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Amazon delivery drivers nationwide have to sign a "biometric consent" form this week that grants the tech behemoth permission to use AI-powered cameras to access drivers' location, movement, and biometric data. If the company's delivery drivers, who number around 75,000 in the United States, refuse to sign these forms, they lose their jobs. The form requires drivers to agree to facial recognition and other biometric data collection within the trucks they drive.

Congressional leaders passed a new stimulus package meant to alleviate the financial pain of the coronavirus, but it won’t cure all that ails PennDOT’s pocketbook. PennDOT press secretary Alexis Campbell said Monday afternoon it wasn’t clear if the relief plan will cover the $600 million funding gap plaguing PennDOT. Early media reports indicate that $10 billion of financial relief could be distributed to the 50 states’ highway systems, though it’s unclear how much would come Pennsylvania’s way. State Sen. Pat Browne, a Lehigh County Republican and longtime chairperson of the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that transportation-specific wording included in the...

Uber claims it may have to temporarily shut down in California after a judge ruled earlier this week that Uber and Lyft must classify their gig drivers as employees. “If the court doesn’t reconsider, then in California, it’s hard to believe we’ll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview Wednesday on MSNBC.

New Georgia drivers can get a driver’s license without passing a road test — at least for the next two weeks. In a little-noticed portion of Gov. Brian Kemp’s April 23 executive order allowing certain businesses to re-open, Kemp also ordered the state Department of Driver Services to suspend a requirement that teens and other new drivers must pass a road skills test before getting a new or upgraded license. The exemption continues for the duration of Kemp’s state of emergency declaration, originally due to expire May 13 but recently extended to June 12.

A woman was driving along Interstate 4 near Orange City late Wednesday when she said her minivan’s windows suddenly “imploded." “It was dark and the next I knew there was glass shattering all over my face,” she later told 911 dispatchers. While the woman was still on the phone, dispatchers began discussing a similar call that had just been phoned in from down the road. Authorities have since determined at least 15 vehicles were damaged after being shot at, likely by a BB or pellet gun, on highways in the Volusia County area on New Year’s Day. The woman gasped...

I-4 Ultimate’s promise five years ago was that private financing and management would make Florida’s largest road reconstruction project better, faster and cheaper. Today, the 21-mile and $2.3 billion rebuilding of Interstate 4 through metro Orlando is slogging through rising costs to an uncertain finish date, with crews working day and night under the pall of repeated worker fatalities. Some of the issues: - The fifth death of a construction worker last month that preliminary findings say would have been avoidable with a more cautious approach to bridge building that SGL Constructors made mandatory this month. - Construction consortium I-4...

At any given time, millions of Americans are forbidden to drive because their licenses have been suspended, often for reasons that have nothing to do with traffic safety. But their cars can still be legally driven by relatives, friends and neighbors. Given that reality, should police be allowed to pull over a car simply because it is registered to someone with a suspended license? While the assumption that the registered owner is behind the wheel might seem reasonable, condoning such traffic stops, as the state of Kansas is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to do in a case the justices...

Are tolls going to be enforced on private drivers? The German government, along with every car owner in the European Union, will finally get a definitive answer to that question on Tuesday. If the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rules in favor of the tolls, all motorists will be charged to drive on German highways. The fees, known as "vignettes," are to be collected according to the time traveled on the autobahn. For cars registered in Germany, however, owners will get a credit deductible from the motor vehicle tax as compensation, meaning the costs would be offset, and ultimately, Germans...

The U.S. Interstate Highway System is the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded on a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise taxes on motor fuel, today it accounts for 25% of total vehicle-miles traveled despite accounting for just 2.5% of total road network lane-miles. Yet, much of the Interstate system, construction of which began in the 1950s, is nearing the end of its functional life, along with the infrastructure of other surface transportation modes. Over the next two decades, trillions of dollars of investment will be needed to rehabilitate and in some cases rebuild this infrastructure, according to...

CHICAGO — Illinois gas taxes haven’t been touched in decades, but this summer, gas taxes will practically double. As part of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s attempt to balance the state budget, the state’s gas tax will double to 38 cents per gallon beginning July 1. That puts Illinois in the top five states for the highest total gasoline taxes. “Illinois is going from one of the lower gas taxes in the region to one of the highest,” Patrick DeHaan, GasBuddy.com founder, said. Cities in Cook County also have the option to raise gas taxes by an additional 3 cents a...

