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The Björn Steiger Stiftung, a German foundation originally set up to improve the response time emergency services need to help injury victims, has announced that the emergency telephones on federal, state and county roads will be abolished in all federal states in Germany except Baden-Württemberg. The foundation attributed the decision to cost reasons but also pointed out that the emergency telephones were becoming more and more superfluous due to mobile location technology.

National City, in San Diego county, California, has installed Opticom multimode signal equipment to enhance safety and provide more efficient traffic signal preemption and management. Currently, more than 70 intersections are equipped with infrared (IR) signal priority technology, most of which are Opticom devices. This allows emergency responders to activate green lights en route to their destination. With the new multimode technology installed at eight intersections, traffic signals can be triggered using

Amey and URS/Scott Wilson have won a four-year contract to manage, maintain and improve ITS throughout Wales. This includes all the associated telecommunications and tunnel systems for the entire motorway and trunk road network in Wales. The contract, which starts this month, will see the companies managing a wide range of motorway technology including telephones, signals, CCTV cameras and the two traffic management centres.

Emcor Group’s Dynalectric Los Angeles subsidiary has been awarded contracts by the City of Los Angeles, California, to upgrade and modify the existing traffic signal equipment in the Wilmington and Canoga Park districts of Los Angeles, as part of the city’s new automated traffic surveillance and control system. The company will be responsible for the replacement of all of the signal controllers for both districts, as well as related installation of conduit, fibre optic cables, video cameras and poles, pavem

Sweden-headquartered Sensys Traffic working in a consortium with Armenian companies Security Dream and Ellips GA and has announced that Security Dream has signed a build-operate-transfer contract with the Armenian police force for a national traffic monitoring system for 25 years.

Latest road safety figures from the UK Department for Transport (DfT) show that compliance with 30mph (48km/h) urban speed limits continues to improve while pedestrian fatality levels are falling.

In a new ABI Research connected car consumer survey, 1,500 respondents in the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, and China were asked about their use (and non-use) of several services available to the ‘connected car.’ Among those who do not currently use any infotainment services, connected navigation was named as the most desired infotainment service by between 59 per cent and 72 per cent (extremely/very interested) in all countries except China, where the greatest interest was in concierge services.

Daimler and Robert Bosch have signed agreements on the establishment of a 50:50 joint venture (JV) for electric motors. Subject to the approval of the antitrust authoritie, the new company, which is to be set up under the name EM-motive, will develop, produce, and market innovative electric motors for electric vehicles.

TomTom has launched Custom Area Analysis, a historical traffic product which gives customers access to highly granular speed and bottleneck information for road networks around the world. The product supports traffic modelling and analysis of road conditions and traffic performance. By providing a complete view of what is happening across the global road network, TomTom claims that Custom Area Analysis enables enterprises and governments to better understand and more efficiently manage their local areas.

Fears that the closure of a heavily congested stretch of highway in the US city of Los Angeles would lead to massive gridlock over the weekend proved groundless. The demolition of the Mulholland Overpass crossing above I-405 required a 53 hour closure of the busy highway along a 16km stretch. The highway carries amongst the heaviest traffic volumes of any stretch of road in the US and there has been concern that the necessary closure would cause chaos on the city as the inhabitants rely heavily on passenger