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The safest and most dangerous songs for driving

“Rock music is often characterised as having a fast tempo and high sound volume . . . The findings are useful for the development of effective driver education strategies — in particular, a publicity programme that could enhance public awareness of the negative impact of music listening on driving performance.” – Qiang Zen (co-author of the study)

We guide you through all the different driving tests from around the world and look at manoeuvres in each test and rank their difficulty.

A Security company recently discovered a goldmine of email addresses, passwords, license plates and VINs belonging to a vehicle tracking service.

Scary things can happen if you don’t keep your cloud secure...

At the autonomous driving startup Starsky Robotics, the present and future of U.S. employment ride in the same cab.

This is a company that employs truck drivers, is how the talk begins. The coders are sometimes taken aback - this differs from the usual change-the-world spiel deployed in hiring meetings. Truckers have very different ideas and different experiences from people like you, Seltz-Axmacher continues. Statistically speaking, many of them are Trump voters. They will say things that you may find startling. Not in a malicious way, but because people from, say, rural West Virginia talk differently than people from San Francisco. Can you handle that?

Many fleets use telematics to keep track of their vehicles but that technology is underutilised when buying insurance. Instead of using telematics to get a discount from UBI providers, fleet managers continue to rely on the same-old policies. “Telematics aren’t used for the insurance side of things,” said Blair Currie, vice-president of business development at IMS. “They are used for the risk-management side.”

Interesting look at Fleet managers and Usage Based Insurance.

#UBI

Hodos Media's Managing Director, Kevin Presott, at Collaboration Nation

Hodos Media successfully completed a Innovate UK feasibility study in September 2015, and presented at the Collaboration Nation event in November 2015.

#fleetfoot collaborationnation

Interesting use for the same hardware Hodos is using for our fleetfoot service...

A Sunderland, UK-based technology entrepreneur has escaped a charge of speeding by using telematics data. The case is the first of its kind and could open the floodgates for hundreds of thousands of motorists

People who really identify with their car drive more aggressively, study finds

A study conducted by Temple University Fox School of Business finds those who view their car as an extension of themselves have stronger aggressive driving tendencies - personality, attitude and values all contribute to aggressive driving behaviors.

The researchers found:

- People who perceive their car as a reflection of their self-identity are more likely to behave aggressively on the road and break the law. - People with compulsive tendencies are more likely to drive aggressively with disregard for potential consequences. - Increased materialism, or the importance of one's possessions, is linked to increased aggressive driving tendencies. - Young people who are in the early stages of forming their self-identity might feel the need to show off their car and driving skills more than others. They may also be overconfident and underestimate the risks involved in reckless driving. - Those who admit to aggressive driving also admit to engaging in more incidents of breaking the law. - A sense of being under time and pressure leads to more aggressive driving.

Study: Ayalla A. Ruvio, Aviv Shoham. Aggressive driving: A consumption experience. Psychology and Marketing, 2011; 28 (11): 1089 DOI: 10.1002/mar.20429

Long Live Games For Learning

This piece articulates what hodos has been feeling for sometime - gamification is more than just points and leaderboards - it’s about “mak[ing] fun and learning indistinguishable.”

A typical “gamification” concept goes something like this: Take an existing set of activities – say banking, or exercise, or rote schoolwork (the more mundane the better, apparently) – apply a set of “game rewards” in the form of points (or leveling, or badges), and as if by magic the world will become more fun, workers more efficient, and learning more effective.

Successful examples of gamification are “based on this philosophy of finding the game in learning: The core of the game [is] the same activity as the core of the competency we were tackling... [by] uniting good game mechanics and learning.” explains Michael John of GlassLab in this Techcrunch article.

#gamification #tech #morethanbadges

Successfully detecting aggressive driving behaviours from velocity and acceleration.

Traffic accidents annually produce 1.3 million fatalities and 50 million injuries worldwide - 70% of these accidents are related to human factors and reckless driving which is the result of excessive or inappropriate speed.