Seveven medical conditions drivers must report in UK

Dropping a dime on trucks and buses that keep their engines running while parked is paying big bucks to some New Yorkers. The number of summonses issued for violating the city’s anti-idling law skyrocketed to 1,038 last year — up from just 24 in 2017 — following the creation of a reward program for ratting out offenders, The Post has learned. Meanwhile, the city Department of Environmental Protection has handed out nearly $20,000 to 13 whistleblowers who each got a 25 percent share of the fines generated by their tips, according to official data. Leading the list is lawyer David...

Dozens of drivers have filed tort claims seeking money from the state of Indiana after their cars were damaged while driving on a 15-mile, pothole-afflicted section of Interstate 69. The problematic stretch of highway extends between mile markers 219 in Pendleton and 234 in Daleville, The Star Press reported. Forty claimants are pursuing damages for repairs to brake calipers and rotors; rims and wheels; tires; improper wheel alignment; suspension way bars and other vehicle parts.

When the 66 Express Lanes opened a year ago, officials promised the tolls would mean a smoother ride on the interstate, a major east-west thoroughfare from Northern Virginia into the District that is infamous for its headache-inducing congestion. The state’s promise — less congestion and faster travel times during rush hour — has been fulfilled for many commuters able to pay or carpool, but the new toll system has had an adverse effect for many of the remaining road users. For some commuters, the rush-hour period has simply shifted later — outside the toll hours — and dumped them onto...

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. Beer required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture, about 9,000 years ago. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer and vice versa. These two were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of...

In life, some things are unavoidable: death, taxes — and if you live in South Florida — tolls. Coughing up money to drive on the highways add to the cost of living in South Florida. Drivers in Miami-Dade and Broward spent more than a half billion dollars in tolls fees in the last year. Consider: A daily trip from Kendall to downtown Miami costs over $4 roundtrip by Sunpass, or about $1,000 a year for a five-day a week, 50-week commuter. For those who haven’t signed up for Sunpass, the toll-by-plate rate of almost $8 per day amounts to $2,000...

There have been three crashes in about one month on the newly opened Interstate 11, resulting in four deaths and causing concern with transportation officials. Representing the first new portion of highway added in the United States in 25 years, I-11 is a 15-mile stretch linking motorists between the Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge near the Hoover Dam and Henderson, bypassing Boulder City. The celebration of the newly opened road on Aug. 9 was short-lived. On Aug. 14, a two-vehicle crash left two men dead. On Aug. 28, a two-vehicle crash left two dead and three injured. On Sept. 6,...

Only two Idaho drivers have been cited for driving too slowly in the fast lane since the state’s new “slowpoke” law took effect July 1. Three other drivers got warnings that they better go the speed limit in the left lane or scoot over. Those numbers, current as of July 27, are from the Idaho State Police, which patrols the state’s highways. Tickets for speeding during that time frame — numbering 2,495 — far surpass these five cases of impeding fast-lane traffic. Even so, the new law gives troopers another tool to keep roads safer, said bill sponsor Rep. Lance...

Elizabeth Zemba of Mt. Pleasant, a daily Pennsylvania Turnpike traveler, turned to art and creativity to express frustration with the highway's ever-rising tolls. She created an Internet meme. A photo of a turnpike tollbooth is overlaid with the logo: "Pennsylvania Turnpike re-inventing highway robbery since 2009." For many, annual turnpike toll increases simply have become too much to bear. Two weeks ago, a coalition of truckers and motorists advocates filed a class action suit against the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, PennDOT and Gov. Tom Wolf, seeking to recoup "excessive fees" that went to underwrite projects other than the operation of the...

ABINGDON, Va. — Crashes in the construction zone around Interstate 81’s Exit 14 in Abingdon more than doubled between 2015, the year before the project started, and 2017, according to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. There were 67 crashes reported between Exits 10 and 17 in 2017, while the number of crashes in that stretch was 36 in 2015, according to the DMV. There were 72 crashes in 2016, the year the project began. Between Dec. 8-10, there were two accidents on that stretch of highway, including a one-vehicle crash that resulted in a fatality and a tractor-trailer that...