NHTSA’s pre­lim­i­nary esti­mates of safety ben­e­fits of V2V tech­nol­ogy show that just two safety appli­ca­tions — Left Turn Assist (LTA) and Inter­sec­tion Move­ment Assist (IMA) – could pre­vent up to 592,000 crashes and 1,083 lives could be saved per year.

By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Editor

Let’s give the gov­ern­ment credit where it’s due: 30 years ago, the Fed­eral High­way Admin­is­tra­tion (FHWA) began pro­grams designed to apply elec­tronic and soft­ware sys­tems to the trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Those pro­grams were first envi­sioned when the reign­ing tech­nol­ogy was not far removed from punched cards and room-sized mainframes.

The goal was to move more peo­ple more safely and more effi­ciently over the exist­ing high­way sys­tem. Even then, it was clear that the golden era of high­way build­ing, if not over, soon would be, espe­cially in urban areas. Only now, thirty years later, are some of the more advanced ideas floated back then being realized.

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If you want to get a spe­cial incen­tive for dri­ving a hybrid, you’re a few years too late; but a tax credit applies to nearly every elec­tric car and plug-in hybrid on the mar­ket and it can, in some cases, effec­tively reduce your cost for such a model to that of an ordi­nary gaso­line vehi­cle (or even less).

The widely men­tioned $7,500 tax credit is arguably con­fus­ing from the start. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment gives infor­ma­tion on it from a ‘Tax Incen­tives Resource Cen­ter,’ but it isn’t treated as an incen­tive or rebate to con­sumers, so you don’t get it at the time of pur­chase. It’s not a tax deduc­tion (a reduc­tion in tax­able income) either. With a tax credit, you reduce the amount of income tax you owe.

READ MORE to learn what you need to know.

The safest places to drive in the nation are the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Mass­a­chu­setts, but West Vir­ginia, South Car­olina, North Dakota and Wyoming are among the worst states.

Those are the results of a new report that found that while road safety in the United States has improved sub­stan­tially in the last decade — road fatal­i­ties across the nation are down about 23 per­cent since 2005 – fatal­ity rates vary greatly by region.

READ MORE about the report results

Short, high-quality videos that address cur­rent, fleet-specific dri­ving safety issues and that are acces­si­ble from mobile devices can help achieve greater dri­ver com­pli­ance with fleet safety poli­cies. That’s the mes­sage Ken Latzko, south­east regional sales man­ager for the CEI Group, Inc. (CEI) told mem­bers of the Car­oli­nas Chap­ter of the NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion who met in Greens­boro, North Car­olina last week.

Just as con­sumer mar­ket­ing firms and polit­i­cal cam­paigns have learned to “micro­tar­get” their mes­sages to spe­cific audi­ences with con­tent they find imme­di­ately rel­e­vant, “fleets need to go beyond the clas­sic approach to safety,” which goes only so far in achiev­ing results, Mr. Latzko said. “The goal of micro­tar­get­ing is to achieve com­pli­ance by assur­ing that your safe dri­ving mes­sage resonates.”

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Inc. mag­a­zine ranked GPS Insight num­ber 3,133 with three-year sales growth of 113% on its eighth annual Inc. 5000, an exclu­sive rank­ing of the nation’s fastest-growing pri­vate com­pa­nies. The list rep­re­sents a com­pre­hen­sive look at the most impor­tant seg­ment of the econ­omy — America’s inde­pen­dent entre­pre­neurs. This is the fifth con­sec­u­tive year that the GPS fleet track­ing com­pany has made the list, plac­ing GPS Insight on the Inc 5000 Honor Roll.

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A new online search tool allows con­sumers to type in a vehi­cle iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber, or VIN, to check on whether recall repairs have been com­pleted on a spe­cific car, truck or motorcycle.

This is the first time con­sumers will be able to use a VIN on the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Administration’s web­site to deter­mine whether a recall issue has been addressed on a par­tic­u­lar car. The ser­vice will also be avail­able on N.H.T.S.A.‘s Safer car app for iOS and Android devices.

READ MORE about this free search tool

In today’s auto mar­ket, com­pe­ti­tion is stiff. Every car seems built to last, which makes it dif­fi­cult for automak­ers to tout reli­a­bil­ity as their sole sell­ing point. Con­sumers can shop nearly any brand, con­fi­dent that they’ll drive home in some­thing that will hold up for years. That’s led to the demise of brand loy­alty — espe­cially among younger buyers.

But brand loy­alty hasn’t com­pletely died out. Exper­ian Auto­mo­tive showed us that some brands do pretty well on that front, while USA Today com­piled data from Kel­ley Blue Book to reveal that some automak­ers are doing…less well.

What car brands have trou­ble get­ting repeat cus­tomers? Which five inspire the least brand loy­alty? READ MORE

Four out of five (84%) peo­ple think more dri­vers should be trained in the skills needed to deal with the after­math of a road traf­fic col­li­sion, accord­ing to a new sur­vey from the Insti­tute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) and Dri­ver First Assist (DFA).

The major­ity of peo­ple, 79%, said that they would stop and help if they arrived at a road traf­fic col­li­sion (RTC) before the emer­gency ser­vices, and 44% have done so already, with a fur­ther 10% say­ing they would if they had received the cor­rect training.

READ MORE about the survey

Gas sta­tions are among the eas­i­est places for crooks to use stolen credit cards. Pumps are usu­ally unat­tended, so all the thieves have to do is swipe your plas­tic to fill up their tanks.

Now Visa is rolling out soft­ware to detect whether it’s you or some­one pre­tend­ing to be you fill­ing up on fuel. Roughly 25,000 gas sta­tions have already signed on, with Chevron, an early test case, report­ing a 23 per­cent drop in fraud at the pump.

READ ON to learn how it works.

One of summer’s great­est joys is the reduced vol­ume of free­way traf­fic dur­ing morn­ing and evening rush hours.

With Labor Day loom­ing, the con­ges­tion will amp up and for at least some of us, so will tem­pers. From exas­per­a­tion to frus­tra­tion to full-blown road rage, emo­tions run high behind the wheel.

We’re ter­ri­to­r­ial, we’re stressed out and we’re in no mood for dither­ing and delays.

Accord­ing to the 2014 Auto­Van­tage “In the Driver’s Seat Road Rage Sur­vey,” dri­vers actu­ally report expe­ri­enc­ing fewer unsafe motor­ing maneu­vers com­pared to the responses in the road­side assis­tance firm’s 2009 sur­vey on the same topic.

READ MORE about the findings