Robert Stevens Elected Green Truck Association Chairman
The Green Truck Association, an affiliate division of NTEA – The Association for the Work Truck Industry, recently elected new officers of its Board of Governors.
Robert Stevens, vice president of strategy for ROUSH CleanTech (Livonia, MI), will serve as the 2015–2016 chairman of the Green Truck Association. Stevens accepted this responsibility from preceding chairman Bill Burns, fleet operations manager for City of Columbus, Ohio (Columbus, OH).
A Peek Into GM’s Connected Car Future
General Motors is working to make sure that your most expensive “device” is also your most connected by giving a new wireless look to its brands. The company has now put WiFi into dozens of new Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC models, thanks to a new AT&T 4G radio module that provides the same kind of high-speed link you’d expect to get out of the latest 4G iPad or Samsung Galaxy.
The service is by no means free (you’ll have to attach the car to AT&T data plan), but it’s a nifty feature to have in this age hyper-connectivity.
Using Naturalistic Data To Assess Teen Driver Crashes
Memo to parents: Distracted driving by teenagers is riskier than previously thought, particularly when it comes to multitasking with a cellphone. This is one finding of research that provides sobering video evidence of the extent and nature of the problem.
The study entailed putting video cameras in the cars of drivers ages 16 to 19, allowing researchers to watch the excruciating moments before nearly 1,700 crashes. Time and time again, teenagers in the videos — which will be made available to the public — lose themselves in their devices and then are jarred back to reality when they slam into another car or careen off the road.
Does Size Really Matter?
By Kristofer Bush, Vice President, Marketing, LeasePlan USA
A global LeasePlan Monitor survey looks into driver preference of company vehicles.
When looking at driver preference, 80 percent of all fleet drivers see the size of the vehicle as the most important selection criteria. Size appears to be a universal reason for choosing a vehicle, but what else is influencing driver decisions? And what does this mean for the future of fleet?
New Ford System Could Spell End to Speeding Tickets
“But officer…” If you’ve ever tried to explain your way out of a speeding ticket, claiming you didn’t know how fast you were going, or what the local limit was, you might want to check out the new Intelligent Speed Limiter that Ford is launching this year.
A number of vehicles now display the local speed limit on their navigation screens, some using cameras to ensure that the limit hasn’t changed since the navi database was created. The system being introduced in the next-generation Ford S-Max people-mover goes the next step, and actually controls the speed of the vehicle itself.
