Industry News

Lawmakers are adding cameras that can catch speeding and red-light violations without an officer pulling anyone over. Supporters see another tool for safer roads. Critics see a system that can turn a mistake behind the wheel into a ticket, a fine and another hit to the wallet.

California is opening the door to more speed cameras.

Ohio lawmakers are once again looking at who gets to use red-light and speed cameras … Cities and villages would need voter approval before starting a traffic-camera program.

Massachusetts lawmakers are considering two bills that could put more ticket cameras on the road. H3754 would allow cities and towns to use speed cameras and red-light cameras.

Arizona is taking a different approach. The state is letting voters decide whether local governments can use automated enforcement cameras … The question goes before voters on Nov. 3. It is Proposition 319.

Parallel Systems might have a way to keep freight moving while allowing railroads to recapture market share. The startup has developed a rail vehicle capable of moving over several tons of freight as far as 500 miles without an operator.

“Less than 500 miles is hard for railroads to do competitively,” Matt Soule, co-founder and CEO of Parallel Systems, told TechCrunch. “Our technology allows them to take some of that trucking, and it’s for the public’s benefit.”

To scale manufacturing of its third-generation vehicle and speed the commercial rollout, Parallel Systems has raised a $100 million Series C led by AVP …

Unlike traditional train cars, Parallel’s vehicles don’t have couplers, instead forming uncoupled platoons that move down the rails … after the Panther is cleared to operate on a section of track, its sensors monitor the rails to ensure the track ahead is clear of obstacles.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Tuesday that it will rewrite its vehicle lighting standards to address concerns about headlight glare and allow for the latest safety-improving lighting technologies.

NHTSA said it plans to improve rules for LEDs, dusk sensors, automatic high beams and replaceable light sources. The agency will also evaluate headlamp height and aim and how they impact driver visibility and address headlight glare and make appropriate changes.

“Today’s standards do not allow automakers to deploy the latest safety-improving lighting technologies, so we are bringing key experts and stakeholders together to modernize our standards and address potential causes of glare,” said NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison.

The issue still accounts for a small number of nighttime crashes, according to a study last year from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

NHTSA will use a negotiated rulemaking process to update its vehicle lighting standards.

A crash involving a Zoox robotaxi on the Las Vegas Strip is drawing renewed attention to how driverless vehicles detect hazards and respond when something unexpected happens on the road.

The Zoox vehicle and another car were involved in a crash on the Strip. Zoox said it is aware of the crash, which the company said happened Friday morning. Zoox said there were no passengers inside the vehicle at the time of the impact, and the company said it will be looking into more details involving what led up to and the aftermath of the crash.

UNLV professor Brendan Morris, who studies autonomous vehicles, said a crash by itself does not explain what went wrong … “I think the short answer is we don’t know exactly how well any individual company is able to recognize the unexpected,” Morris said.

WalletHub’s study evaluated and ranked 100 of the largest U.S. cities to determine the best and worst places for drivers. Drivers spend nearly 370 annual hours and about $894 per year in wasted fuel and traffic delays.

Scottsdale, Arizona, earned the top spot as the best city to drive in, driven by outstanding safety ratings and smooth traffic infrastructure. Following Scottsdale in the top five are Boise, Idaho, Fort Wayne, Indiana … and Corpus Christi, Texas.

On the other end of the spectrum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ranked as the single worst city for drivers, burdened by severe traffic gridlock, poor road conditions, and high safety risks. Joining Philadelphia at the bottom of the rankings are Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, California, New York, and Detroit, Michigan …

Americans are more familiar with autonomous vehicles than they were a decade ago. But if a self-driving car is in their future, most still want the option of taking the wheel. Those are among the findings from a survey by Cox Automotive about Americans’ attitudes towards autonomous vehicles.

About one in five people have ridden in a robotaxi, according to Cox’s survey … 83% said their perception of autonomous vehicles improved after riding in one.

