The recent announcement that EU rules for fitting speed limiters to new cars from 2022 will be adopted by the UK was welcomed by many, including the European Transport Safety Council, as a move that will save lives. However, not everyone is convinced by this 'guardian angel' technology. The AA pointed out that there are times, when overtaking for example, when temporarily exceeding the speed limit may be safer. Others have said that proposed 'black boxes' that would record a vehicle’s ...

A massive redevelopment of the old Royal Albert Dock in East London is transforming the derelict waterfront to a gleaming business district. The project, which started in June 2017, will create 325,000 square metres of prime office space – a 'city within a city', as it has been dubbed – for Asian finance and tech firms. Then, in 2018, authorities in Kampala, Uganda celebrated as a ferry on Lake Victoria was unloaded with goods from the Indian Ocean, onto a rail service into the city. This ...

Potholes are a perennial problem. They are dangerous to road users, and the damage they cause to vehicles can be hugely expensive. The cost of repairing them is also vast. But still they appear, and reappear, in countless places. So why do these pesky crevices pose such a difficult challenge? And is there any light at the end of this pothole-filled tunnel? Potholes often begin as imperceptible microscopic cracks in the road surface. Bad weather, poor drainage and heavy traffic can all ...

The idea of free public transport has clear appeal. Cities in France and Germany are already considering such proposals, to reduce traffic and air pollution. And in the UK, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn declared that he would introduce free bus travel for under-25s, to complement the passes already available to senior citizens. But the evidence suggests that offering free public transport causes headaches for local authorities – and may not be an effective way of getting commuters to ...

Whether tapping a contactless card to take the subway, buying a gift for a loved one or using a smartphone to find the way home, your everyday actions leave behind breadcrumbs of digital information. When these traces are collected and analysed en masse, they can help urban planners to pick up on the daily rhythms of the life of a city and uncover trends about the people who live there. In a recent study, we developed a new mathematical framework which extracts various spending habits ...

The joke It is a standard April Fools' Day joke that will get dredged up once every few years, and goes something like this: Ireland is considering amending all of its roads from left-hand drive to right-hand drive so it can be more in line with European standards. However, it will be done on a phased basis where only heavy goods vehicles will drive on the right for the first six weeks, after which all vehicles drive on the right. However, more than 50 years ago, in 1967, Sweden ...