Cycling is contentious because campaigners demand physical changes to the roads – often at the expense of cars. And roads are political, writes Katja Leyendecker

Whether describing how the seeds of determination to succeed were sown from having to walk to the local boy’s school to attend honours maths, physics and chemistry classes, or how empathy helps you to be a more effective colleague when collaborating on projects, four female engineers describe their career journey

With aims of bringing more human-like reasoning to autonomous vehicles, MIT researchers have created a system that uses only simple maps and visual data to enable driverless cars to navigate routes in new, complex environments. Human drivers are exceptionally good at navigating roads they haven’t driven on before, using observation and simple tools. We simply match what we see around us to what we see on our GPS devices to determine where we are and where we need to go. Driverless ...

The aboriginal people of Australia have a story about the demise of Irish engineer Charles Y O’Connor. In the course of his construction of Fremantle harbour he ordered the destruction of a reef which was used by aboriginal men to cross the Swan River for ceremonies with their womenfolk. Angered by this destruction of their ceremonial route, they sang a mystical aboriginal song to drive him mad. Subsequently (the story goes), he rode himself and his horse off a cliff into the ocean and ...

With the number of vehicles on the road around the world expected to grow to more than two billion by the 2040s, traffic congestion on roads will worsen to significant degree. Producing 20 per cent of all air pollution, gas-burning vehicles increasingly threaten the air quality and the health of people living in the affected areas. As construction projects seek to expand roads to accommodate the increase in vehicles, more of our open spaces will need to be given over to roads or rail ...

In the 1960s animated sitcom 'The Jetsons', George Jetson commutes to work in his family-size flying car, which miraculously transforms into a briefcase at the end of the trip. A study of the environmental sustainability impacts of flying cars, formally known as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or VTOLs, finds that they wouldn't be suitable for a Jetsons-style short commute. Vertical takeoff and landing like a helicopter However, VTOLs - which combine the ...