Industry News

Drivers in Montgomery County are getting a new warning about speeding through intersections, even when the traffic light is green.

The Montgomery County Police Department is testing its new “Speed on Green” program at two intersections where red-light cameras are already in place. The upgraded technology can also detect vehicles traveling above the posted speed limit while the signal is green.

One of the test locations is Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, while the other is Colesville Road and University Boulevard.

The program means drivers could potentially face two automated citations at the same intersection — one for running a red light and another for speeding. County officials told 7News that, while issuing both citations is legally possible, officials expect to use discretion in most cases and issue only the red-light citation when both violations occur.

Much of the appeal of self-driving vehicles is just that: the fact that they drive themselves. Still, there are times when a driver needs to put their hands on the wheel, and a new study from Binghamton University suggests that task could be more difficult if you have a history of head injuries.

“…the ‘self-driving’ cars are going to create an unusual transition period where you are not quite a passenger and not always a driver either,”” said Associate Professor of Physical Therapy Vipul Lugade.

The team tested two groups in a driving simulator: ice hockey players with a history of concussions or repeated impacts to the head, and a group of participants around the same age who do not play high-contact sports… While the athletes did not perform worse on cognitive tests…, they were slower than the comparison group to take manual control of the driving simulation when required. The ice hockey players had an 81% takeover success rate versus the other group’s 93% success rate.

Riders in the Croatian capital of Zagreb are now able to order a Pony.ai robotaxi on the Uber platform.

The move is part of an agreement between Pony.ai and Uber Technologies to deploy more than 2,000 Pony.ai robotaxis across Europe. Pony.ai operates paid, fully-driverless services in four Chinese cities. The plan is to add services in four other cities in Europe, with deployment in the Middle East also on the roadmap.

…For the new partnership, Pony.ai will provide its L4 autonomous driving technology, rider experience and operational expertise. Uber will provide customer access through its global mobility platform, including booking, payment and customer service capabilities.

…The new Zagreb service is operated by local provider Verne… At this stage, a human operator will also be on board, monitoring behind the wheel, before fully-driverless operations begin in the future, Pony.ai says.

… new safety data has shown that injuries on e-scooters are both widespread and, in many cases, very serious. For that reason, Consumer Reports does not currently recommed any electric scooters…

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, there were roughly 10,500 e-scooter injuries in 2017. By 2024, that number grew to nearly 80,000…

“Almost all of the e-scooters we tested in 2022 were limited to 24.9 km/h, or 15.5 mph,” says Bernie Deitrick, CR’s engineer who oversees e-scooter testing. “The most common top speed for e-scooters now is 20 mph…That’s almost twice as fast as the models we tested in 2022,” he says.

Toaster-shaped taxis that don’t have a driver or a steering wheel have started rolling across San Francisco and charging for rides in Las Vegas.

The all-electric cars are the first robotaxis offering rides on the roads without standard driver features like a dashboard and pedals. They can drive in either direction and hold up to four passengers who sit facing each other. The vehicles are called Zoox and they come from a new entrant in robotaxis: Amazon.com.

Regulators are approaching these new rides cautiously. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration last month allowed Zoox to charge for rides in up to 5,000 vehicles within the next two years. Yet it barred Zoox taxis on roads with heavy rain, snow…or a speed limit of more than 45 miles an hour…

“There’s stuff that they could have and should have done…that had nothing to do with not having a driver that they failed to do,” said Phil Koopman, an emeritus engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in autonomous vehicles.

In many places, the robotaxi rollout has outpaced the rules governing it.

“Robotaxis are popping up all over the place,” said Shua Sanchez, national campaign director of SAVE-US, a nonprofit advocating for stricter state AV legislation in the absence of federal rules. “The state legislatures don’t have experience with this technology, and there aren’t good laws on the books to regulate them.”

