Here are five things worth knowing today: 1. The National Transportation Safety Board announced its top-10 list of Most Wanted safety improvements for this year, Forbes reports. The list, which covers all modes of transportation, includes: Reduced fatigue-related accidents, disconnect from deadly distractions, required medical fitness for duty, and strengthened occupant protection. See the full list at the NTSB site. 2. The public can now track the location of more than 500 plow trucks and 200 contracted rental trucks on Pennsylvania’s interstates and expressways this winter, PennDOT announced. The announcement is part of an Automated Vehicle Location system pilot that Gov. Tom Wolf hopes will help improve PennDOT’s operations and usage of winter materials. The public can view the trucks’ locations at www.511PA.com.3. Nebraska Transportation Company announced it has chosen to deploy Zonar telematics across its fleet of 120 trucks, according to Field Technologies Online. According to the company, Zonar’s 2020 is preloaded with ZLogs, an hours of service application, that will help NTC drivers submit timely and accurate reports. NTC said it selected Zonar for its telematics platform and 2020 communications tablet with a pre-installed electronic verified inspection reports, hours of service, fuel efficiency, two-way messaging and commercial navigation.4. Three men working in a wash bay at Groendyke Transport were critically injured after a tanker truck exploded Tuesday afternoon, Kake ABC reports. Emergency workers cordoned off a half mile around the Liberal, KS, trucking company for fear of more explosions, according to the report. The victims were still in critical condition as of 7 p.m. on Tuesday. 5. Increased use of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology by municipal transportation departments and city planners brings with it increased safety risks to the public due to electrical faults, according to Utility Testing and Geographic Information Systems (UTGIS). Data from New York State show that in 2014, more than 600 transportation/ITS objects were found to have contact voltages present on them – 82% were traffic signals and an additional 10% were pedestrian crosswalk push button poles. According to UTGIS, many different events or factors can be responsible for DOT/ITS contact voltage: normal wear and tear on the electrical infrastructure, accidents, wire theft, vandalism or rodents chewing on wires are common examples.
