduce speed cameras. The website Isle of Man Today reports that officials in the newly combined Arbory and Rushen are considering introducing cameras to tackle speeding, with the newly-appointed Commissioners’ chairman Jane Glover calling the idea, “a […]
Scottish Power boss calls for quicker phase-out of petrol and diesel
Scottish Power’s CEO is calling for petrol and diesel cars to be phased out quicker than the 2035 deadline set in Scotland. Keith Anderson’s told the Sunday Times that the country is rapidly heading for an electric car revolution, with investors “queuing up” to fund charging infrastructure to reduce emissions. He told the paper that […]
HE extends duration of next NTIS Contract
Highways England is adding an extra two years to the duration of the next National Traffic Information Service to make it run for at least seven years. The contract, currently held by a JV between WSP and Thales, is being tendered for at the moment and its value has been increased by £12 million to […]
New driverless port opens in Tilbury
A new “unaccompanied” freight ferry terminal has opened east of London in the port of Tilbury. The 500,000-unit freight-only facility uses a “truck driver-free operation”, meaning freight is transported into the UK without needing lorry drivers to accompany it. The owners Forth Ports say this comes at an opportune time when infection control is uppermost […]
Driverless prescription deliveries introduced in the US
The American driverless car solution Nuro has teamed up with pharmacy chain CVS to trial social-distanced deliveries of prescriptions. In a blog on its website it says this first-of-its-kind partnership brings Nuro into the health space where it will utilise its fleet of autonomous vehicles to deliver prescriptions and essentials across three zip codes in […]
Clearview offering Journey Time Monitoring trial
Traffic technology firm Clearview Intelligence is offering local authorities a desktop solution to monitor journey times. Working with HERE Technologies, Clearview says its JTM application allows traffic managers to monitor flows with no need to install anything at the roadside – removing any risk associated with physically going out onto the network. Clearview says the […]
FLIR releases thermal imaging dataset
The machine vision company FLIR has released datasets from thermal imaging cameras, designed to help in the development of vehicle safety systems. Annotated data from six European cities, including London, they contain a total of 14,353 annotated thermal images to increase testing and development of convolutional neural networks. The images were taken in a variety […]
Germany bans sat navs from detailing speed camera locations
The German Federal Government’s amended traffic laws include a ban on sat navs from alerting drivers to the location of speed cameras. Visordown.com reports that the country has strengthened its rules regarding speed camera warnings – it was already illegal to use detection systems in vehicles. This means motorists travelling through or to Germany will […]
Amazon moving further into driverless vehicle sector
Amazon’s reported to be in advanced talks to buy the self-driving car start-up Zoox, the company which describes itself as producing “more than just a car with a computer.” The Wall Street Journal says that Amazon’s set to pay US$3.2 billion (£2.6 billion) for the company, which is apparently lower than recent market valuations. But […]