“Autonomous vehicle companies are making huge claims about how their technology is going to save lives,” [Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)] told The Verge in a statement. “But right now, our regulatory structure amounts to this: we hope they’re telling the truth.”…

“I want to unequivocally say we agree with the administrator and the administration and the regulatory agency. We need to be regulated,” Zoox CEO Aicha Evans recently said on Fox Business in response to NHTSA’s warnings about unsafe interactions with emergency vehicles.

The country needs to find a “compromise” between privacy and safety, according to Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley.

“When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise,” Langley said during a recent interview with Fox News. “How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?”…

The Washington Post recently identified 46 cases where police officers have been accused of using Flock technology for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk their wives, girlfriends, or exes…

Flock has already made some changes in response to the criticism, reducing the default data retention time from 30 days to seven days and requiring that a case code be entered before accessing data.

Uber Technologies has started operating Baidu’s Apollo Go driverless service in its Dubai network, with plans to deploy “thousands” of the autonomous vehicles in the emirate.

The service, which will use Baidu’s sixth-generation RT6 robotaxi, will initially be available in the Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim areas, with plans to expand, San Francisco-based Uber said in a statement on Thursday.

Uber already has a driverless service in Abu Dhabi in partnership with WeRide. Riders can use Apollo Go by being matched to the driverless cars via UberX or Uber Comfort, or by selecting the “autonomous” option on the app.

“Bringing our partnership with Baidu to life is a major step forward as we expand autonomous mobility globally,” said Sarfraz Maredia, head of autonomous mobility and delivery at Uber.

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo has built a custom chip that the company said will improve the performance of its robotaxis, while also diversifying its chip supply beyond third-party companies such as Nvidia Corp.

The ASIC chip — short for application-specific integrated circuit — is in production in Waymo’s latest robotaxi generation, the company said Thursday. Waymo said using its own chip, alongside others and with sensors the company designed itself, will improve its robotaxis’ reflexes and navigational skills in complex urban environments.

Waymo has historically relied on products from companies including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., integrating them into computers of its own design. With a specialized chip, Waymo said it can now more quickly process sensor data and run AI models that help robotaxis understand and respond to surroundings.

AI has made its way to our Downtown Vegas crosswalks, and pedestrians have mixed feelings.

Downtown Las Vegas is known for the lights, the entertainment, and now cameras that can read your eyes. They are meant to assist people in crossing streets. Some pedestrians, like DJ Plender, fully support this safety feature.

“It would be way more beneficial than looking at it like a counter or a time.”

16 intersections in downtown will be fitted with this new technology. The AI looks at your body language and your gaze, then flips the light for you. No button press needed.

DJ says a lot of deaths can be prevented. “A lot of lives have been lost historically due to human error. So maybe having that as a safety net could be extremely beneficial, such as at a crosswalk,” he said.

Amazon said today that it plans to expand its Prime Air drone delivery service sixfold, reaching nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026…

Uber, meanwhile, is investing in drone operator Zipline, with an ambitious goal of reaching 1 million Uber Eats drone deliveries per day by the end of 2029…

Amazon says hundreds of thousands of packages have already been delivered by drone this year…Uber’s service will launch in Houston and Dallas this year before expanding to dozens of other U.S. cities.

Rivian’s headlights lit up a family of raccoons on a pitch-black Wisconsin road, then reshaped their beam around another car to avoid blinding its driver, without dimming the road ahead.

Why it matters: A decade after shape-shifting headlights changed nighttime driving in Europe, the technology remains remarkably scarce in North America — a case study in how U.S. regulations can slow the arrival of proven safety innovations.

Driving the news: Rivian has made “adaptive driving beam” headlights standard on its new midsized R2, which went on sale in June. The electric vehicle maker was the first to deploy ADB headlights in the U.S. in 2024, with its refreshed 2025 R1T pickup and R1S SUV models. Tesla is the only other manufacturer that offers them in the U.S. today, but just on newer vehicles equipped with its matrix LED hardware.