A group of researchers for the Applied Mathematics for Information Technology and Communications Department of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid has found a way to efficiently characterize driving through non intrusive methods, not perceived by the driver. Thanks to this research, they have shown that is possible to detect a reckless driving behavior by just monitoring driving external signals, such as velocity and acceleration.

The model was empirically verified under real driving situations at UPM facilities. They tested its validity and its generality for diverse driving signals, different drivers and types of roads. The results showed a success rate of 92% for detecting reckless driving behavior from driving signals.

Study: Ana Belen Rodriguez Gonzalez, Mark Richard Wilby, Juan Jose Vinagre Diaz, Carmen Sanchez Avila. Modeling and Detecting Aggressiveness From Driving Signals. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2014; 15 (4): 1419 DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2013.2297057

Driverless cars aren't the future...

... safer and more efficient driving is!

Above: The new driverless Google car. Image Source: Google

“‘Our research reveals that although many drivers have an understanding of what the car of the future will look like, they aren’t quite ready to try it out just yet – and they still enjoy the physical act of driving. Over one quarter (27%) of people surveyed say that they wouldn’t buy a driverless car for that reason. “ Dr Chris Davies, head of technical superiority at Autoglass.

UK motorists enjoy driving too much to let technology take over!

#driverless cars #tech #ecodriving #safer driving

Are women better drivers than men? One study has suggested they are...

We’ve been discussing this at hodos media HQ today!

“A small sample of 50 drivers faced in-car assessment, and another 200 were watched from the street at Hyde Park Corner in London.When they were marked on 14 different aspects on driving, women on average scored 23.6 points out of a possible 30, while the men only got 19.8 points on average. According to the survey, women made typical road mistakes far less than men.”

“Charlotte Fielding, head of car insurance at Privilege, said: "The research has shown that there is a really big discrepancy between how men think they drive and how they actually drive."

#safedriving #good driving #women drivers

Taxi GPS data helps researchers study Hurricane Sandy’s effect on NYC traffic.

“The first step was to figure out from the data what is normal,” Dan Work, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois said. “There is a heartbeat pattern to the city every single day. In the middle of the night when traffic is light, you can get from one side of the city to another very quickly, and every morning during rush hour the roads are congested. The data shows us the typical heartbeat, and then we look for the arrhythmia."

Older drivers four times more likely to swerve out of lane while texting

Randall Commissaris, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Wayne State University in Detroit, says that people tend to think that young drivers are easily distracted, allowing them to be more likely candidates for accidents. However, he tells The Telegraph, the study proves the opposite. Commissaris explains:

"Although texting while driving had a negative impact on drivers of all ages, younger drivers were less distracted by texting, and older drivers' performance was much worse because of their texting."

For those aged between 35 and 44, 80 percent of participants swerved, the Daily Mail continues to report. Twentysomethings and teens ages 18 and older only swerved 40 percent and nearly 25 percent of the time, respectively.

Study: The Effects of Texting on Driving Performance in a Driving Simulator: The Influence of Driver Age.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons License

Will smartwatches be the next big gaming platform?

Google Earth and Niantic Labs founder John Hanke tells Sophie Curtis why gaming could be the 'killer app' for smartwatches

"Gaming is always there. I’ve heard Steve Jobs initially thought that games were beneath his aspirations for the iPhone, but they ended being a huge driver of adoption," said Mr Hanke.

"I think games are going to be one of the things that encourages early adopters to go out and grab these new devices and actually use them and get comfortable with them. And then many other apps will grow out of that."

#games #smartwatch #wearables #future

European Cargo Van Sector Grows For The 14th Consecutive Month.

European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) October figures for commercial vehicle registrations indicate steady growth with the UK market posting strong results compared to 2013. Overall CV demand was up 27.1% in the UK, compared with October 2013, and up 13.9% over the first 10 months of 2014 compared to last year.

Watch Sampo Hietanen, CEO of ITS Finland, talk about the promising future of traffic apps

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