Take it slow
Teenage drivers are eight times more likely to be involved in a collision or near miss during the first three months after getting a driver’s license, compared to the previous three months on a learner’s permit, suggests a study led by the National Institutes of Health. Teens are also four times more likely to engage in risky behaviors, such as rapid acceleration, sudden braking and hard turns, during this period. In contrast, teens on a learner’s permit drove more safely, with their crash/near crash and risky driving rates similar to those of adults. The study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health. “Given the abrupt increase in driving risks when teenagers start to drive independently, our findings suggest that they may benefit from a more gradual decrease in adult supervision during the first few months of driving alone,” said Bruce Simons-Morton, Ed.D., M.P.H., senior investigator at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and one of the authors of the study.
Who’s going electric?
While consumer adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) continues to disappoint, with only 2 percent of all vehicles shipping in 2018 expected to be electric, city governments are climbing aboard, according to a new report by ABI Research. The introduction of urban emission zones, initially aimed at banning older diesel vehicles, will culminate in zero emission zones and city centers restricted to EVs only, according to the report. The state of California was preparing a bill at press time that would mandate 20 percent of miles traveled via ride-hailing services to be in EVs by 2023, rising to 50 percent by 2026.
Creepy in St. Louis
Sitting in the back of a cab or ride-share can have a confessional allure, notes the author of an article this summer in The New York Times. “Sealed off to the world, you can take a private moment for yourself or have a conversation – casual or deeply intimate – with a driver you’ll never see again. Now imagine finding out days later that those moments were being streamed live on the Internet to thousands of people. What’s more, some of those people paid to watch you, commenting on your appearance, sometimes explicitly, or musing about your livelihood. This was the reality for potentially hundreds of passengers of a ride-hailing service driver in St. Louis, according to a lengthy article published in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch this weekend. In it, Jason Gargac, 32, a driver for Uber and Lyft from Florissant, Mo., described an elaborate $3,000 rig of cameras that he used to record and live-stream passengers’ rides to the video platform Twitch. Sometimes passengers’ homes and names were revealed.”
Putting the reins on ride-hail services
New York became the first major American city in August to halt new vehicle licenses for ride-hail services, dealing a significant setback to Uber in its largest market in the United States, according to a report in The New York Times. The legislation passed by the City Council will cap the number of for-hire vehicles for a year while the city studies the booming industry. The bills also allow New York to set a minimum pay rate for drivers.
Cars for rent
Getaround, the car-sharing platform that allows users to rent and drive cars shared by people in their city, was launched in Philadelphia this summer. Every car on the platform can be booked hourly or daily and is equipped with Getaround Connect™, a technology that enables users to remotely locate and unlock cars using the Getaround iPhone or Android app. Philadelphians can car-share with people near them, without coordinating a key pickup or dropoff. This is said to put a wide variety of cars at the fingertips of consumers while allowing car owners to earn thousands in extra income that helps offset the cost of their vehicle.