But for the vast majority of people who’ve never ridden in a robotaxi, Cox found several reasons they’re hesitant: 61% are not comfortable riding in a car without a human driver; 64% would want the autonomous vehicle to be “significantly safer” than a human driver. But also, 27% of respondents think a robotaxi might be too cautious and hesitant.

Waymo reported 219 crashes in Los Angeles County in 2025, more than triple its 69 in 2024; 186 more have been reported so far this year.

More than 80% of this year’s reported Waymo crashes in the county caused no apparent injuries and many happened while the vehicles were stopped.

Robotaxis’ safety record remains difficult to judge: Companies cite lower injury rates than human drivers, but experts say current data reflect limited operating conditions.

As more driverless cars hit Los Angeles streets, accidents involving them have surged. Accidents tied to Mountain View, Calif.-based Waymo tripled last year in L.A. County as it put more robotaxis on the road. The vehicles still had relatively few incidents, and most were fender benders, according to a Times review of autonomous vehicle crash data filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Transit Lab has been awarded $2.1 million in funding from Google to support public transportation agencies’ real-time monitoring, operations control and passenger communication systems into a single centralized artificial intelligence (AI)-orchestrated platform.

MIT’s project, the Public Transit Intelligence Hub (PTIQ), is part of a total of $30 million in funds Google awarded to 15 recipients for the Google.org Impact Challenge: AI for Government Innovation.

“Public transportation agencies are required to make decisions around the clock regarding real-time operations, control and passenger communication,” said MIT Transit Lab Associate Director … Awad Abdelhalim. “Our goal isn’t to automate those decisions, but to make sure the people making them have the best information possible.”

PTIQ’s decision support interface for control center staff will integrate predictive models, optimization engines and large language model-based contextual reasoning. The decision-making based on that information will be left to transit staff …

How do pedestrians react when they encounter an automated vehicle on the street? … does it make a difference whether the vehicle is operating autonomously, is driven by a human or is teleoperated from a remote location?

Researchers from Chemnitz University of Technology and Technische Universität Berlin investigated these questions … using an automated shuttle on the campus … in Chemnitz.

Initial results indicate that interactions with the shuttle were generally perceived as safe, comfortable, self-determined and efficient … The vehicle’s operating mode, however, had no significant influence on how the interaction was experienced.

Preliminary analyses show that both the nature of the braking maneuver and the final stopping position substantially influence how pedestrians perceive the interaction. The findings indicate that it is not merely the fact that an automated vehicle stops that matters; the way it decelerates and where it stops are equally important for creating a positive interaction.

Kodiak’s unsupervised driverless long-haul delivery trucks will soon hit Texas roads as its partnership with Swedish furniture giant IKEA enters a new phase.

“We’re starting with one. We’re gonna get that first one out by the end of the year, and then we’re gonna start to scale throughout 2027 and beyond,” Burnette [Kodiak founder and CEO] said. Burnette said IKEA will serve as the launch partner later in the year.

“We’re doing just over 200-mile trips to start, but nobody in the driver’s seat, nobody in [the] cab,” Burnette said.

“In the event that it gets stuck or it doesn’t understand, it can safely come to a stop, it can pull over, it can take an exit, it can call home for help. And we can go in and remotely assist the truck …”

Cassandras’s [Boston University professor] recent research has focused on mathematically proving vehicle safety before a car is road-tested. He has extended the approach to a bigger idea: eliminating traffic lights.

One of his more striking projects involves a chronically congested intersection near his office in Boston, where Commonwealth Avenue meets the Boston University Bridge. Using computer simulations, he and his team modeled what would happen if they removed all the traffic lights, and cars simply coordinated with each other instead. The results, he says, showed improvements not only in how smoothly traffic would flow but also in safety and energy efficiency.

Cassandras acknowledges that widespread adoption is still far off. For now, only a small percentage of vehicles on the road are capable of that kind of communication.