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Activu

I am very pleased with our increasing involvement in helping the State of Florida meet its growing traffic challenges with intelligent, cost effective, scalable and secure solutions. Paul Noble, Activu CEO

Rockaway, NJ (PRWEB) April 24, 2012

Activu® Corporation, a leading provider of IP-based visualization and collaboration solutions for mission-critical command and control center environments, is pleased to announce that its solution has been selected by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for integrated traffic management operations across multiple fixed and mobile locations in District Two.

FDOT’s District Two encompasses 12,000 square miles in north-east Florida with major cities such as Gainesville and Jacksonville, a combined population of 1.9 million residents and roadways with over 8,200 lane-miles. District Two has a main Traffic Management Center (TMC) at its urban office in Jacksonville, Florida, a satellite operation co-located at the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) Dispatch Office to coordinate incident response with FHP troopers and a third location at one of FDOT’s maintenance facilities. As a result, one of the District’s primary TMC requirements was to install a single visualization and collaboration solution that would seamlessly interconnect all three centers so operators at each location could view and share the same information and visuals simultaneously and have the right collaboration tools to exchange ideas and make effective decisions.

District Two also had the following additional requirements. They wanted a solution that made the best use of their existing fiber optic network, information technology infrastructure and video display devices without requiring additional purchases; that met FDOT specification 782-2.2.2 for Video Display Control Systems approved by Florida’s Traffic Engineering Research Laboratory (TERL) and was on their Approved Product List; and was fully compatible with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware so District Two could make equipment purchases at State of Florida contract rates from approved vendors. From a technology and features perspective, they wanted a network-based system that utilized an open system architecture while simultaneously providing very high levels of access rights and security; would scale to match the District’s inevitable growth in traffic; had built-in peer-to-peer collaboration capabilities for real-time information sharing with incident-management partners in other facilities; and allowed mobile information devices to be fully integrated into the information sharing, collaboration and decision-making matrix. Activu was selected because its intelligent network and open systems based visualization and collaboration architecture met all of District Two’s system design, interconnectivity, security, scalability, cost, mobility and TERL certification requirements, and more.

“I am very pleased with our increasing involvement in helping the State of Florida meet its growing traffic challenges with intelligent, cost effective, scalable and secure solutions. In addition to serving District Two, we believe that our integration with Florida’s SunGuide ITS software and our deployment in other TMCs across the State will help FDOT realize significant productivity and efficiency benefits from information sharing and coordination across a common platform in routine and mission-critical situations,” said Paul Noble, Activu CEO.

About Activu
Activu is the leading provider of highly secure, scalable and robust IP-based visualization and collaboration solutions for mission critical command and control center environments. Our solutions enable sharing, annotating, and analyzing real-time visual information across the network, and across display devices from large video walls to mobile devices - to develop a Common Operational Picture (COP), improve Situational Awareness (SA) and accelerate decision-making. Learn more.

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Dayton, Ohio (PRWEB) April 24, 2012

In a revealing new report published by the Society of Automotive Engineers this week at the 2012 SAE World Congress, an in-depth observation study of turn signal rate-of-neglect not only exposes how widespread the problem is, but how simple the solution is.    

A total of 12,000 turning and lane-changing vehicles were observed with visible turn signal usage (or neglect) data recorded. The study shows that the neglect rate for lane changing vehicles is 48% and the neglect rate for turning vehicles is 25%. That translates to an astonishing 750 billion times a year that drivers neglect turn signals on U.S. roadways, or over 2 billion times per day. Each incident of neglect elevates the risk of a multi-vehicle crash.

Obviously, not every absent turn signal results in a crash, but the study concludes that the collective result of turn signal neglect is as many as 2 million crashes per year. In comparison, the U.S. Department of Transportation states that Distracted Driving causes about 950,000 crashes per year, so Turn Signal Neglect is actually a more significant safety issue. While the causes and remedies to combat Distracted Driving remain a matter of ongoing debate, the remedy for Turn Signal Neglect is simple, direct, effective, and cost-saving: The singular cause is driver neglect and the solution is the Smart Turn Signal.

Smart Turn Signals use vehicle sensors and computer control to not only shut off the turn signal appropriately and accurately under every conceivable driving situation, but also assists the driver to assure that the turn signal is used regularly. The Turn Signal Assist feature is similar to a seat belt reminder – If you habitually neglect the use of your turn signal when you execute turns, you will eventually get a friendly reminder display. For drivers who use turn signals nearly every time, no display will ever appear, so it is never a nuisance for most drivers. Drivers who neglect their turn signals will quickly improve their habits and therefore reduce their overall risk of involvement in a crash as well as reducing the risk of getting a traffic citation.

Smart Turn Signals actually use the information from the very same vehicle sensors used for the Stability Control System (now standard on all new cars), so no cost is added to the vehicle. In fact, there are savings in cost, space and weight because the turn signal trip mechanism is eliminated. Advances in vehicle computer control have exposed the defects of the trip mechanism, which first went into production in 1940 and has remained unimproved for 72 years.

“This is a first of its kind report on a subject that amazingly, has never been studied. The turn signal is one of the very original automotive crash prevention devices and this simple driver to driver communication device remains extremely effective, but only when it is accurately displayed as required by law”, states Richard Ponziani, P.E., President of RLP Engineering and author of the report. “The turn signal can no longer be considered ‘optional’ and all drivers have an ongoing duty to use it, just as they have a duty to stop at a stop sign or at a red light” he added. Ponziani further stated: "Smart Turn Signals are the perfect complement to the Stability Control System since Stability Control predominately prevents single-vehicle crashes, whereas the Smart Turn Signal prevents multi-vehicle crashes".

The Smart Turn Signal system has been in development for the past several years and the highly favorable cost to benefit ratio makes the urgent need for Smart Turn Signals even more obvious. It is anticipated that this life-saving technology will be integrated into production vehicles in the near future. This breakthrough represents a perfect opportunity to significantly reduce multi-vehicle crash rates, reduce vehicle cost and make driving a lot more friendly and courteous across the U.S.

The SAE report, publication number 2012-01-0261 is available at http://www.sae.org. RLP Engineering is a consulting firm in Dayton, Ohio specializing in vehicle safety design.

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