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General Motors Co announced last Tuesday that it has completed mass production of 130 self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. The production began in January and took place at GM’s Orion assembly plant located in Michigan.
A GM company representative released details of the company’s plan to deploy the autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, California and Scottsdale, Arizona. The deployment is scheduled to take place within the month after a final test in Michigan with ride-sharing affiliate
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Alphabet Inc.’s autonomous car company Waymo announced its plans to begin exploring self-driving trucks on Thursday, June 1st.
“Self-driving technology can transport people and things much more safely than we do today and reduce the thousands of trucking-related deaths each year,” a Waymo spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, had been testing autonomous technology since 2009 and finally announced the launch of Waymo in December 2016. Since then, it has set in motion several driverless-car test-ride initiatives throughout Phoenix, Arizona.
The company
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Cell phones in the car can be tempting, especially if you are receiving text message notifications. Although driving requires 100 percent of a driver’s attention, the sound of a cell phone ping often gets the best of us.
In fact, at any given time throughout the day, approximately 660,000 drivers are attempting to use their phones while behind the wheel of an automobile, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
For this reason, the software developers of Apple Inc. have announced that the new iOS 11 update, coming this fall, will feature a new “Do Not Disturb” feature that will disable smartphones from receiving alerts while a driver is behind the wheel.
Apple iPhones
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Earlier last month, the Colorado State Senate passed a bill that increases the penalties that repeat drunk-driving offenders will face.
The bill, properly referred to as House Bill 17-1288, was originally presented by Republican Senator John Cooke of Greely. If the bill passes, habitual DUI offenders who commit a class 4 felony DUI or who have been charged with four subsequent DUIs must be sentenced by the court to no less than 90 days and up to two years in a correctional facility. Additional community service requirements of up to 120 hours may also be required, along with mandatory enrollment in drug and alcohol safety classes, based on the language included in the bill.
Drunk driving in Colorado has been deemed a serious issue with more than 4,600 DUIs occurring in 2015
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Iowa state officials have recently announced that resident’s should be able to start downloading their driver’s licenses via their smartphones by late next year.
According to a report made by The Des Moines Register, the Iowa Department of Transportation administered a pilot program that required over 100 state employees to use state-issued iPhones last year. After a successful test period, officials decided to expand the digital driver’s license program statewide within 12 to 18 months.
"We definitely need to be able to accept this as proof of identity and driving privilege where necessary," said Mark Lowe, director of the department. "Our law enforcement should be able to interact with it,
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Although the full integration of self-driving cars is still many years away, it is not as far as people may believe. Autonomous vehicles are being tested more and more day by day, and companies are already projecting their effects. For instance, a new report revealed by Goldman Sachs states that self-driving cars and trucks could withdraw a total of 25,000 jobs per month or 300,000 per year in the United States.
Truck drivers are expected to experience the brunt of the effects from driverless technology. According to research conducted by Goldman Sachs, there were 4 million U.S. driver jobs in 2014, of which 3.1 million were truck driver jobs.
The report also estimates that semi and fully
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A majority of drivers who work for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are usually doing so without letting their insurers know about it.
Most auto insurance companies lack additional coverage for drivers who work for network driving companies. Instead, they require drivers to obtain commercial driving coverage, which would cost drivers thousands more each year.
As insurance companies discover that drivers are working for Uber and Lyft under the radar, due to fears of being dropped, they are coming up with ways to incentivize drivers to come out of the woodwork.
Allstate Corp. has been one of the first major auto insurance companies to provide extra coverage options
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Waymo and Lyft have come together to sign a self-driving vehicle partnership deal that will help put both companies on the autonomous technology map.
Lyft ranks as the nation’s second most-profitable transportation network company right after their top competitor, Uber. Their partnership with Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit that was announced in December 2016, comes to no surprise as the race toward self-driving vehicles amplifies.
Since launching, Waymo has rolled out a test ride program with over 600 self-driving minivans across Phoenix, Arizona.
The partnership deal signed between Lyft and
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In the midst of what many are calling a “distracted driving epidemic,” a new device has been created to help stop preventable accidents from occurring.
Named after its similarities to a traditional Breathalyzer, the “textalyzer” is a developing device that has the power to reveal whether or not drivers were using their cellphones at the time of a car accident.
The new device, developed by Israeli company ‘Cellebrite’, works by attaching itself to cell phones and encrypting files of activity. Once the textalyzer is attached to a cell phone, it can report the exact time when a phone was swiped or clicked. However, the device cannot reveal any sent text messages or other content that might have been displayed on the screen moments before a car crash.
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Uber Technologies has announced that it will expand its Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) outside of the U.S. for the first time. The transportation network company, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, has chosen to expand their research development center in the Canadian city of Toronto.
The ATG differs from most Uber offices in the sense that their sole focus is aimed at the hardware and software of autonomous vehicles. Employees who work within the ATG are dedicated to developing both the algorithms of self-driving cars as well as the mechanics and robotics that execute given commands.
The new ATG research center in Toronto will be located in the backyard of the
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